jobs are important ?

[HopeydaFish]

When I was 25, I was in much the same boat as Gorie's friend. I was working a crappy retail sales job, just scraping by and hating my life. I had just finished my B.A., but it wasn't going to help me land a better job. I was only 25 years old, but I had almost convinced myself that I was too old to go back to school (now that I'm 31, I realize how foolish this notion was). Thankfully a friend of mine had just gotten laid off from his job and was thinking of going to College to learn programming. Also thankfully, I had just had a big argument with my boss and was desperate for a change. I basically made the decision overnight to go back to school, went to the bank and got a loan for $25k (tuition was $17k -- it was an intensive 8 months course), and was back in school full-time a month later. It took a few years of working for a bunch of crappy companies in order to get enough experience to find a well-paying job, but I finally landed a decent job a couple of years ago and have paid off all my debt and have a bright future ahead of me.

I didn't mean to go for so long with that story...but my point is that I was in much the same circustances as your friend is, and my life is completely different 5 years later. He needs to understand that at 28 years old, his life is only just beginning. When he's 38 and looking back at how he thought his life was over at 28, he'll realize what a fool he was. $25,000 of debt is nothing -- or at least it's not enough that he should consider himself as being crippled by it.

He needs to figure out what type of job he'd enjoy doing, and then come up with a plan so that he can do that for a living. He just needs a plan, and then needs to stick to it. It's no more complicated than that.