I'm a junior in high school, and I go to a vocational school, which offers a co-op program. I've been doing this program for a while now, focusing on metal fabrication and welding. Recently, as all my friends visit colleges and start to tell me about their futures, I am honestly second guessing, or at least kind of considering a different line of work. Compared to all this welding and blue-collar, hands-on work, I've really considered being a historian or archivist of some kind, as I've always had a fascination of Napoleonic history.
My shop teachers tell us all the time about how people leave high school and go do something completely different, but I'm worried that maybe I'm stuck here, considering for the past 2 years I've really wanted to do welding, and so I always put academics second. I've always taken the College Prep courses, not wanting a challenge and just trying to get through high school. Even though, however, I've gotten consistent A's and B's, averaging a 3.4GPA. Along with this, I have been asked by my councilors to try something harder, but I always refused. I feel like colleges wouldn't want such an average student.
I've also never really shown interest in colleges and have yet to express my consideration to friends or family. Due to being this and being so committed to welding for so long, I honestly have no idea where my college fund is, if my parents even still have it stashed away in case I ever changed my mind.
With this stuff in mind, I've thought that I would want to be a historian or something, but I feel that this kind of stuff would come later in life, as I still love welding and working with my hands. My current thoughts are that I'll just work in welding till I break something and then retire from the field and focus on Napoleon stuff more, but the more I think about it the less realistic that seems. I know that this kind of stuff is ridiculously tedious academically, as you need so many degrees its nauseating. I also feel like going to college as a 30s-40s year old man would probably be really weird, and I don't think there are any community colleges that would really help with what I'm aiming to do. Then again, I don't know if I want to go to college out of high school and then go back to the trades for years.
I'm just really torn because I would love to keep going with the trades but I also want to settle down a bit when im older, as I have seen very old men in the trades, and they seem miserable. I also know that Napoleonic history is probably very popular, so that doesn't really help to be honest. Any tips???? I genuinely don't know what I want to do right now, I'm incredibly torn :((