First off.. Orange and Black tomorrow is our day!

Don and the other guys really said it best man... find what you love to do and do it well and you will be happy. I myself joined the machinist apprenticeship program up in Salem when I was 17.. took about 4 years but I walked away with a trade that has taken me all over the west coast and provided a pretty good living for my family for the past 23 years. I even spent a few years in Corvallis working the job shops that made parts for HP. Manufacturing can be a very rewarding career but it is also a very demanding... production schedules and customer demands will pretty much dictate your life if you let them. Get all the education you can and then do what you love most and it will not even feel like work.