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Keegan, before you start looking at colleges with an idea what you're going to study, I want to you very firmly sit your rear down and take a good hard long think about what you want to do and how you are going to get there.
You mention you want to perhaps pursue Engineering. I will answer this by saying you have better have top notch mathematical skills and be well versed in Calculus, even now as a high school student. If mathematics is at all difficult for you now, it's not going to get easier!
I myself have three utterly useless degrees under my belt and the student loans to prove it - and I haven't been to a university in nearly ten years. I did work in the field of my first degree for about three years, but that was a terrible existence on the feast or famine geology work schedule and I only had the final work in the geology field due to a connection I made in my first fall class of my Library Science masters program. My third and last degree is as equally worthless as the first two degrees but not because I don't work in the field of that degree, but rather because the field of Aircraft Avionics Systems couldn't give a rat's tail if I have the Associates degree in Avionics Systems from the Community College of the Air Force or not; what they care about is my nearly ten years of avionics experience working on avionics systems.
I started in Mechanical Engineering myself, it took my until Vector Calculus to figure out it just wasn't going to work out. That turned into a major change that then led to a second major change and an eventual graduation after six years. If your mathematics are not ready for Calculus I by the time you enter the university as a freshman, tack on another year of college for each year it takes you to get to Calculus I!
I told you to take a hard seat down and re-evaluate your outlook. There's a good reason for this, the first notion you have to understand is that the degree itself is worthless, meaningless, and there are millions of people who will never go back and work in the field for which they have a degree. In many cases pursuing that degree set their professional and personal lives back decades due to the time they spent and the debt they incurred pursuing it. The second notion you have to understand is that if it's worth doing and you want to be well paid for doing it, it's going to be a job that is difficult in one way or another, and EVERYBODY thinks they have the Intellectually Difficult profile down pat. Very few have the combination of intellectually difficult, environmentally difficult, physically difficult, etc and so forth.
There are a ton of career opportunities that are available to you NOW that will never be open to you again. Later on you will have a family, be less geographically mobile, be less physically able, be shouldered with responsibility, and you won't be able to go be that drill rig hand or that para-rescueman or a lineman or join the railroad or join the military or whatnot. At the same time, you do not want a job that's going to beat you up for menial pay and no benefits, and that includes an easy entry level job anybody (and not to disparage older people) including old people with no prior experience or education in that field can start doing at any age.
My first advice is to only go to college if you can get someone else to pay for it, and I mean with no obligations hanging over you after you complete the education. My second advice is to steer clear of any major that you can pass with a simple google search. My third piece of advice is to listen to yourself when it comes to the golden opportunities that suck - Jobs with benefits are few and far between, especially retirement benefits, and you only need 20 and 30 years to get retirement benefits form many of the places that do offer them. Think about what you want to do, and then think hard about what you can do, and then find something that you can do that will pay you enough time and money off to allow you to think about the things you want to do.
Once you figure out what fields and careers you think you can do that will exact you the kind of income you would like to enjoy, take a good long hard look at technical training and certification that will get you into those fields. I knew a bouncer about ten years back who only bounced because his brother needed him to do it, but otherwise he was doing very well financially working as an electrician for the county fairgrounds. He further had the expertise and knowledge where he could wire up a panel for a house on the side and make a little extra money (did you know a house electrical panel easily starts at $1000?) if he was feeling froggy or someone he knew needed a little help.
If you can join the military (and that's a hard line because only 25% are eligible to join in the first place and only 1-2% actually do), I would suggest you very seriously consider the technical career fields available through either the Navy or the Air Force in a heartbeat. All you need is four to six FAST (I mean blink and they're gone) years of commitment to keeping your head straight and your wits clean and you can leave with what amounts to four years of paid university tuition WITH a monthly housing stipend that may very well be worth as much as the tuition payments! It's quite easily the best deal I know going around, not many places are offering a better one. The problem with this route is that if you get a good career field, you'll want to stick out your twenty years and get that military retirement with healthcare for the rest of your life, which doesn't sound like much now but in twenty years will mean bank.
I hate the fact that I wasted 8 years of my life in college and a year after trying to figure it all out when in reality I could have gone to the Air Force in the Spring of 2000. If I had done so, I would literally be RETIRED in less than 7 months from today, and by retired, I mean half of my Air Force paycheck for the rest of my life. Alas, I still have ten more years before that glorious day - but here's to another ten great years or a good living!! You're not going to get it back - this time, this place, this endless sense of opportunity - enjoy it while you have it!!
