Just A Query

You dropped out of studies and you consider yourself a bright boy?

Degrees really do open up doors, even much later on, so perhaps you should think about that?

no degree, no Spanish - no well paid work - the same all over the world -

Take a year of Spanish. Comute to Spain a la cheap airline. Ask there.

In the states theres an old test from the '50s. They still use it. It tells what career path we'd be HAPPIEST IN.

The Kuter Preference Test. gives code numbers. They look up the various scores, and talk about it with us.

Just because you have a digree, in a certain field, doesn't mean you have to have that job type. My granpa hated every day of being a lawyer.

We change fields of business about five times through life.

Gramps felt trapped and obligated. In Spain, they say, "I'd rather be happy than rich."

Get into the Art Department at uni. Honest people.
I worked in the Audio Visual Dept. at uni. I kept films running all the time. Its paid off big time.

Some jobs you just don't do for the money.

You're 20 and don't know what you want to do with your life. So what's new? You and the majority of other 20 year olds.

If you're a 'bright boy' you should know that as well as how likely it is you could get any kind of decent job in Spain with no education/skills and not speaking Spanish.

Get a job at home or get back to school.

I suggest kids should bp Europe slowly, after thier first year of uni. That gives them exposure to wider horizons than home and one town.

The journeyman bp could show them other ways of seeing things And the fact that the world has changed and existed for longer than we'd heard. Europe has been through it all!

www.popperslist.com
Documentaries on world history.

Matthew, you are talking about the human condition, dear friend - alienated, lonely, despairing...and these are just the good times. Trust me, life is downhill from twenty onwards.
Seriously, your options are rather limited without a degree, and the feelings you experience in Wales are probably going to follow you to foreign fields. Seneca: "It is not a change of climate you need it is a change of heart."
That said, maybe you do need to get out into the world and flap your wings a bit before deciding on your true path/vocation. So perhaps, you could try a kibbutzim in Israel, or a work visa scheme in Canada or New Zealand? Failing that, you could head up to Spain in the summer and find work in one of the resorts.
On a logical note, maybe you need to sit down and really think what you want to do with your life and then decide how you are going to achieve it. For example, any degree will enable you to teach English in Spain or even latin America. As you admitted yourself, you don't know what you want to do therefore any rush-of- the- blood foreign escapade will probably result in not very much. n.b. How can you find the answer when you don't even know the question? And I am not talking about a vague dream of giggling senoritas whilst glugging vino - very applaudable no doubt, but even that grows old after a while - a long 'while' but it does grow old.
Matthew, finally I would agree, you are indeed "bright boy" that you are in the process of searching for your role in life - as you know, most of your contempories are more interested in Big Brother and if Posh is pregnant or not. But, celebrate your difference, don't run away physically or mentally until you have a game plan.
Sorry, I do not mean to come across as patronising or belittling because I have made many mistakes myself [oh, gawd, let's not go there] but I have learned from them - they are the greatest teachers.
Good luck.

Well I agree with just about everything but the part about things being downhill later -in my experience if you have paved the way by doing the time -getting a degree and hopping through those hoops, life really opens up. As it stands you are locking yourself out from many options. Life is all about having options. Get your ass back in school and accomplish a basic degree of study.

Matthew, you have A/S levels that denote approximately half Advanced [A] Levels - as you know, you need to complete them before you can read for any degree at university. How about going to a local college part-time including some Sapnish study, and, if you are so inclined you could do some part-time work that will give you the skills to enable you to travel? Bar work? Waiter work? The magic of university life is that you get long holidays so you can travel then.
To be honest, all of my travelling before the age of 25 was one long pub crawl, me trying to act like Indiana Jones in the hostels to impress [failing!] the Swedish girls in the corner, I had no idea about the history or cultures of the places I was visiting. Good fun [for me not the Swedish girls] but, in retrospect, it would have been more prudent for me to live a little first, get an idea about myself and my place in this world then don my travel travel boots.
I don't mean to pour water on your parade, but there's my experience for what it's worth.