It was only a matter of time.
Bigbrent, hopefully you realize the reason I did not respond to your PM's, because I knew this is what you wanted, and I am not capable of giving my time to help others because I'm still trying to figure out trading myself. I've been doing this for a year now and I still feel like every day is a new challenge, a new adventure. I can not give my time to help every person that PM's me asking to swap ideas, in your case I knew you wanted me to mentor you.
You will have to learn the hard way, and if you are not willing to put in the effort you will fail. Join a prop firm, put up 2k and see what you can do, that is all the advice I have to offer.
Who You Know does not apply in trading. It is... do you know yourself?
Go to a remote prop firm, I have my list, http://www.utropix.com/jmowery/PropFirms.html, and sign up with one of them.
If you want to talk about prop firms, I can help you possibly, but I don't have time to do the chat thing and talk all day. I used to participate in a chat room, but I haven't been there for almost 2 months it seems, there just isn't any time for anyone who is a serious trader to teach others unless they are rich and don't need to trade on their own.
Sorry, but, mentors are few and far between, and there is no mentor out there who will teach you without them benefiting, either directly or indirectly somehow.
I talk to ES once in a great while, but even he will tell you that this only happens maybe once every week if even that.
When you said you blew your money on a FEW bad plays, that told me you were money hungry, you wanted to go big and try to take huge profits in the shortest amount of time, and sadly, trading does not work that way.
I started at 100 shares and worked my way up. You should be happy that you didn't get started in the Futures markets, because that could have been even more painful.
Here is some more advice I will give you and all I have left to give:
1. Read Mark Douglas - Trading in the Zone
2. Trade 100 shares of any stock, one that represents the style of trading you'd like to take on, and trade it, and then once in awhile spread out to a few different stocks. Expose yourself to several methods of trading.
3. Preserve your money. When I first started, I made 4k last me for close to 6 months, in that 6 months I learned so much on an extremely low amount of money to work with and that tought me hard to preserve my money and protect it and was probably my most valuable lesson beyond reading Mark Douglas' book.
4. Work hard. Something about you is telling me you are not willing to put in the effort to do this on your own like the other successful traders have. That is okay, 90% or more fail at this. You have to learn to let your ego go and accept the fact that you are most likely not going to make it. But you are smart because you are in college and can finish off college with your degree and move on to something better.
5. Know when to give up. If you work at this for several years, and are struggling to make a living, and know you won't make it in the long run, or think it was just luck or something, be sure to take another job, because the markets will always be here. If 1 year from now I had to give up trading, I'd accept it and go work at another job until I could save up funds and work out a new system of trading, and only when I was testing it for at least 6 months to a year and knew it was rock solid, and had a backup just incase, maybe I'd give it another shot.
Trading is not easy, and for many it probably is a job where you are struggling to make payments and for some others, might be on the brink of failure and are struggling.
The successful traders make the big bucks, but if your lured into this career because of the $$$$$$$, you better realize you will pay the ultimate price to learn how to do it and it will not be easy, and I myself sometimes get a little bit stressed when things do not go my way, but I am fortunate to have backup plans if things go wrong. Do you?