Go to college, work hard, and get laid off
October 10th, 2008So I’m talking to some fellow musicians. These ones happen to be a generation younger than me. They’re not looking forward to the future at all.
A singer I was talking to said he’ll probably have to get five degrees. He knows with globalism, you now have to compete with everyone else in the rest of the world. Great feeling. I’m sure he’s proud of his parents’ generation, you know, the ones who sold out his future.
He also got to see how we just spent $700 billion and the execs took that money and rewarded themselves with wild parties. Great. Not only that, they got to expand their golden parachutes. And people wonder why I was against the bailout. Let’s see, the Dow’s barely over 8000. Do you think the bailout worked? I don’t either.
The drummer I was talking to told me about how his father said to pursue his dreams. His mother on the other hand is convinced he HAS to go to college because he has to think about his future.
I told him that his mother has her head up her ass. Except, with a little bit more tact than that. What world is she living in?
The truth is, pretty much no one has job security. College doesn’t mean shit. It’s no guarantee of anything.
If any young people read this, your parents are wrong. Pursue your dreams. The average person lives to be in their late 70s. Take off eight years if you’re a male.
You’re going to be laid off. You might as well enjoy what you’re doing. If you work hard at something you hate, believe me, the layoff is going to hurt that much more.
Well, ideally kids will get some post-secondary education AND do what they love, but you’re right about job security. Job insecurity is the norm now. But hey, there are advantages to all this short-term employment and globalism: People get to travel more, try out many different kinds of employment rather than training in one narrow field and being stuck there for 40+ years, and…..uh, that’s about all I can come up with at the moment.
I feel sorry for our kids today. It’s hard to decide whether they want to accrue a huge education debt and then find that there aren’t any jobs in their field.
At the moment, Z is leaning toward trade school. With all the illegals they’re letting in, the trades may not get him a secure job either.
If the gov’t doesn’t stop the flow of illegals and bring back our jobs from overseas, I don’t see much of a future for our kids.
SME - The thing is, who’s got the money to travel? Everyone I know keeps getting laid off.
Tshsmom - Yeah, I do too. Especially Z because it’s gonna be even harder. On top of job insecurity, he’s got to pay off Bush’s debt. That should be fun.
The purpose of higher education is more than just job training my friend. If you want a piece of paper that certifies you for a profession, go to a trade school. In certain fields, lay offs or no, a college education will at least get your foot in the door. If you can’t get that much, then you’re at a greater disadvantage in this economy.
You want job security? Go into teaching or education. You’ll always have a job somewhere.
Laura - That’s what I told the drummer. You don’t go to college for job training, you go there to get a formal education.
Even education isn’t safe. Arnie Schwartzwasher’s cutting education funds because this state is near bankrupt, and teachers are now getting laid off.
Z since college is a right (per Obama) then everyone will have that, so next you will have to get a PHD to be ahead.
My advice to the young is to master a trade.
Well even if we live to see our 70, we spend 1/3 of our live educating ourselves. Even when gettin’ into a relationship with the other person, you spend 4 yrs getting to know him/her. Isn’t that waste of time? If you know you just know…
Face Your Fears and Live Your Dreams
Zombie: Yes, CA is cutting education jobs, but there are always openings somewhere, especially for science teachers. They also have the benefit of unions and very good benefits packages too. I agree that the opportunity to go to college should be a right. Every other industrialized nation in this world provides good education for very low costs to its citizens. No one should be denied the opportunity to get an education (if they want one) because they can’t afford it or because they went to an underfunded high school.
I wasn’t hurt by the stock market drop, because I’d moved my $$ out of it about three years ago, in order to capitalize on the cyclical decline in the real estate market (by the way, I’m not wealthy… this is the first time in our lives that my wife and I have been able to make a financial maneuver). We were waiting for it to hit bottom and it looked as if it would accelerate a bit, because of the recent congressional oversight fiasco.
However, the bailout stopped the slide of the housing market down to actual values, so we ended up paying more for our investment in real estate than we should have. On the back end, we will pay higher taxes to fund the bailout. So, in our case it was Bush and congress that torpedoed us.
We don’t have the $$ to be as nimble as the big players and, in my experience over the years, the market has been more predictable than the congress in providing folks with financial opportunities. You can watch commodities and research a company and monitor trends, but with one panic driven weeks worth of legislation and a pen, billions are gone in an instant.
The moral of the story is this… when you’re a working stiff and play by the rules, it’s really a crap shoot out there. So, I go with Zombie’s advice… do what you really like to do.
Sage - Agreed about trades. They’re something nobody can take from you.
With trades though, I strongly believe we have to be more strict with illegal immigration. I see illegal immigration as another way The Man holds us down, by using illegals to undercut the Working Class.
Tenzin - Agreed, but sometimes, people can fool you. You think you know someone and when they move in, they turn out to be not the person you expected.
Miladysa - Yup. Life is too short to do something you hate doing just because your parents wanted you to do it.
Laura - The thing is, we already have those opportunities. Community college is still cheap, and you can get grants and loans for that. Heck, I did. Then my grades were really good and transferred to a state school, which I swear by.
I still think it’s the person, not the educational system. I got just as good as an education from a state university as someone did from UC Berkeley or any of those other schools.
Bo - That’s what I was getting at. I didn’t want to sound like an anti-intellectual and am no way anti-college. But I see too many young people doing things to please their parents instead of doing what they love. You’re going to get laid off anyways, might as well enjoy what you do.
By the way, I didn’t. I had my stocks in with the Dow at 12k, and will probably buy again tomorrow. The thing is, I’m invested long-term, so will just ride it out.
I haven’t read anybody else’s comments, so I have no idea if this has been mentioned yet. I have to agree with the drummer’s mother about college. While it is no guarantee of a job or even keeping a job, a college education is viewed as an imperative these days, sort of like a high school education just a generation or so back. If I go for a job against someone who doesn’t have a degree, unless they have some major natural ability, I will more than likely get the job over the other person simply on the basis of the degree. Is it right? Probably not, but it’s one easy way for an employer to distinguish between two viable candidates.
You know I am with you on this one my friend. The harder road is definitely doing what YOU want; doing what you are told is easier in some ways, but much less rewarding… AND you don’t end up feeling like you are in control of your options. School is an option, but not an end all. Educating yourself is not an option.
Just to make that last point clear… lol…
Educating yourself is not an option, it is absolutely necessary.
I would say that you should get out of high school, go to work at some fast food place, earn enough to buy a few guns, then learn how to shoot them properly. That is about the only education people are going to need in the upcoming future.
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