Posted on 01/11/2023 6:56:02 AM PST by simpson96
Young people, are you ready for success? Want a career in a rewarding field that will lead to a fulfilling life? Don’t go to college. Be an electrician, be a plumber, be a welder, be a carpenter — hell, learn to code — but for heaven’s sake and for that matter, your own, don’t go to college. I know some of you are months or even years away from high school graduation, but: Don’t. Go. To. College. Okay, so if you want to be a doctor, lawyer, or physicist (more on that below), maybe look for a college that does not double as an asylum. Other than that, treat college campuses like the radioactive waste depots that they have become.
Back when I was your age, everybody had to go to college. “Get a liberal arts degree,” my mother said. “You can do anything with a liberal arts degree.” You can’t do much with a liberal arts degree in the 21st century. Actually, you couldn’t do much with one in the 20th century, but no one seemed to know that. We were all supposed to go to college. One person told me to skip it and be a plumber. Not a day goes by that I do not rue failing to heed that advice.
Today, oh young people, college is likely to be a monumental waste of time and money: time you could have spent learning how to do something that people need; and money you could have been earning instead of waiting to see if Biden’s magical student loan forgiveness plan will take root and blossom. (Hint: the election is over. You won’t hear anything more about that until 2024.)
If you do go to college, you may be looking for a challenging atmosphere, an exchange of ideas, and opportunities to grow and craft a future. Instead, like Coleridge’s ancient mariner, you will find yourself on a tiny raft, adrift on a cold, gray, featureless sea with a rotting albatross of a student loan hanging on your neck. And if you don’t get that reference, find someone with a liberal arts degree. Once they explain it, ask if that explanation was worth all the money they paid.
College is lame and depressing. For example:
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has appointed a number of conservatives to the board of the uber-left New College of Florida. One student said, “I got really sad and then just, like, laid down.” Just, like, laid down. It’s a board, kid, you didn’t get a terminal diagnosis. Students are also concerned that their personal safety is at risk, according to The Daily Caller. At risk from what? A different idea? If your safety is that fragile, you should probably be at home engaging with nothing more complicated than Fisher-Price toys. As James Earl Jones said in Field of Dreams, “You’re seeing a whole team of psychiatrists, aren’t you?”
Related: NYC Mom Hired ‘Deprogrammer’ for Daughter ‘Brainwashed’ by College’s Woke Agenda
Speaking of fields, the Caller also notes that the word “field” has been banned at the University of Southern California. The reason? Inclusion. According to the school, “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.” The word “practicum” must now suffice. I’m assuming it only applies to academics. I can’t see a sportscaster talking about how play has been stopped on the football practicum.
The College Fix reports: “Colorado College astrophysics professor Natalie Gosnell says that her field is violent and rife with hypermasculinity, systemic racism, and white supremacy because of individualism, exceptionalism, and perfectionism.”
No, we don’t need any exceptional physicists. No need to strive for the best when it comes to the field… I mean, um, practicum. Aren’t all physicists like the guys on The Big Bang Theory, anyway? I kid! I kid! But how do you make physics racist? Never mind, I’m sure there’s a Venn diagram somewhere that can breathlessly explain it to you.
Also, Harvard Medical School is offering specialized training to students to help them care for LGBTQIA+ infants. I don’t even want to know how to determine if an infant is LGBTQIA+. Is it just me or does that just sound sick and creepy? No, it isn’t just me. It’s sick and creepy.
Finally, from Campus Reform:
On December 6, Penn State professor Sam Richards held a sociology class discussion titled “Trans Issues, TERFs, and The Binary.” During class, he told students “we are all at some level nonbinary.” We’re all, very much, easily bisexual.” To prove we are all bisexual he instructed students to “watch gay and lesbian porn.”
What else can I add to that?
So to sum up: College is lame. Save your money. A college diploma will teach you to be self-centered, moody, and angry. You will learn to bitch, whine, moan, complain, gripe, grouse, cry, emote and wail. You will think that the world revolves around you and spend your life feeling oppressed and depressed for reasons you can’t even define. And as a teenager, you probably already know plenty of people like that. See, you can earn a Ph.D. in being a college student and never even leave home! You can major in Coffee Shop Complaining without spending a dime. The only thing a college degree will prepare you for is to go back and get another degree.
So go be a plumber. It was the only good advice anyone ever gave me in life and now I’m passing it on to you. Your future is calling, and it’s not waiting for you at Harvard. Or Penn State.
Some of the greatest writers I have ever read from the 20th century were not college boys.
G.K. Chesterton was an art school drop out. Mark Steyn didn’t attend, and his personal education shows, and it covers literature, culture and history as well as popular music and movies. He writes like a cheeky 1960s humanities PhD.
Young people are going to follow the bucks, and if it means a free ride for a crap degree (even if ‘free’ means big-time loans), then they’ll do it.
Bottom line, don’t blame them - plenty of others can stop this crap, but simply WILL NOT. For example, a state can mandate higher tuition for crap degrees (at state schools, of course), versus STEM degrees...but no state has ever even considered that, as far as I know.
Mike Rowe on Lockdowns, Safety Third, Dignity of Work and College Loans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKIEX3I9lxY&t=4s&ab_channel=JohnStossel
Rewarding? Hardly. They have no social status at all. You may even make good money doing that but your neighbors don't want to see you gross work truck parked in their tidy neighborhoods...
If you want to be middle class you still have to go to college. Just keep your mouth closed, pretend to be liberal while in enemy territory, get good grades and move on. Never look back.
With Google and Udemy, who needs college?
Screw them. With your income as an electrician, plumber or welder, you will be able to afford a nice place, away from the “beautiful people”.
Get a job, get a life.
I’m have a Master’s degree and I’m not sorry that I got it but if I could go back and do it all over again I would either have gone to cosmetology school and done a couple of years in a shop before starting my own or I would have done 2 years at community college studying IT and jumped right into a high paying position.
“That guys a plumber, wow!!!” said no single female ever.
They make the bucks for now.
However, complex economies need more than house repair people.
Hispanics now do almost all new house construction. They have taken over roof replacement and lots of tree cutting work.
I know retired airline pilots that never went to college (weren’t in the military either). One got to the point of being a certified flight instructer (instrument) by the time he was 19. If he wasn’t instructing, he was riding along on charters building experience in more complex aircraft. I think he made captain for a commuter airline by 25.
I had more experience than him at 16 than he had at 18. Chose to farm. Jimmy Cawtah almost destroyed that career.
I heard one guy said his gal’s mom eventually came to like him because he always had wads of bills on him.
I got a liberal arts degree in English, with a minor in classics. No regrets. It isn’t for most people, and nowadays I advise young people to be wary of the college humanities scene, as it’s mostly toxic. That said, a career in a trade will not provide formal, dedicated training in how to think rigorously and systematically. You can make a good living as a plumber or HVAC technician, but you won’t be able to call yourself educated unless you take care of it on your own. Most people aren’t capable of self education. This places them at the mercy of elites skilled in sophistry and fallacy, or just with an excessive estimate of their abilities. Without a real education it’s almost impossible to challenge such people. Liberal education got that name because it was the education thought most suitable for a free man who wants to stay that way. The servile arts don’t do that.
BS...at my son’s 10th high school reunion (@1998)...all the college degreed guys were lamenting their pay (white collar workers)...while my son, the carpenter with his own biz, figured out he was doing lots better than them. And, likely still is.
If you like working out side your whole life then be a carpenter. For me wood working is a hobby.
You have to decide whether at the end of the work day if you would rather be physically tired and in need of a shower or mentally tired and shower in the morning. It is all a matter of preference.
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