My advice to young people has always been to take any job you can get, and learn everything there is to know about it - Make Yourself Valuable, by being supremely knowledgeable and reliable.
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Spot on.
My slight variation on your very fine advice: I tell young people to get so good at your job that you are “invaluable”, that the business you work for would suffer if you left.
Knowledge is indeed power, even if you are just flipping burgers.
Exactly right. And somebody who starts out at MacDonald’s has just as much possibility ahead of him as someone who has a University degree.
It’s all in the individual and their personal gumption.