Posted on 05/25/2005 3:50:28 PM PDT by anniegetyourgun
One of the biggest decisions Andy Blevins ever made, and one of the few he now regrets, never seemed like much of a decision at all. It felt like the natural thing to do.
In 1995, he was moving boxes of soup cans, paper towels and dog food across the floor of a supermarket warehouse, one of the biggest buildings here in southwestern Virginia. The heat was brutal. The job had sounded impossible when he arrived, fresh from his first year of college, looking to make some summer money, still a skinny teenager.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
BTW, my undergrad (the final 60 hours) cost $1300.00 total. Law school was $20K for tuition and books.
In the state I live in, you almost can't go to the state university. Kids with straight A's and fantastic SAT scores are rejected in favor of foreign nationals whose nations will pay big bucks in tuition. An ordinary honor-roll student with a variety of interesting, patriotic, and/or athletic extracurricular activities can't dream of getting in and must resign him or herself to going to a costly private school.
Maureen Dowd wishes she looked as good as Helen Thomas.
Didn't she say that when she grows up, she wants to be Helen Thomas?
Most of this is just personal choice on the part of young people who think they know everything. That's a problem of judgement, and in lower-income areas, it is more prevalent because too many of those folks don't think long term. They think next week, not a few years from now, and instant gratification seems to be the order of the day instead of long term planning because they don't trust or have hope in the future, not realizing that their future is what THEY make of it.
What I have observed (with only a very few exceptions) is that most without the completed degree have a tougher time landing a good job in the first place, start at a lower wage in the first job - having more ground to make up, and they tend to be individuals who are first to blame their lack of progress on others.
How do you explain Gates, Dell, Wright and Edison?
See second paragraph disclaimer - I don't deny there are exceptions to the general trend.
One has to enlarge the rule so the exceptions can also be explained by some more overriding factor, otherwise, it's an ad hoc explanation, made up for any incidence and non-binding in others, arbitrarily.
Success is larger than simply doing well in school. What do successful college graduates, and Gates, Dell, Wright and Edison have in common?
*** Not-PC Alert ***
Some people, including some of those who happen to be poor, should not attend college. They are naturally best suited to doing work that doesn't require a college degree.
See first paragraph - drive & discipline. Similar to those who finish a degree program, there has to be a certain bull-headedness/tenacity/stick-to-it-ism.
I agree.
Furthermore, from the article, only 42 percent of college graduates and only 43 percent of college graduates believe a degree is essential for success. These numbers are almost identical. Even the article can't deny that a majority of Americans do not believe a degree is necessary for success.
Of course it depends on the area you want to go into. Some fields you need a degree, some you don't. If my boy were getting C's and D's after his freshman year, I'd be damned before I'd pay for another year of his college.
35k+ doesn't sound like too much, but when you figure he was probably racking up savings in his early 20's while his college bound peers were paying 20k to 40k and then were stuck with huge student loans throughout their 20's, it's not too bad.
One has his entire life to learn; if he's getting only C's and D's, he's not interested at that time in his life in what college offers. Some people join the military; some work at a part-time job, some pursue an art or athletics until they're clear and resolved what they want to do. But for anybody to think that they have to go to college when they really don't, they're just setting themselves up for failure and misery by going against their inner wisdom and passion.
One of the great failures in life is becoming good at something you really don't care about or believe in -- because you know you've sold yourself out, sold yourself short. Too many people go for the security over their happiness and live lives of quiet desperation -- never having tried anything else. And so you hear these people who have done one thing all their lives talk about the great sacrifices they've made for society but it was really their lack of courage to try anything else. That's not a sacrifice. That is cowardice rationalizing itself.
Those are the people who, fearing to fail, warn everybody else against trying. They're horrified by bold moves by anybody -- and especially the President of the United States. They often get jobs in the mainstream media propagating fear and anxieties. If they don't have courage, nobody should.
In regards to the article.....blah, blah, blah. I opted for work instead of college after high school. No one to foot the bill for my education. Still ended up getting a BA and a MA further down the road by working and going to school in the evenings.....so what? My father worked 2 jobs and went to DeVry in the evenings back in the 60's. Worked/Contracted to NASA for over 20 years. Some people don't get scholarships or have wealthy families, but they can still do what they want to do if they work hard and are willing to make a few sacrifices.
The key is that you (and your father) were determined....or as you said, "[to] work hard and are willing to make a few sacrifices." In other words, it is the later that leads to completed degrees, rather than the other way around.
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