Like you, I am a Elec. Engineer.
I worked my way though college, I delivered pizza, I mopped floors, I did electrical work, I worked on farms, fixed cars, Any job I could find to pay for school. It wasn’t easy. I graduated with only $5k student debt.
Personal responsibility. No cape, no tights, can’t jump worth crap. Running? Nope.
My niece brought a nice guy to Thanksgiving a few years back. Theater Major, he got his Masters in Theater Lighting, here in Utah. He owed $225K because he didn’t want to work while pursuing his “art”. He delivers for Domino’s and VOLUNTEERS at a local Playhouse to run lights for their plays.
Yes, I said $225k for a young man to pursue a degree in “Let’s pretend” in a degree field so obscure that not only does it not have the potential for a career, at best it’s a part-time volunteer job. But, he had 6 years of fun going to school.
Now, he can declare bankruptcy and walk away from that debt, and let me pay for it? Nope. No sale
I was blessed to have a wafer fab job dropped in my lap early on. Dinky little three man operation, literally in a garage. Learned a bit of everything, mostly that I loved the work, I loved watching a slice of silicon turn, step-by-step into scores of ICs.
It was off to the races from there! I used very little of my EE education, but lots of chemistry, optics, physics, plumbing, and mechanical work. Every day an adventure, with the possibility of finding a way to do the 'impossible'.
You two sound as though multiple sigma from the norm in a distribution. (opposite directions obviously)
“Now, he can declare bankruptcy and walk away from that debt, and let me pay for it? Nope. No sale”
There might not need to be a sale...
“But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom”
Alexis de Tocqueville