Student loans

People get upset when they find out they studied the wrong thing for what they want out of life and who they are. We all like to think we are exceptional but there are few prodigies in any generation. A top lawyer will make millions, but most will chase ambulances to make little more than someone who never went to law school for example. A top accountant can make millions while a mediocre one will make little over minimum wage and most will make an average middle class wage. Excelling in a field isn’t just about your skill level- it’s about your ability to leverage your skill set, seek or be granted opportunity, market yourself and position yourself to be where you need to be to make money.

As for the old wisdom that a grad will make so much more over their life than a non grad- many skilled trades, sales jobs, investing, tech jobs, etc. don’t even require a high school education. I knew guys who dropped out of high school to sell cars and were making $100k a year before they were 20. That’s over half a million dollars earned before their peers were graduating college to start at jobs paying less than that with almost that much in debt racked up- and this isn’t a Steve Jobs or sports star/celebrity gig that’s one in a million. A good salesman in a good market can easily make that without being a statistical anomaly.

But yeah- they are more or less capped to around that amount and in time their peers will possibly exceed them. IF- they stop there. But I know one person in particular who started in sales when young, became a manager young and got a raise- took finance classes and worked finance, and then with their experience and skills became a partner in a business and within a few decades were making $200 an hour. It’s all about how you play your cards and who you really are. If you don’t have it in you to excel you won’t- it doesn’t matter what level of education you have.

If you don’t have goals and the drive and ambition to reach them, the soft skills to realize them, the eye to see opportunity, the circumstances to be where opportunity is- you are going to have lower odds and a harder time reaching a goal. I’m not advocating people not go to school or saying that it’s a persons “fault” if they aren’t successful as they’d like- but there is a component of self in our success to go along with the external factors and luck that influence success.

The forgotten factor of many grads is time. We all want reward now, not in decades- but generally that’s not how it works. They thing is- many or most grads are ignorant. Not an insult- a truth. You just finished studying for 4 years+ and May have never worked at all- but most likely do not have any experience in your field. Watch a YouTube tutorial on how to do crazy make up or how to draw. You can memorize it and be able to tell someone all the steps but not have the practice and experience to do it yourself.

And it isn’t just the hard skills- it’s not just engineer or lawyer who knows everything on paper and in theory about their trade but has never actually been hands on with t on the field- it’s soft skills. Little things like communication, working on a team, organization, politics, customs, and the particular nuances of whatever the industry and the types of personalities in it are. These you only learn through experience.

So when people get flummoxed over how entry level jobs have these requirements and or low pay- that’s why. I’ve worked with people who were shiny grads with amazing knowledge but they made tools for people who’s jobs they’d never done and didn’t understand. The logic and design was flawless of these tools and any school project would give an A+... but they sucked and people hated them and they didn’t work- because in the trap world they didn’t do what was needed and weren’t designed how the actual user would use them or understand them.

One of the requirements of my job is that I must be able to do the job of every single person in my company. HR, credit, accounting, shipping, recieving, every manager, networking, operations, business enterprise, any technical position, the receptionists even. I have to know their jobs and how to do every function of them. I have to intimately know their work flow and how they operate.

In theory you could do my job without that knowledge- but not well. I make decisions that effect these people on high levels and in minute detail. I approve changes that impact them and need to speak for them and be able to say “that’s great but it needs to do this instead...” and so on. But most jobs rely on others. You can’t be a good sales person if you don’t understand how your shipping, procurement, logistics, and credit work. How do you give customers estimates on time for things when you don’t know how long it takes to ship, receive, inventory/inspect, etc. product or transactions? How can an accountant know something is wrong on the books if they don’t know the business? How can a lawyer defend a client when they don’t know how police or others operate? How can a Dr. know what they can ask of their nurses if they don’t understand the job? And so on.

You have to do your time. You have to learn how the business works and what your place in it is. Knowledge is power and what you learn in school is only a fraction of the knowledge most jobs require of a successful fit. You can be taught technical things and procedural things that form the basic foundations a role requires, but the rest you have to gather through experience- and you have to weed out the people who will work and those who just picked a job where they thought they could be mediocre and make a steady and large check.