College isn't for everyone
2017-10-09
from the time we are born, we are told that college is the way to a good life. teachers tell us statistics about how college educated workers make more money compared to high school graduates. we are misled into thinking that if we dont know what to do with our lives, then we should go to college. some people in the bourgeois community even use what college they went to to measure their self worth. other bourgeois like to brag about the college their kids went to, but how relevant is this to you?
people make the wrong assumption that college prepares us for employment. it doesnt. it's also very easy to assume that because "successful" people went to college, that means you too can become successful by going to college, but this logic doesnt work. if a successful person played golf, would you become successful by playing golf? of course not. simply engaging in the same activities as a successful person isnt going to make you successful. likewise if a successful person had a habit of going to church, you would not succeed by going to church.
we are made to believe that college makes people smart, and that any mofo can walk into a college a dummie, and walk out smart, but it doesnt work that way. if you throw a dummie into a college, and have him attend classes for 10 years, he's still going to be a dummie 10 years later. on the other hand, a smart person will still be smart regardless of whether he attended college or not.
a smart person is someone who is able to make the most of what he has without having to make too much sacrifice. that includes wasting time at school, and money on tuition. as we begin to grow older and look back on life, we realize time may be worth more than money itself.
let's be real here. in the kapitalist world we live in, alot of college students, or the majority of them, come from bourgeois backgrounds. college itself costs $30k and up in western kapitalist countries like amerika, meaning you generally need to have 120k laying around in order to finish college. furthermore, if we calculate lost wages for the 4 yrs you are in college, the cost for college adds up. if we assume that you can be making $30k a year instead of going to college, then multiply that by 4 and you get 120k, plus the 120k in tuition. so in actuality, college winds up costing you 240k in total rather than just the 120k in tuition. what we end up discovering is that you generally have to be rich just to choose the college path. our findings may help dispel the myth that college made you rich, because if you do some digging, you;ll find that most college students in kapitalist societies were rich to begin with. making money using money you already have is different from college making you rich. you must distinguish that. youd have to be rich to not work 4yrs as an adult. normal people in a kapitalist society cant afford to not work 4yrs. in addition to being rich, many of college students are well connected before they stepped on campus. bill gates father was a mllionare. gates jr didnt graduate college but was able to do all sorts of things based on his connections alone. this must be taken into account before we assume college is what earned you a job. when many college students graduate from college, they are given jobs based on their connections rather than their education. it's who you know, not what you know. someone like danold chrump couldve become a real estate developer whether he went to college or not, because his career was based more on his daddys connections and money rather than the education he received at college.
sure, some college grads do get jobs strictly based on their education. some of the grads that come to mind are nursing, and engineering majors, but a philosophy major who comes from a rich family that is well connected probably got his job based on guanxi rather than his degree.
joan got a business degree. she was validictorian at his high school. she lives in a city of 60,000, so not a lot of business opportunities there. when he got out of college, she found that his business degree couldnt find her a job. she ended up going back to college to get a degree in nursing because he found that his business degree was useless. she wasted 4yrs of his life getting a business degree because kapitalist society values business, so naturally young people are going to gravitate towards something that is respected, but are we misled into thinking that anyone can get into business, and strike it rich? because that simply isn't true for most people. in fact, most businesses go out of business within a couple of years, but we aren't informed about this. we are only shown the ma yuns, steve bezos, and elon musks. furthermore, business isn't for everyone, and getting a business degree simply isn't practical for most people. joan was lucky enough to be able to get the nursing degree, but what about the ones who arent? someone else could have easily ended up working at the post office after wasting 4yrs pursuing a business degree. one of the mistakes people make is that they dont consider their environment when choosing their future. a business degree can only take you so far in a city that doesnt have a whole lot of business activity. while it's true that danold chrump made millions from business, danold chrump also had a daddy who was a milionare. do you?
true story. theres a guy who came from a working class background. raised by a single mother who had him at 19. his dad left him at a young age. no one in his family ever went to college. they all worked for minimum wage including himself. all his life, he was told that he was dumb, and he is. because he was a dumb guy, he was placed in special ed, and was teased by school mates throughout his life for being perceived as stupid. his response was- he didnt want to accept his circumstances, and the more people told him he was dumb, the more he wanted to prove them wrong. he went to college strictly because he wanted to prove to everyone he wasnt stupid, but what he ended up doing may have proven how stupid he was. so he went to one of those colleges (野鸡大学) that didnt have any requirements. all they wanted was money. because he was dumb, it took him longer to graduate, and he did eventually graduate. but he got himself in debt because of the college tuition. today, hes in his 30s and unloading trucks for a shopping center receiving minimum wage. like danold, he also got his job through family. his mother worked at the same shopping center. however unlike danold, he has no health insurance, rents a very small apartment, and lives with his girlfriend (who has other boyfriends). she makes more money than him, and pays a lot of the bills. if he had taken a different route, and not wasted all those years in college, perhaps he might have a better job today. at least he would have some seniority in a bad job, but he doesnt. there are alot of goverment jobs out there with good benefits. many of them will allow you to retire earlier than the private sector. although his grandmother washed clothes for the military for minimum wage, she retired with benefits that you would expect a goverment employee to get. wash clothes for 20yrs, and you will eventually get some kind of reward. but timing is everything. some jobs will only hire people in their 20s, for someone who is 40, it's hard for him to find some of the same opportunities that a 20yr old would. if you dont get into some positions at a certain time, at exactly the right age range, then you wont at all.
what we can learn from his experience is that sometimes you have to accept your circumstances. if youre stupid, then youre stupid. just accept it and move on. dont try to prove other people wrong. you have nothing to prove to anyone. instead, you have to do what works for you. you have to work within the parameters. theres no sense in trying to overachieve, just like theres no point in trying to become an actor, or a musician, because the odds are against you. instead, the smartest thing to do is to work with what you have. for example, his grandmother washed clothes for the military. with those circumstances, and conditions, he could have asked his grandmother for an introduction into that occupation. he could very well have retired in is 50s, with benefits, if everything went smooth. but instead, he wasted his time with college. now he has no health care as stated, and his job unloading trucks is not stable, because he can be replaced by anyone. jobs requiring that kind of physical labor will be limited to people of a certain age. in other words, he may not be able to handle that kind of job after his 40s. then what? he has nothing to fall back to.
thats just an extreme case, because in most cases, people are generally good at something. some are good at fixing cars, some at cooking, and others good at plumbing.
now there are many other people who take different routes, and their lives end up being much more successful. some of them join the military, some go to free vocational schools that actually guarantee a job. theres another guy who dropped out of high school and went to work as a mechanic fixing cars. his dad was an electrician. he worked his way up to the manager of a big auto shop. eventually, he got a job as a mechanic working for the city. he says that he works very little hours, and gets paid alot. he also gets all kinds of benefits. he was also able to afford to buy a house. in western countries, some of these free vocational school grads end up making as much as $90k/yr depending on his skill and its demand. on the other hand, there are college grads with no connections who are making minimum wage.
next we have kim. she comes from a bourgeois family. her dad worked at a bank, and her mother worked for the city. she lived a fairly comfortable life. her dad took her fishing, camping, and skiing. she had a talent in art, and won several awards as a teenager. during her senior yr in hs, she was offered a full scholarship to a state school. she turned that down, and decided to go to a "prestigious" private art school which ended up costing 50kpa including room and board. she graduated from the art school, and ended up working as a bar tender, and selling things online (something similar to taobao). because she graduated from this "prestigious art school", she felt she was above many jobs she could have gotten. she got work as a bar tender because it seemed cool to her when she was young, but years went by, and before she knew it, she was in her 30s, and by then, the people that may have considered hiring her 10yrs ago, no longer considered her for work. when you're in your 30s, and all you have on your resume is bar tender, and selling things online, employers are going to be skeptical. you're probably wondering, did she really need to spend 200k to work as a bar tender and sell things online?
then we have zu. here we have another man who came from a bourgeois family. it's a fairly common story. his grandparents were reactionary landlords from the mainland who moved to hk. his grandfather owned many expensive properties throughout guangzhou during the republican era. after reaching hk, his grandfather worked as a doctor. his father, educated under british schools, worked for public housing, and his mother was a school administrator. like many hongers, he was raised strict, beaten regularly, and studied hard, but he didn't enjoy studying. he was the type who thought he was very intelligent, even though he wasn't, and wanted to take shortcuts. he didnt believe in hard work. no matter what his parents told him, his heart wasn't into studying, so he started failing in high school. he failed his exams, so he did what many failures from hk did. he headed west. he moved west at 18, and ended up spending another 2 yrs in high school, finally graduating high school at 20 instead of 18 like most students. in high school, he surrounded himself with fobs, and spoke cantonese. although he worshipped westerners and kissed the ground they walked on, he never assimilated. during this time, his english didn't improve much. after high school, he went to college with no aim, or goal. he went for one semester, but after that stopped going. his parents kept giving him money for tuition which he spent on prastitutes, and expensive restraunts. after a few years, his parents caught on, and realized their son wasn't going to school. at this point, zu could have gotten a job, but he was too lazy. he wanted short cuts, and like many hongers, he looked up to the criminal underworld (黑帮), the same kind of crimnal underworld that is glorified in hk movies. he liked crime but wasnt really the criminal type. i mean he had a criminal mindset, but he wasnt fearless like real thugs are, and he couldnt fight. it was around this time that he started smoking just to fit in. he got mixed up with these 古惑仔, and it was here that he learned about fake marriages for money, and citizenship. at the time, fake marriages were going for 50k a pop. this was his dream job. he was even selling identities of real people to illegal immigrants who needed papers to work, but this wasnt a career his parents would accept. eventually, he talked his parents into letting him go back to school, this time at a hotel management training institute. this time he actually finished the program because it was shorter, and easier. the school got him a job at a hotel where he worked nights. it was an easy job, but he felt the job was beneath him, and not very high paying. being from hk, he was very shallow, and materialistic. like most hongers, he wanted to strike it rich, and show off. but he had nothing to show. he was working nights at a hotel making $10 an hour. he was also looked down upon by the gwailo for being asian. it wasn't what he bargained for. for a number of reasons, he decided to go back to hk, where he believed his "western education" would be in high demand because hongers worship the west. he also believed that he would be respected by other hongers for having spent time in the west. he was tired of being a nobody in the west, and believed he could be somebody in hk. he noticed that westerners in hk were offered lucrative positions simply for being western. somehow he believe that would apply to him, but it didnt. while its true that many westerners are given lucrative positions in hk, and are respected, this didnt happen for zu. turns out his expertise wasnt quite as attractive as he had thought. he sent resumes out throughout the city, and got very little response. he would aim for hotels like the oriental mandarin, a huge leap from the indian owned hotel he was working at in the west. it also turned out that hk was much more competitive than the west, but at least he still stood a chance at $10/hr hotel jobs. the only hotel that responded to his application was a 1 star hotel, and he accepted the job because he had no other choice. the peninsula, and four seasons just werent calling him back. after a few months, he thought these jobs were beneath him, just like before. he got into an argument with his boss, and left the job. shortly after he got cancer, and gave up on working. he was told that he had no chance at living, so he ended up spending all his parents savings on prastitutes, 5 star hotels, luxury cars, and first class plane tickets. he hit all the bourgeois spots, singapore, japan, australia, europe, dubai, taewan, even attended the world cup in brazil. he ended up living 8yrs after getting cancer, so he spent the last 8yrs of his life living luxuriously.
now we have tom. he comes from a working class background, and a large family with many brothers and sister. ever since he was a teenager, he spent his summers on contruction sites as his father was a construction worker. however, his grandfather was a college graduate. his grandfather wanted him to attend his alma mater, and he did. however, times were different and college was not affordable like it was during his grandfathers era, so he dropped out. he tried going back to public colleges to attend classes for many years after, but that was a complete waste of time for him. like many others he had no goal or aim in college. he only went because he thought that was the thing to do, and maybe his grandfather wanted him to go. his girlfriend at the time was also bourgeois. she was the daughter of a doctor. since his father was a construction worker, and thats what he had experience in, he naturally followed that path. today, he makes close to 70k as a construction worker with no college degree in hand. the only job he has ever had was in construction. for tom, he could have avoided college entirely, and went straight into construction after high school instead of wasting all that time, and money on college. if construction was going to be his career, he might as well have devoted his time and money into learning the details of construction, but i guess nobody has a time machine and cant tell what will happen. maybe tom was originally trying to break away from the construction world, but in the end he stayed.
finally we have sahil. his father was a cop back home, but when he emigrated
to the west, the only thing he could find was restraunt work. sahil grew up
in the slums in poverty. sahil was unsuccessful at school, partly due to the
language barrier, and dropped out. he went to work at restraunts just like
his father. he later went to work for the post office. this was a decent
job. the hours werent long because once he finished his work, he could go to
sleep. the benefits were good. and he was good at his job. after working
there a few years, he met a woman. she was bourgeois and they began dating.
however, his new bourgeois girlfriend began to look down on him for being a
high school drop out. she wanted to make him presentable, so she asked him
to go back to school. he did that at her request. he had been out of school
for a long time by now, so it was going to be difficult. he couldnt quit his
job, so he went to school part time. like many others, he had no goal, or
plan in mind, other than to get a degree, any degree. so what do you do in a
kapitalist country? get a business degree of course. it took him a long time
to get this degree given that he was going part time. it was many years, but
he finally got it, but once he got out, he found that he couldnt find a job
in his field. his age also had something to do with it, because by the time
he was done with his degree, he wasnt young anymore. the only thing he had
was his original job, which he had seniority now, was good at, and familiar
with. unlike the private sector, the post office is somewhere that you can
retire from with benefits after a set number of years. it was also around
this time that his girlfriend broke up with him. his friends say that the
girlfriends parents had something to do with it, as they (bourgeois) looked
down upon postmen. long story short, he ended up staying at the post office,
and went to college for nothing. he could have spent that time, and money
doing other things. he must have spent at least 50k on tuition alone.
the lesson we can learn from sahil is dont go to college for the sake of earning a degree. know the job market. explore whether or not your degree can actually lead to a job. dont assume anything. if you want to be an engineer, go get an engineering degree. if you believe you have a shot at getting a job, then get a degree that the job requires. unless you're smart, lucky, or connected, dont get the degree first, and then aimlessly start looking for a job, especially when there are other options. also, consider your age before getting into something like this. if you're going to be in your 30s by the time you get out, then you might want to reconsider.
it's a shame that there are still people who encourage people to go to college indiscriminantly. this is a much bigger problem amongst the bourgeoisie, but ive also known bourgeoisie who go to free vocational schools, become private licensed contractors making 6 figures. just because youre bourgeois doesnt mean college is for you.
i leave you with this video
v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzA3NDA0NjQ5Ng==.html?spm=a2h3j.8428770.3416059.1
Its not just economic insecurity the capitalists want to lock them into but psychological insecurity as well. Psychological insecurity ensures a life of economic insecurity so you have to lock them in early at 16. 16 years old is certainty the best time to he the most important time of your life right? Ha. $%$%ing capitalists. They are all going to die.
And hey - why do you think capitalists stress 16 year old kids out so much with these stupid tests? It is to lock them into insecurity at an early age so they go out and take a horrid job while the bourgeoisie offspring $%$% around having a happy day at uni for 4 years or more before starting their easy overpaid jobs.
Just a tip for you that doesn't require a college education ... Sentences start with a capital letter.
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