Just to make it hard, assume that you're a young white male with no fortune or family -- so no affirmative action, no preference points, and none of the actual privilege that those things are supposed to compensate for either. Maybe you have a regular public school education as it is done today, so you can barely read or write and advanced math has never been taught to you. Just some poor kid who gets nothing from anybody for free, and who has to figure out how to try to make it in today's world.
How Would You Start Over Today?
We all have stories we tell ourselves and each other about how our lives went, how we became whoever it is that we are. What if you were starting over today, though? If you were just out in the world for the first time, with all the difficulties and changes coming online -- the ChatGPTs undermining ordinary college degrees and entry level white collar careers, the government dysfunction and even outright hostility to starting businesses or succeeding as an individual -- what do you think you might try? The military used to be a good option, but it looks like a much less attractive one now; interest rates are rising, so buying investment properties with whatever you can keep from your labor is probably out for those without established credit and substantial capital; a lot of the old ways are off the table.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
A trade. Probably electrician or hvac.
Given your opening paragraph, there's not much I'd change were I to start over, other than to try to do better sooner than I did the first time.
High interest rates (today's are pretty low in comparison); high inflation (ditto) doing for AI on job availability; disdain for the military, fed by the military's own affirmative action "training" seminars as mandatory formations; LBJ and Carter dysfunction; runaway anti-business regulations; and so on.
Today isn't much different, more extreme in some ways, less extreme in others.
And: one of my purposes in joining the USAF was to be able to kill f---ing Russians. That hasn't changed a whit.
Eric Hines
A young white male just out of high school. Hmm.
Absolute #1- find a mentor.
2- get proficient in reading and math. #1^
3 learn a foreign language.
4-get out of the USA. And all Western nations. If staying, make 3^ Spanish.
I left school at 15 and went on the road. Would not recommend that course of action.
Start learning a trade. Find a library or someplace with free or cheap literacy classes. Find a mentor to help navigate banks, business skills, people skills.
There are a handful of companies here that have paid apprenticeships with guaranteed job afterwards. And those are just the ones I know of. Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, others are all looking for people willing to work and to learn.
LittleRed1
Join a church - a large, active Protestant denomination.
Ask my library how to learn to read.
This assumes, of course, that I understand that where I am now isn't where I have to remain, that I can improve my education. If I have no family to back me up and finished high school without really learning to read, I don't know if that would be the case. No one has gone to bat for me or taught me to go to bat for myself.
Post a Comment