More Choices

There are many more choices in life other than to college or not.

But when college is the option then the choice is what to study.  Sure, where, how, and other questions also arise but what is the most important of those choices.

Talking with a 16 year old cousin, I find myself preaching on the words I write here. To not college.  And if I could go back I wouldnt change my decision, but I would hopefully do it better. Think about it more and realize there are many more years after college. Years that the decisions made before, through, and after are affected.

So the choice of what to study and ultimately Be is one that shouldn't be made lightly, but one that any young person does not know because they've barely experienced to know what is.  But nonetheless we give them that life defining choice and let them run into whatever life they choose, which the direction is chosen in some instances but paths and obstacles arise that were not necessarily by choice.

He, my cousin, wants to be an aerospace engineer, which to me sounds like a child saying I want to be an astronaut.  To say that you will start into this career path is one thing but getting through is a whole different, long and brutal story.  Ive known many an engineering student move elsewhere,  which are those unseen and unchosen paths and obstacles.  So I heeded him that warning along with a warning to chose a field like that, he also said mechanical engineering which seems a bit more obtainable but also a grueling effort is needed to succeed while in school.

I, as an accounting major, took a job for jobs sake and still believe in the accounting major as an adequate opportunity with a heed of warning that you, unlike I, must put in the work to find a position in the field.  But many come out with 'business' or 'management' or 'communication' or 'miscellaneous' degrees and look for miscellaneous jobs, not unlike myself.  So I ask what then is the point of those degrees.  And the point of educational institutions that give 'knowledge' but actually give nothing of real value, physical or future, such as guarantee of a position.  A guarentee of a grade is giving and even when that is sufficient, a job is still not given.

Maybe im being a child of my generation.

Entitled.

Maybe im just bitching. As always.

But read and know that the choice of 'what' is a fine point as to know to college or not to college.

The Choice

100k plus is a choice, one that I was not aware of the implications and thus I sit here trying to find a forum to educate future generations, but it was still a choice to make.

As a 'lower' middle class teenager, college was most certainly an option, especially for someone like myself who excelled in that environment, but there were other choices, many of which I see my peers having made and doing much better than myself at this point.

Well, I guess there wasnt many choices, college, mooch, or work, as my simple mind can put together.  I chose college as did many of my equals, intellectually (ha that's a stretch for myself to deem myself intellectual but we'll run with it) not all economically, in high school.  Others who did not see the benefit of more schooling chose work.  I wont go into option b, but I assume there is a choice to do nothing and allow those, society and family, around you to cover the tab.

Work presented many benefits that college did not. Money.

I started working at age 15 and made a couple thousand each yeah but no more than 8k until I start my professional career.  Maybe that was a lack of motivation to be something more while being an academic but either way I did not make an above poverty level wage until 23 while those who chose work made a full time workers salary, whether that be even minimum wage, still add in up to around 15k a year.  Others took it further and work allowed them to make much more than that, thus receive the benefits of financial freedom prior to college graduates.

Work seems like a much more viable option, but the ceiling is much lower, or the potential ceiling I must say is much lower. But that's all obvious.

But that's also all a choice.

A necessary choice by a mind much to young and inexperienced to understand the life long implocations or either choice.

But that's another argument for another blog.

The choice I chose was 100k plus, one I assumed and hope would lead to an accounting position, a career path I was told in high school was booming.

I never made it to that career path, and thus I sit here and bitch, or preach, or try to pen words to show others(ha like who? I must ask) to make a more informed choice.

A New York Time article(today's for some reference other than my babbling) called 'Falling wages at factories squeeze the middle class' make the choice of Work seem much less viable, and the choice in general much more complex.  It basically sums up that manufacturing positions, which I saw some 'friends' pursue, do not simply pay as well as they once did.  Also obvious,  at least in my eyes, with that field being one sent to foreign (The Elephant and the Dragon, a economic commentary on the rise of both nations worth a read) labor markets that present a much cheaper landscape.  But is that what we must accept.

The article also goes on to explain and show the government's hand in the overall industry, as evidently seen in the auto manufacturing industry, while wages still have succumbed to a decreasing trend. 

One which may seem to be a contradiction in a democratic nation.

For the people?

For the industry.

For the company.

So how is work versus schooling going to win the debate?

I myself have seen wages by a manufacturing company in my community which was taken over by an Indian company, slashed.  A position that was somewhat well paying and held by one of my peers as I went off to college and saw him be able to support himself with the company but the company has been reduced to minimum or close to minimum wage positions for jobs that are above the duties of many workers at that same wage.

This trend is not a welcome in the battle of work versus school but that is what also must be understood, trends at the time of The Choice.

The Choice is not easily formulated, even with my hopeful Life Equation, but its a necessary and inevitable choice.

Book Title

Its becoming more apparent to me that this is the forum to attempt to launch a book, whether read or words in a forest that fall and no one hears.

Nonetheless writing can take place with pen and paper and be much faster or typing can take place and be a little less faster but more concrete, at least more visible.

Im not sure visibility is the most important factor, but importance is the most important factor. Importance, and relevance.  Where can I as an opinionated and educationally desired individual add any value to educate others through my self education and experience.

Thus, I blog.

Blogging, and talking, and notching about debt is one thing; the question here lies what can I add to the conversation,  especially that I could include in my dream, of a book and of financial freedom, as they, the proverbial they, deem it.  But a debt adverse lifestyle would be ideal. 

One can either divest and throw away future potential or the lucky ones can invest in a future that provides that which they are working for, whether that be fulfillment, happiness, other's happiness,  but not for yesterday and yesterdays problems and financial burdens.  But that is the system banking and financial instruments have allowed.  One where the few with available financial freedoms allow the many with many financial obligations and lack of finances to secure debts so aggregious that their lives are owed to that debt.

I talk in philosophies but they are truths that many live with and any sense of worth outside of our earthly existence is diminished by our earthly existence.  Living contradictions for the life not lived.

Still we must look past finances, even 100k plus finances, and live to fight and educate and evolve another day.  So that future generations are burdened by the things worth burdening over, our reason for existence, our search for knowledge, our search for meaning, our search for other intangibles that finances could never bring.

Again, way too existential.

But when you're 100k plus that's where the mind goes, to philosophical reasoning as to the necessity of the 100k plus.

I hope none of this on anybody and am slowly, very dramatically slowly, to know that no one else will be in this position ever, whether that's just through meaningless words on a meaningless space of the internet, or hopeful action in the world I reside in.