I would be greatly interested in hearing you expand upon some of these issues and ideas. My son is about to turn 18, and the world is a very different place than it was when I was his age; I am attempting to gain an understanding of what it is to be a young person in the world-as-it-is-now, so that I may help him establish himself in it.
Absolutely. This is gonna be another long one, Goshin, so get a drink. :lol:
I'm gonna sort of start with what I see a lot of people in my generation growing up with, that makes them uniquely susceptible to getting trapped in their adulthood. I doubt many of these childhood factors apply to your son, knowing you, but he will hear the disempowering arguments they spawn when he is in college, so he needs to be aware of them regardless.
So, how they grow up. A lot of people refer to this as "helicopter parenting."
A lot of kids -- particularly in the middle and middle-upper class -- have parents who see success for their child in terms of grades and extracurricular achievement. There's nothing inherently wrong with having those things be some tools among many, but the problem is they give them WAY too much weight, and it's reflected in their parenting style.
From preschool age or even before, everything is about getting their kid into the most advanced programs possible, winning them ribbons, and having their entire day scheduled after they leave school.
And in school these days -- even in gifted programs -- it's not geared towards critical thinking as such. It's geared towards high test scores, and good reflection on the school.
After they get out of schools, it's off to work. Maybe they have skiing, quiz bowl, and math club, all in the same night. They leave for school at 7am and get home at 9pm.
They have no time to just... sit around and think. Be creative. Play with a stick in the dirt. Even hanging out with their friends is scheduled between the parents. It's a "play day," rather than a kid hopping on their bike and going down the street and saying they'll be back before dinner.
At no point has anyone ever asked this kid what they ENJOY doing, and what they would LIKE to be involved with, or what they THINK about anything.
Pushing children to attain externally validating signs of achievement -- high scores, ribbons, etc -- has taken the place of teaching them how to be people. It's an intense form of living vicariously through your children.
Children often don't get much emotional support from their parents, partly because they're always off doing something and partly because navigating the confusion of childhood openly would look bad to society, and so they don't indulge it. Children get no intellectual support at all. They aren't asked what they think. They aren't asked to make decisions, and face reward or consequence. And they are spoon-fed what their beliefs about society should be (and in some cases, yes, this takes the form of a hyper-partisan liberal bias, but this depends where you are).
These kids reach adulthood having never been asked to do something like choose what they're going to do tonight, or even clean up their own mess. People see that they don't know how to even wash dishes and assume they've been spoiled and coddled all their lives, but that isn't the problem. The problem is they were too busy being run around like show ponies to ever acquire those kinds of skills.
Being raised this way has a deeper consequence as well, and it is one that is ruining the entire lives of almost everyone in my generation.
They are used to spending long hours doing something they hate for no benefit. And furthermore, they haven't developed critical thinking or decision-making skills, leaving them extremely vulnerable to pressure from authority.
And this is where the real problems begin.
They are told there is no way to a successful adulthood than a straight-through shot at a 4-year university immediately after high school. This is still true even if they cannot afford it without $50,000 or $100,000 of debt. There is no other option, as it's presented to them by their parents, their school, and banks.
Furthermore, they must go to the most expensive school they can get into to prove their prestige -- the show pony mentality.
This lands the majority of them in enormous amounts of debt at 22 years of age. I will say that my generation -- older than your son -- had another confounding factor, which is that tuition jumped dramatically the year after they began attending, which threw off their financial plans, so that's a problem as well. But even the younger ones are making the same mistake.
They think that since they'll have the degree, they'll get a good job, live below their means, and they'll be able to pay it off.
But then they get hit with the second aspect of the equation: their high tolerance for being used for no benefit.
Employers these days are aware of this, and they capitalize on it. Internships used to be something you did once, for a few months, and after that, you qualified for a decent paying entry level job.
Not anymore. Now, internships take up the first 5 to 10 years of your career, and they are extremely demanding. They're 20-40 hours a week, on call 24/7, and you're doing the same level of work as the people getting paid... except you're doing it for free. You don't even get college credit.
Employers do this because they know they can get away with it. They know these people have no concept of their own self-worth.
These kids believe they HAVE to do this to get ahead. But in reality, all they're doing is trapping themselves.
I know a woman who graduated with a journalism degree from a good school at 22, and at 28 years old, she is STILL doing unpaid internships. She can't get anything else, apart from low-wage work.
And the reason she can't get anything else is because she has nothing but unpaid internships on her resume. Employers see that, and they know if they push her, they can get her to work for free for them too.
Meanwhile, her debt continues to grow, as she sits on the interest unable to get a decent-paying job.
The cumulative effect of all this is a class of permanent debt slaves, being constantly under-sold for their talents, with no way out.
And my advice to everyone I meet who is staring down the barrel of this and wondering if they have no choice but to just sell themselves to it is to NOT give in.
Do NOT believe there is only one way to make it. If you want to take a break from school, take it. If you don't think you can afford a particular school, don't go. If you would rather do something else, or go to a vocational school, or start, take a break, and come back, do it. There is MORE THAN ONE WAY to succeed.
And when you're through it, DO NOT take an unpaid internship, unless you are in a small pool of very technical programs (engineers and doctors, things like that). If you're not in something like that, don't EVER do it. Never put ANYTHING on your resume that you weren't paid for. I didn't even do my college paper for free.
You CAN beat the game, but you have to let them know you're not going to take it lying down.
Some background on myself: I am looking at this from the outside. I'm of this generation, but my life has been nothing like that.
I traveled for 4 years after high school. I knew I was not ready for college. I had no desire to do it. I wanted to see the world before I did something so presumptuous as try to write about it. I got my BA in Life before I ever went to school.
While I was doing that, I took whatever odd jobs I could find, but I also kept my eye out for little opportunities to write. And I did find some. I took it, whatever it was, no matter how temporary or low-paid (as long as it was paid).
I went back to school at 22. I started at community college, because I could do it without debt. I moved to the top of the paper quickly, and we became one of the biggest players for a community college in the country (partly on the work of my predecessors, I will say). I wore myself ragged for that, but I did it for a reason. And like I said, I didn't do that for free either.
Right now, I'm taking a break from school. And you know why?
To continue right now will cost me financially. I don't want to go into debt. But also... because I might not have to.
At the moment, I am about this far away from getting where I'm going. I currently work as a caption editor, which is in and of itself a skilled job. I beat out people with degrees for this job. And I am seriously in the running for an editor position on an actual paper. And I know I'm the best writer in the pool. If I wasn't, they wouldn't even consider me, because I haven't graduated. So I know that I must be. Wish me luck...
I have no degree. I have never done an internship. I have no debt.
I did not know when I started this path that I was doing everything right, but apparently, I am. I am pulling ahead of my friends with degrees because I DIDN'T play the game.
I insist that my time is worth paying for. I never stopped doing what I love, even when I was traveling. I've been working at it all my life, I'm good, and that is worth real money. And I won't let anyone tell me otherwise.
This was a complete accident on my part. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea this was going to lead somewhere good. So this isn't me claiming to be oh-so-wise and everyone should do exactly what I do. I just got lucky. I'm a bull-headed person, and I never had any choice but to do things my own way.
But I'm very good proof that you don't have to play the game. And in fact, you might do better if you don't, because when you don't let yourself be pushed around, employers won't see you as a free lunch they can just use and abuse and then throw away.
I am sick of watching my friends drown. And as good as it feels to be making my own way, I am even more excited about being an example that can make them think that maybe they don't
have to drown. Maybe there's another way.
