In my last post, I pointed out how both high school and college graduates are often (usually) unrealistically optimistic. That’s me, destroyer of young dreams… but I only tell them for their own good. Better to have no dreams or to know that your dreams are probably unachievable than to dream and have those dreams shredded and left on the compost pile of life. Did I just quote Shakespeare? Wasn’t that in Hamlet? … maybe not…
I felt kind of bad for presenting the future of most of these graduates as the miserable abyss that, for most of them, their lives are going to become. I wanted to make a modest attempt, in my own very special and unique way, at letting them know that everything is gonna be alright. Here we go…
Sometimes, my family worries about the level of pessimism (or, as I like to think of it, “realism”) that I display on my blog. I spoke to my dad on the phone shortly after he read the last graduation post. He seemed slightly concerned.
Dad: “Son, I bet people who don’t really know you think you’re very bitter.”
Me: “Ya think?”
Dad: “You’re really not that bitter , are you?”
Me: “I thought you knew me.”
Dad: “I do, I just have a hard time believing you’re that bitter.”
Me: “Yeah, me sometimes too.”
Dad: “I mean… you’re really not that bitter… are you?”
Me: “Not always. Sometimes, I sleep.”
Dad: “… oh…”
Hahaha!
Nothing says “good times” like making your parents believe that they somehow failed you in your childhood and your current level of life-misery is all their fault. No worries, Dad. All of my pessimism is self-induced. Life has taught me that it often sucks without any help from you… although the short-gene that you have passed on to me hasn’t helped. How was I ever supposed to live out my dream of playing in the NBA when I come from short European stock? But, you just passed on what was passed to you, so not really your fault (I don’t want to piss off my dad… he’s one of 3 people who read this blog regularly.)
Ok, back to encouraging high school graduates. I think part of the problem I see with the whole free education system is that, by the time you are finished with it, you are still way too young to have a decent idea what you want to do with the rest of your life. “I’m going to be a doctor” or “I’m going to be a lawyer” you may say if you are one of them real smarty-pants-types… or you actually have parents with enough cash to help you get through medical or law school. But, do you really want to be a doctor? Do you really want to be a lawyer? You’re 18-years old. How can you really know what you want to do with the rest of your life?
You can’t.
When you are 18-years-old, you know you want an attractive person of the opposite sex to pay attention to you, you know you like hanging out with your friends, and you know that you like to eat food that, a couple of years in the future, is going to end up straight on either your gut or your butt; this is what you know about life. I’m 41-years-old, and I only really figured out what would have been pretty cool to do with my life a few years ago… and by then it was too late.
For my college education, I went the business route. 4-years and a lot of money went to Montana State University and the Bozeman community while I earned a bachelor of science in marketing. Now, I knew I could make more money if I chose something like engineering, but I always had issues with science. I didn’t enjoy it, so why would I want to apply it to my career for the rest of my life? Teaching sounded okay, but kids who took the teaching path seemed to be looking for the easy route. Besides, teachers don’t make squat, right? Business… no crappy science, and good money, right? Oh, how wrong I was.
There needs to be a large disclaimer when someone enrolls in a business program at the university level. That disclaimer would read:
This degree does not guarantee any kind of future success. This degree will most likely lead to some crappy job in sales or retail management. If sales and/or retail management aren’t what you are looking for, chose another program of study!
Of course, this disclaimer does not exist… until now. I am warning you, if you get a business degree (unless it is very specialized, like accounting) you will most likely wind up as an assistant manager at Walmart or trying to sell computer software to companies that don’t need it and who cringe every time they see you come through the door. This is a proven fact… well, I don’t have proof, but I’m pretty sure it’s true, which is almost the same as fact, isn’t it?
So, I went through college, got a crappy retail management job, and jumped from crappy job to crappy job every couple years. A few years ago, I realized that an education in literature would be more up my alley. I’ve always liked reading and writing. Maybe that teaching thing wouldn’t have been so bad. Besides, as crappy as I perceived teacher pay to be at the time I was making career decisions… in reality, I’d be making a hell of a lot more if I had been teaching for the past 20 years than I am now… and I’d have my summers off. Hindsight… it’ll kick your ass every time.
A few years ago, I figured, heck, why not try pursuing something that would be a little better fit with my personality. I enrolled in an online graduate program through Fort Hays State University in Kansas. I was gonna get me a Master of Liberal Studies with an emphasis in English.
“What could you do with that?” you may have asked. Well, boy howdy, I could have taught English at a community college.
“How does that pay?” you may have asked.
“Like crap,” would have been my response, but I was going through a brief period of insanity in my life where I thought maybe money wasn’t everything.
I enrolled, took a couple of classes, loved the classes, started to get a fresh perspective on life, and then reality smacked me upside the head. First of all, I stopped working for a company that had a really good tuition reimbursement plan, and college classes are not cheap. Second, I realized that taking these classes was interfering with family time (and my kids aren’t going to be around forever… they will get out of high school and, I’m assuming, move as far away from the panhandle of Nebraska as possible). Third, I realized that the odds of getting an actual job teaching English at a community college were pretty slim, and, even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to support a family on that kind of crappy pay.
See, even a seasoned pessimist like me can let stinking dreams and hope and all of that other positive garbage creep back in every once in awhile. I’m just glad that dream got smacked down before it grew too large. I was in my mid-30s when that one snuck in. I’m in my 40s now and any silly hope of getting an education that would lead to some sort of life-happiness is a thing of the past. Once you get family obligations and mortgages and car loans piled on you and once you get accustomed to a certain quality of life and start thinking about the prospect of being able to retire some day, going backwards financially to make silly dreams come true becomes what it really was all along… a pipe dream.
So, you may be wondering how these words can be construed as “encouragement” for recent high school graduates. I’m not exactly sure. I guess my words of encouragement would have to be:
DON’T STRESS IT!
Don’t stress the fact that everyone expects you to plan out the rest of your life through the choices you make at age 18. Plans change. Dreams change. Hopes change. And most importantly… YOU change. You will not be the same person at age 28 that you are at age 18, and 38 is going to make 28 look like a total stranger. You will see the world differently, you will value different things, and your passions may change hundreds of times before you leave life in this realm. Very few choices that don’t involve death are permanent, and any wound that doesn’t kill you will heal. Scars are badges of effort, and it takes effort to survive. Whether you accomplish your goals or realize your dreams, or if you end up living the disappointing life of the average mortal, you will get some scars along the way. Wear them with pride. They show that you made the effort.
Now, if you end up bitter and pissed at the world like me, I’m thinking I’m probably going to be looking for a protege to take over this blog in about 20 years (if I ain’t dead by then). If you are 18 now, you’ll be 38 then (which is how old I was when I started this bad boy) and we may have to get together and discuss you taking over old Happy Stinking Joy. See, even when your dreams are dead, you may still have something to look forward to… or not…
