J.K. Rowling was living on welfare and scraping by. She would spend her days writing outlines for a series of books that were epic in nature. She wrote the first novel which was rejected by several publishers and would have been forgotten had it not been for the daughter of one of the people at Scholastic who read the first bit of the book and wanted to know how it ended. The company took a risk on the unknown author, and the Harry Potter books would go on to be the bestselling series of the last decade. Rowling is now the richest woman in the UK. She is even richer than Queen Elizabeth.
Now, this is a fabulous story of rags-to-riches. Yet, what made Rowling so successful? Is it because she is so talented? Or was it luck? Or was it a combination of both things? And should other aspiring writers quit their jobs and start writing stories about young wizards?
The fact is that you could repeat the story of Rowling all over again and remove one or two key pieces of luck, and she is someone that is waiting tables today in some restaurant or maybe teaching school somewhere. We know this because it happens to many other writers. Most aspiring writers of fiction make virtually nothing from their dream. Even the ones who do make it to print rarely make enough to live on from their royalties. They must supplement their incomes from other sources such as teaching or doing blue collar stuff.
We know Rowling made it by sheer dumb luck. We know this because we consider anyone else following in her footsteps to be foolish dreamers. It doesn't have to be the aspiring novelist. It could be the aspiring rock star, actor, politician, entrepreneur, etc. We have all heard the advice to boldly follow our dreams. The reality is that most of the people who follow their dreams end up in a nightmare.
The fact is that the example of Rowling and many others serve as bait. They are the cheese in various mouse traps meant to entice people into doing very foolish things with their lives. I see these traps everywhere. I see them in every lottery ticket I see at the convenience store. I see the trap of college as young people rack up debt that they expect to pay off with six figure jobs that don't exist. I see people working in crappy management jobs hoping to move up the chain and maybe become CEO. This isn't going to happen.
Here's a story I pulled from a messageboard:
I graduated 12/2001 as an Electrical Engineer. I worked hard and even did my own work, a very novel concept I learned. (Who knew that wouldn’t be such a hot time to enter the work force?) A year earlier, people in my major could expect to be hired right out of school for about 50-60k a year. I spent about 6 months looking for an Engineering job in an area I actually knew something about, it went nowhere. After 6 months of climbing the walls at home, I enrolled in a community college to take some welding and automotive classes. I really enjoyed them, but never really expected to finish the program. In May 2004, I finished the Automotive Technology program. In July, I moved to the San Jose area in search of an entry level engineering job, I would have taken just about anything. When I did get a bite, I would get a call and said they would get back to me. They never did. I took a job at a car dealership fixing cars, it didn’t quite work out and after a couple of months, I decided to cut my losses (It ain’t cheap to live in San Jose), put all my stuff in storage, and moved BACK IN with my parents in lovely Phoenix, AZ. There is very little here for engineers and even less for engineers with my technical interests.
I actually called a couple of companies and inquired about the status of my resume in San Jose. One HR person told me I didn’t have enough experience to be considered for an “Engineer 2" position. Realistically, anyone with a pulse and the ability to take direction could have done it – no college degree was necessary. I asked if I could be an Engineer 1. “No, we don’t have those.” Well how do you get to Engineer 2 if you can’t get the requisite experience? “You go to another company.” Well, there aren’t many companies that do this. “Well, then vote your conscience (inferred vote Kerry) in the upcoming election.” Yeah, like that would have made a difference. I gleaned that this company wasn’t serious about really filling the job. The posting sat on their website for months. I don’t know if this HR experience was typical for San Jose, but the serious lack of hiring was. There was nothing, even temp agencies had few jobs. I recently ran into an Engineer with 23 years of experience who was now working at a Ford dealership in the San Francisco peninsula area. It just sucks out there. He had been out of work nearly 2 years.
So here I am – 28 years old, living with my parents once again, and still no realistic job possibilities. I have more education than I know what to do with and I’m still not qualified to do anything. (It seems I need a Masters and 5 years of x, y, z to be considered for anything above janitor.) My life has been on hold for 4 years. I figured I would buy a new car when I got my first job out of college, which doesn’t seem to be happening. I’m fortunate I know how to fix the one I have. I figured I could deal with high deductible health insurance because it was cheap and I’d have better insurance as soon as I got a job. I’ve had the same crappy health insurance since 2001 and fear having to use it. If I developed any conditions, they could be excluded from new coverage. I really thought I would have been part of a large group health plan by now
There is no light at the end of the tunnel and I’m more convinced than ever that higher education is America’s most overrated product. In short, I’m a very unhappy camper. I appear to be in good company.
This was written in 2005 before the housing bubble burst and the economy went to shit. I don't know if this guy ever got a job in his field or what he is doing today. The reason the story is so fascinating to me is because this was happening long before the recession, and this guy has a technical major. This is not the English major working at Starbucks.
Here's a controversial viewpoint, but it is one that I stand behind. That unemployed electrical engineer was every bit as deluded as the English major thinking she was going to be the next J.K. Rowling. He went for the cheese in the trap, and the trap broke his fucking neck. This is because the conventional wisdom that if you go to college and get a degree in something marketable (like electrical engineering) you will be on the first class express to being middle class. If you read his story, you can see where the cheese was. A year earlier, people in my major could expect to be hired right out of school for about 50-60k a year. That sounds really familiar to me because when I was in college they were saying that comp sci majors could make $60K to start. There must be something magical about that $60K figure. Right now, the hot major is petroleum engineering, and I bet they are quoting $60K for that job, too.
All of this crap is just symptomatic of the higher ed bubble. Because of the bubble, tuition has skyrocketed. Student loan debts are at an all time high. Graduates struggle to pay off the loans. There are no jobs waiting for them. But all of this dances around the fundamental issue which gets overlooked. The biggest problem in this bubble is the fact that too many people go to college, and no amount of news about the bubble is deterring them from going in much the same way that the vast majority of failed writers does not keep people from trying to be the next J.K. Rowling. But there is a big difference between Rowling and these college kids. The price of her failure was merely a humdrum boring life. The price of their failure is a lifetime of debt.
I am an elitist. I don't think everyone should go to college. Yet, everyone is going to college. They are all cramming into universities and financing it courtesy of Sallie Mae. They expect to have office jobs pulling down six figures when they graduate. But this is a delusion. The cost of their pride and ambition is working menial jobs and watching it all go to pay for their useless degrees. Our unemployed electrical engineer is actually an electrician. But he opted to go to college instead of taking an apprenticeship with an electrician. The result is that he makes less money than a journeyman electrician.
Are these delusions the product of federal student loan aid? Nope. The delusions have always been there. I talk to a lot of baby boomer types who express regret that they didn't go to college, but I set their minds at ease. I tell them they didn't have the brains to go to college, and it is true. I don't say this as an insult but in the same spirit that I might tell someone like myself that I don't have the looks to make it as a model. But that is the nature of that cheese in the trap. It traps some mice and makes others say, "I could have had that cheese."
The reality is that the majority of us are average people. That is basic elementary statistics. I learned some time ago to not measure myself by the outliers but by the mean. This goes against the conventional wisdom to "reach for the stars." But measured against the mean, my life is pretty damn good. The fact that I don't have a bunch of debts actually makes me better off than the average person who carries over $3K in debt on credit cards and over $10K in total debt. I have zero. I have more in savings than people have in debt. I'm not rich, and I don't feel rich. I'm just a mouse who didn't go after the cheese.
The way to avoid the trap is to be humble. I have learned this lesson. It is the most valuable lesson I have ever learned. Be humble as the dust. I think you have to get to a certain age to appreciate that lesson. Some people never learn that lesson. The misery of this age is that everyone is working, striving, borrowing, and pretending to be more than they actually are. This is ambition, but it has a high cost. That cost is tremendous failure, poverty, and despair.
The lesson of humility is not a popular one. Thrift and hard work are not popular either. But those are the values that will serve you well in life. I posted a link for an article on Facebook that talked about how few high schoolers were considering the trades as a career option, and it got the typical response you would expect. Those jobs are dirty, low paying, destructive of the body, and exposes you to the elements. The person who made these remarks went on to say that a person couldn't get by on less than $65K a year. I thought this was odd considering I don't make that much. In fact, 90% of the population makes less than $75K a year. The median income is around $40K which is what I make. I do just fine.
Today, our college educated youth can expect to have a lower income than their high school educated parents. The reason for this is because too many people are going to college. You can't make everyone above average. I am someone who did go to college, and I can tell you the jobs I can take requiring a college degree don't pay any better than the blue collar job I have now. Faced with this reality, I had to decide which I liked better. Did I want to teach school or work in management somewhere? Or did I want to keep doing blue collar work? The answer for me was simple. I had more fun being blue collar, so I went that way and have not regretted it. If I can't be rich, I at least want to be happy.
I find myself in the middle of two worlds. It was like this for me in high school, and it continues for me to this day. I have snobs on one side, and I have blue collars on the other side. The one thing the snobs and the blue collars have in common is the belief that the snobs are better people and are better off. Being educated, I know better. My knowledge has not made me richer, but it has made me more content. For that reason, I do not regret going to college or reading all those books after college. My life is no different than if I had simply not gone to college in terms of career or income, but it is profoundly different in that I appreciate the life I have in a way that others in my peer group never can. I have traveled to an exotic land and discovered it to be a shithole, so I laugh a bit when people yearn to visit that exotic land. I have been there and know better.
I don't expect people to change their thinking on these things. I don't see a massive rush for people suckered by the system to go learn a blue collar trade. At least our electrical engineer had the good sense to go learn welding and auto repair. For most people, their trade is what they settle for instead of what they aim for. I see a growing number of people who began on an ambitious route but are now on the humble path. I have already rubbed shoulders with engineers, fired middle managers, people with master's degrees, and what have you in my blue collar world. I have even been envied by people who have good white collar jobs they hate.
I know this is not a popular message. This isn't the dream. This is the reality. But think about it like a dream. Imagine a job that you enjoy doing everyday. You do the job, and it is demanding. But at the end of the day, you feel good about that job both physically and mentally. You go to sleep at night, and you sleep soundly. You have no moral conflicts or regrets. You don't make six figures, but you aren't scraping by either. You live a modest life in a modest home. Your stress levels are low. There isn't a day that goes by that you don't have a dozen hearty laughs. I don't have to dream this life because it is my life.
What people want is the status. That is the cheese in that trap. People would rather make less working in an office than make more working as a plumber. They would rather be miserable on the corporate ladder than be happy as a wage earner. They would rather compromise their integrity than live with honor. What does all this pride and ambition bring? All that happens is the trap springs, and your neck is broken.
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