Yet there’s a contradiction: Many people, online at least, agree that college isn’t necessary, but when you tell someone “Oh I didn’t go to college”, they’ll automatically assume you either work a menial job or you get weird looks. Some of this is just the old assumptions lingering in real life vs an online conversation or environment where people might be more liberal. But on the other hand I imagine that it’s just society being slow to adapt as usual.
I myself have essentially had a quarter-life crisis over this for the past year. I’ve changed what field I want to go into more times than I can count: once I wanted to be a lawyer, then engineer, then nurse. I basically wanted to do whatever job paid the best but wasn’t strongly pulled in any direction. I know I want to do creative writing but I don’t very much think it can make me money; I’ve grown up in dire circumstances and growing past that in my adult life is probably the most important thing to me. I don’t want to still be living in a small apartment, on Section8, when I’m 35—not because social welfare is bad, but because it keeps you stagnant. If you make enough money, you get cut off of it. This has kept my mother from seriously considering working for a while, because you’re caught in the dilemma of either not working and not being able to afford groceries without food stamps or working and not being able to afford rent without Section8. It’s a terrible system and I don’t think its design was accidental.
The second most important thing to me is not wasting part of my life. If I go through four years of undergrad, another four years of graduate school, work a job to pay room and board throughout, get a “good” job at a law firm, have golden handcuffs to it, and work there for the rest of my working life or at a similar place without freedom of movement or genuinely enjoying the busywork for the busywork, then what was the point? I’ve become more attuned to wanting financial security because I’ve grown up without it, but not to that extent.
If I genuinely want to make money from this (i.e. creative writing) though, I probably have to accept the menial jobs. At least, for a time. I won’t say “it’ll be hard work, but it’ll be worth it” because that implies that I’ll enjoy it, and I won’t. I won’t enjoy going home exhausted after 10 hours as a waiter with little tips, worrying about the lights being turned off, worrying about hot water, frustrated that the walls are thin as loose-leaf, done with life. The only true thing I can say of it is: I hope it isn’t that way for long. ♦
edited for propriety