This is crucial because some people expect that a certain level of education or useful skills will enable them to find high-paying jobs. This is self-deception. It is founded on the falsehood that we live in a merit-based society. Moreover, many people accept in the abstract that they will struggle, but it is only when they graduate and attempt to seek a job that the full force of this truth is brought to bear on them.
As a teenager or young adult, you can imagine that once you reach X level of education and academic attainment, more prestigious companies will want to hire you, but the reality is that you border on doomed, and you will likely be hanging onto a lower class job at best. The sooner this strikes you, the better.
There is a caveat: Those with a pre-eminent level of intelligence (top ~2%), self-discipline, and/or familial connections might succeed in finding a high-paying job, but they are the exceptions to the general truth.
Acquiring a good job often depends on connections with acquaintances or friends, or there might be a family business. Those with a conflicted or poor family and a lack of social ties should realise that those who get the top jobs tend to not do so mainly on the basis of merit. There are a series of filters to pass through, and one of them - nearly as essential as education itself - is an acquaintance to bring one's self to the employer, as well as the social skills necessary for job interviews and promotions and a lack of crippling performance anxiety.
Education is useful for checking a box, but for someone who was not doing internships and making connections early on, it is mainly a means to job security, not to jobs that pay well.
If you plan to pursue more education, it is wise to pick routes that involve little social interaction and place maximal emphasis on merit. Some fields in the workforce involve more merit than others, but the workforce as a whole likely puts more emphasis on popularity, looks, social skills, etc., than merit beyond the basic level of effort required to maintain the job.
If you are an outcast, go into education knowing that you will get extra job security by sometimes being the pick above high school graduates by default, but realise that you are likely destined to lower-class jobs or being a NEET, and you will probably be devastated if/when the U.S. economy descends into a debt crisis and affects many other countries tied to it because you will likely have little savings to get by with.
As a teenager or young adult, you can imagine that once you reach X level of education and academic attainment, more prestigious companies will want to hire you, but the reality is that you border on doomed, and you will likely be hanging onto a lower class job at best. The sooner this strikes you, the better.
There is a caveat: Those with a pre-eminent level of intelligence (top ~2%), self-discipline, and/or familial connections might succeed in finding a high-paying job, but they are the exceptions to the general truth.
Acquiring a good job often depends on connections with acquaintances or friends, or there might be a family business. Those with a conflicted or poor family and a lack of social ties should realise that those who get the top jobs tend to not do so mainly on the basis of merit. There are a series of filters to pass through, and one of them - nearly as essential as education itself - is an acquaintance to bring one's self to the employer, as well as the social skills necessary for job interviews and promotions and a lack of crippling performance anxiety.
Education is useful for checking a box, but for someone who was not doing internships and making connections early on, it is mainly a means to job security, not to jobs that pay well.
If you plan to pursue more education, it is wise to pick routes that involve little social interaction and place maximal emphasis on merit. Some fields in the workforce involve more merit than others, but the workforce as a whole likely puts more emphasis on popularity, looks, social skills, etc., than merit beyond the basic level of effort required to maintain the job.
If you are an outcast, go into education knowing that you will get extra job security by sometimes being the pick above high school graduates by default, but realise that you are likely destined to lower-class jobs or being a NEET, and you will probably be devastated if/when the U.S. economy descends into a debt crisis and affects many other countries tied to it because you will likely have little savings to get by with.
