The Path to College is Industrial
Every weekend, I walk by the view of countless rows of conveyer belts, ovens, vats, wood pallets, and boxes. It’s my part-time gig as a night shift security guard that lends me to see this sterile food production. In one way, it’s a very interesting process that requires a lot of attention from a variety of skillsets and minds.
On the other hand, the fact that I’m seeing exposes me to uncomfortable thoughts: that I should’ve landed my dream job by now, and that I’m much like the countless cookies, bread rolls, and biscuits all rolling by on conveyer lines: utterly indistinguishable. Part of a mass.
These negative thoughts don’t last long though. I’ve long-trained myself to resist this kind of self-deprication. Additionally, with my plans to attend the Marines Officer Course, getting a long-term job isn’t really the goal anymore.
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t know the struggle before, where it seemed like your peers were in a race with you after graduation, and whoever got a job relevant to their degree was a cut above the rest.
It’s valuable to integrate your work and your study, if you’re that kind of person. But a lot of people don’t even graduate with a love for what they studied. Four years, usually, spent on something because it was “marketable,” or because someone in the family decided: “you’re going to college.” At that point, it was just picking something you could tolerate.
I think it’s worth making this point: maybe freshly-graduated kids out of high school shouldn’t go straight into college.
There may be other options to consider. If your kid has a knack for hands-on metalwork, excelled in shop classes, and loved putting things together, it doesn’t mean he wants to be an engineer. Maybe a trade school and blue-collar work would be his forte, and if he wants to, university in the future.
And a lot of parents nowadays scream at the idea of their kid not working as the 9–5 office salaryman. But they don’t realize that we need people who work alternate career paths. Enlisted military. HVAC specialists. Delivery drivers.
There are all sorts of roles that need to be filled for our infrastructure to continue. Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t compartmentalize our child into being the next academic savant. Some of us don’t want that. Some of us need time to decide.
Some of us aspire differently.
