What do you plan on spending your time on if you don’t go to school? Most jobs largely consist of being forced to do some assignment that you feel isn’t worth your time. - you’re not going to be escaping that by dropping out. And I’d wager that a college degree is one of the best ways to snag a job that you DO actually enjoy.
I suspect the REAL value of a college degree, aside from the basic intelligence indication, is that it says you can handle 4 years doing largely unpleasant work.
Most jobs largely consist of being forced to do some assignment that you feel isn’t worth your time. - you’re not going to be escaping that by dropping out.
I can’t speak for all people or all jobs, but in my experience, there’s a certain dignity and autonomy in paid work that I never got out of school. After quitting University, I worked in a supermarket for nineteen months. Sure, it was low-paying, low-status, and largely boring, but I was much happier at the store, and I think a big reason for this was that I had a function other than simply to obey. At University, I had spent a lot of time worrying that I wasn’t following the professor’s instructions exactly to the letter, and being terrified that this made me a bad person. Whereas at the store, it didn’t matter so much if I incidentally broke a dozen company rules in the course of doing my job, because what mattered was that the books were balanced and the customers were happy. It’s not so bad, nominally having a boss, as long as there’s some optimization criterion other than garnering the boss’s approval: you can tell if you couldn’t solve a customer’s problem, or if the safe is fifty dollars short, or if the latte you made is too foamy. And when the time comes, you can clock out, and walk to the library, with no one to tell you what to study. Kind of idyllic, really.
I worked at a supermarket for three days, and was fired for insubordination. (I wanted to read a book when there were no customers coming to my register, and the boss told me not to...)
I have a similar story; except in my case I was fired because my shirt was insufficiently black.
Could you elaborate? Were you fired for once not having a black shirt, or for not being able to acquire / evaluate black shirts? or, if it’s possible to tell, having a bad attitude about the shirt rule?
I had a shirt I felt was black & meet the dress code; the manager felt that it didn’t. I felt that since I had already spent something like 60$ on new clothes to meet the dress code, and since I didn’t interact with the customers at all, I wasn’t going to go and buy a new black shirt. The manager felt I no longer needed to work there.
I suspect the REAL value of a college degree, aside from the basic intelligence indication, is that it says you can handle 4 years doing largely unpleasant work.
Letting your future employer know you’re willing to do all the unpleasant stuff you feel isn’t worth your time.
If you did it for a piece of paper, then surely you’ll do it for a paycheck… right?
If I’m not actually willing to put up with pointless stuff for a paycheck, would I benefit from signaling that I am? Or would I just lose a useful filter on potential employers?
What do you plan on spending your time on if you don’t go to school? Most jobs largely consist of being forced to do some assignment that you feel isn’t worth your time. - you’re not going to be escaping that by dropping out. And I’d wager that a college degree is one of the best ways to snag a job that you DO actually enjoy.
I suspect the REAL value of a college degree, aside from the basic intelligence indication, is that it says you can handle 4 years doing largely unpleasant work.
I can’t speak for all people or all jobs, but in my experience, there’s a certain dignity and autonomy in paid work that I never got out of school. After quitting University, I worked in a supermarket for nineteen months. Sure, it was low-paying, low-status, and largely boring, but I was much happier at the store, and I think a big reason for this was that I had a function other than simply to obey. At University, I had spent a lot of time worrying that I wasn’t following the professor’s instructions exactly to the letter, and being terrified that this made me a bad person. Whereas at the store, it didn’t matter so much if I incidentally broke a dozen company rules in the course of doing my job, because what mattered was that the books were balanced and the customers were happy. It’s not so bad, nominally having a boss, as long as there’s some optimization criterion other than garnering the boss’s approval: you can tell if you couldn’t solve a customer’s problem, or if the safe is fifty dollars short, or if the latte you made is too foamy. And when the time comes, you can clock out, and walk to the library, with no one to tell you what to study. Kind of idyllic, really.
I worked at a supermarket for three days, and was fired for insubordination. (I wanted to read a book when there were no customers coming to my register, and the boss told me not to...)
I have a similar story; except in my case I was fired because my shirt was insufficiently black.
Could you elaborate? Were you fired for once not having a black shirt, or for not being able to acquire / evaluate black shirts? or, if it’s possible to tell, having a bad attitude about the shirt rule?
I had a shirt I felt was black & meet the dress code; the manager felt that it didn’t. I felt that since I had already spent something like 60$ on new clothes to meet the dress code, and since I didn’t interact with the customers at all, I wasn’t going to go and buy a new black shirt. The manager felt I no longer needed to work there.
Letting your future employer know you’re willing to do all the unpleasant stuff you feel isn’t worth your time.
If you did it for a piece of paper, then surely you’ll do it for a paycheck… right?
If I’m not actually willing to put up with pointless stuff for a paycheck, would I benefit from signaling that I am? Or would I just lose a useful filter on potential employers?