Rethinking Traditional Success Part 2

Many people who live the 9-5 lifestyle tend to do very little outside of those hours except consume. They consume media, mostly, but they also use the services of the restaurant industry, the health and wellness industry, the retail industry, and others never stopping to think about what should be the most obvious question: Who makes sure that all these things are here for me to consume? There must be someone willing to work outside of the 9-5 for the world to keep running. Who will make your meals, film your TV shows, or fix your car? If everyone is supposed to work a boring office job, then who takes care of everything that happens outside of the office? Not to mention, these jobs are horribly undervalued and underpaid in today’s world. The answer most people give is that if those workers want more money or to be happy, then they should go back to school and get a better job. We need to start thinking about this in a different way. Since ostensibly their roles are to important to society, why are these people not meant to be happy and fulfilled in their lives as well? 

Stepping back for a moment, I want to actually consider what about this “norm” actually makes sense. In the modern era, we’re expected to be entirely self-sufficient. Everyone needs their own income to support themselves for the most part. The unfortunate reality is that at the current rate of pay for most jobs, it’s extremely difficult to survive on your own with only 40 hours of work. Many people who followed the “right” plan find themselves terribly under-employed after college and are forced to start “side-hustles” to survive (which is an odd way of saying “second job”, I love how we’ve re-branded that as a society). Even if you do find a 40 hour job with decent pay, we don’t have stay-at-home spouses taking care of the cooking, cleaning, and other tasks like we commonly saw in previous years. How are we expected to even have the time to do the basics and take care of ourselves, let alone have some semblance of an enjoyable life, if our jobs take up half of our waking hours and all of our energy?

So if the traditional success plan doesn’t even work for those who followed it then what about the rest of us? What are we supposed to do? Please take a seat, because the following statistic nearly knocked me over when I looked it up. Over 60% of Americans do not have college degrees. Do you understand what that means? It means that MOST of us don’t finish college. If MOST people don’t, then how could it POSSIBLY be the “norm”? How could this be the expectation for anyone to have some semblance of self-sufficiency when most people don’t get there?

Now if the last statistic didn’t surprise you, maybe this one will. According to the Wall Street Journal more than 50% of people with college degrees don’t use them in their current careers. That’s half. HALF? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I struggle to understand how getting a college degree and finding the perfect 9-5 office job to carry you through to retirement can possibly be accepted as the “norm” when only half of us even use that degree once we get it. The world has changed, and we need to change with it. 

Up until now, it might sound like I’m bashing college, but that’s not what I’m getting at here. There are many, many jobs that require college educations and they are just as important as the ones that don’t. The world needs engineers, doctors, teachers, and other skilled professions that require degrees just as much as it needs chefs and filmmakers and store managers. If this is your calling in life, and you want to pursue a career in a field that requires college, then I would encourage you to follow that dream. College can be a wonderful, fulfilling experience for so many people and I have nothing against going to college. In fact, I would say that making the decision to go back to school and learn a skill that you need to make yourself happier with your life is one of the single most valuable decisions you could make. Just understand that the reason I admire that decision is not simply because you’re going to college, it’s because you decided that you needed to make a change in your life to pursue something you’d be happier doing. It’s because you made a choice for yourself to pursue something you care about and want to learn about. What I don’t condone is going just to go and wasting money on something you’ll never use, when there are so many other options out there these days.

Thanks as always for reading,

Aaron Frank