I love this reminder to never just accept without question. Just defaulting to anything 401k without evaluating other relevant factors and options is never the best idea. Someone wise often advises me to make decisions from a position of power, not weakness.
Agree! Thank you for this perspective; context ALWAYS matters.
I only wish I had not accepted conventional wisdom and gone straight from high school into a 4 year college. I wasted years and a lot of money not knowing what to major in, and graduated with a TON of student loan debt.
If I could go back in time I would have gone to community college to knock out my general education classes, then transferred AFTER I knew myself a little bit better.
I would also have explored testing OUT of some subjects to save time and money. I had no idea CLEP existed! (College-Level Examination Program: https://clep.collegeboard.org/ )
Thanks for the comment and kind words, Steph. Interesting that you bring this up. My wife and I talk about this a lot, how we wished we had more direction in college. I won't speak for her, but I was pretty aimless, eventually settling on English as a major because, well, I wanted to be a writer. In retrospect, however, that was pretty linear thinking. I just didn't know any better. I wish academic advisors in high school and college were prioritized more and given more resources. They could potentially provide some of that guidance.
In my experience, high school guidance counselors were NOT helpful at all. I'm not sure if it was due to them being under resourced, or just plain apathy on their part.
I attended a public school back in the day (Gen X here lol) but my spouse attended a private school and encountered the same issue! Guidance counselors were not there to help either of us explore options. And the adults in our lives, while well meaning, didn't offer any guidance other than "You're expected to go to college". If you didn't go to college, you were expected to get a job and move out. There were definitely no discussions about context or alternate paths to learning and gaining experience.
Oh, 100%. My guidance counselors did nothing for me, neither in high school nor the advisors in college. I told my academic advisor in college that I declared my major in English, so I asked him what career paths were realistic for me, and I kid you not, one of the options he gave me was "novelist." Don't get me wrong, I wanted to be a novelist, and I continue to pursue that to this day, but even as a 19-year-old I knew not to bank on that as a reliable source of income.
I love this reminder to never just accept without question. Just defaulting to anything 401k without evaluating other relevant factors and options is never the best idea. Someone wise often advises me to make decisions from a position of power, not weakness.
Context matters, and asking questions is always a good thing.
Agree! Thank you for this perspective; context ALWAYS matters.
I only wish I had not accepted conventional wisdom and gone straight from high school into a 4 year college. I wasted years and a lot of money not knowing what to major in, and graduated with a TON of student loan debt.
If I could go back in time I would have gone to community college to knock out my general education classes, then transferred AFTER I knew myself a little bit better.
I would also have explored testing OUT of some subjects to save time and money. I had no idea CLEP existed! (College-Level Examination Program: https://clep.collegeboard.org/ )
Thanks again, great newsletter.
Thanks for the comment and kind words, Steph. Interesting that you bring this up. My wife and I talk about this a lot, how we wished we had more direction in college. I won't speak for her, but I was pretty aimless, eventually settling on English as a major because, well, I wanted to be a writer. In retrospect, however, that was pretty linear thinking. I just didn't know any better. I wish academic advisors in high school and college were prioritized more and given more resources. They could potentially provide some of that guidance.
Also, meant to add guidance counselors.
In my experience, high school guidance counselors were NOT helpful at all. I'm not sure if it was due to them being under resourced, or just plain apathy on their part.
I attended a public school back in the day (Gen X here lol) but my spouse attended a private school and encountered the same issue! Guidance counselors were not there to help either of us explore options. And the adults in our lives, while well meaning, didn't offer any guidance other than "You're expected to go to college". If you didn't go to college, you were expected to get a job and move out. There were definitely no discussions about context or alternate paths to learning and gaining experience.
Oh, 100%. My guidance counselors did nothing for me, neither in high school nor the advisors in college. I told my academic advisor in college that I declared my major in English, so I asked him what career paths were realistic for me, and I kid you not, one of the options he gave me was "novelist." Don't get me wrong, I wanted to be a novelist, and I continue to pursue that to this day, but even as a 19-year-old I knew not to bank on that as a reliable source of income.