Sometime ago I did a blog post on "10 Reasons Not to go to College." Robert emailed me and requested I do one on the alternatives to going to college. Well, here it is. Actually this post will also be applicable to someone who wants to pursue a line of work for which a college diploma is required as well. A college diploma is only one among a number of credentials which may or may not be required for any particuler job. Other credentials, for example, are licenses such as contractors' licenses, licenses to practice law, medicine, pilot a plane, drive a truck, graduate degrees etc etc. The cost of each credential and how many are needed and the time and effort required to get them should be a factor in whether or not they're worth pursuing.
1. Spend the equivalent of a one semester high school course in doing research on various occupations, jobs, careers, ways of making money, businesses, arts, crafts, trades, lines of work etc in order to come up with a semi-exhaustive list of ways of making a living. Actually, this should be a required course at the high school level. This is one of the most important decisions you'll ever make in your life so why not give it serious study, research, time and consideration? How much time do you spend taking courses in high school math? Most of you will never use anything beyond elementary school math in your whole adult life unless you are going to be a top level scientist, engineer or mathematician. Balancing a checkbook and other financial transactions will probably constitute 100% of your adult math activities and these require nothing more then elementary mathematics, mainly addition and subtraction. In order to impose order on your list, you can also categorize different kinds of jobs by industry such as the construction industry, the real estate industry etc.
2. Once you've come up with you semi-exhaustive list of ways of making money, develop a list of your own interests, passions, hobbies and other satisfying activities regardlesss of their revenue producing potential. If you can combine these with something that's revenue producing that's great, but often they must be pursued on two separate tracks. In other words, if you can get paid for what you love doing, this is the ultimate scenario, but often you must do something revenue producing on one track and non-revenue producing on another, but it's important to take both into account when you're trying to figure out a satisfying and enriching lifestyle. How important is money and how important is it having the free time to pursue whatever you love to do? For some people, waiting on tables while having lots of time to surf or ski might be a more satisfying lifestyle then spending 40-60 hours a week in an office.
3. Once you've come up with your semi-exhaustive list, rate each job, occupation, line of work, way of making money etc in several ways. #1 How enjoyable would it be for you? What is your interest level or passion level for this line of work. Compare each line of work with your list of interests and activities you would pursue even if you weren't being paid to do them. #2 How lucrative is the line of work per hour? #3 Can you be either self-employed or other-employed in this line of work? #4 What are the credentialing requirements and how much time and money is necessary to get them? #5 Will you be working primarily by yourself (good for introverts) or primarily interacting with others (good for extroverts)? #6 Will you have control over your working conditions or will these be controlled by others? For instance, will you be able to set your own hours? Will you be able to work as much or as little as you want? Will you be able to work out of your home or perhaps the neighborhood Starbucks
or will you be confined to an office? #7 How sedentary or non-sedentary is the job? Those with a lot of physical energy may not want to sit at a desk all day. #8 How much natural talent do you have for the job? Don't try to be a mathematician if you're not good in math. #9 What are what I call the sideline serendipities of the job? What I mean by that is what can you do with the skill set required for your primary job as either a revenue producing or non-revenue producing but inherently more saatisfying sideline? For instance, if your primary job is as a journalist, you can write books and get them published on the side. Ben Franklin was a publisher so he could not only publish the works of others for which he was paid up front but publish his own works such as Poor Richard's Almanac which was a more speculative venture for which he might make money if enough people bought it (enough did). A handyman can work for others and build spec houses on the side. #10 How readily can you make money at this job? Is it readily marketable? Can you step right in and make money at it or is there a long period of relatively meager returns before you start to make good money? How much competition is there? How much demand is there for this type of work? #11 How easy is it to combine your revenue producing labor with your other interests in life and here I include your family and relationships as well as your hobbies and interests? Is your work life enhancing or stress producing, emotionally and psychologically satisfying or nerve wracking?
4. Once you've shortened your list to areas of activity that you think you're most interested in, contact other individuals already working in those fields. Ask if you could spend a day with them as they go about their work. At least try to interview them and ask questions. Try to get a feel for the job. Don't let them snow you or lay a PR trip on you. You want to find out what the job is really like, not have them try to impress you with how wonderful it is while at the same time they are hating it.
5. Get involved in some line of work you're interested in at as early an age as possible. Start racking up real life experience. If it turns out that the work experience isn't what you thought it would be, you have plenty of time to change. In the meantime you're making money.
6. If you start your own business, be willing to live frugally while you grow the business. You might have to plow most of your income back into the businesss. I had a friend who loved Macintosh computers and started his own MacLab. He had a storefront so rather than pay two rents, he lived in his office. He had rows of the latest computers which he used for training, and at night he rolled out his sleeping bag and slept in the aisles between the computers. He was one of the best engineers I've ever known, and, by the way, did not have a college degree. Instead he had a passion for his line of work and was good at it. If you have a work vehicle such as a van which you use for a mobile service of some sort, consider partially converting your work vehicle into a dual purpose camper and sleeping in it until you get your business established.
7. Evaluate your list of jobs with respect to capital investment required. Don't forget that college requires a considerable capital investment if you take out student loans. Many people come out of college $100,000. or more in debt. You could start a great business (which you would then own) for that.
8. Get whatever credentials you need by the cheapest possible route. When you get to be a lawyer, for example, nobody is going to be interested in where you went to college only in whether you can win their case. Your reputation will count far more than where your degree came from. Start out with a two year community college (always cheaper) and then transfer to the cheapest 4 year school to get your degree. Beware of "degree mills" however. Get your credentials from a reputable institution and if the leaarning experience is not that great there, it's up to you to learn your stuff on your own in spite of the quality of the school. That's the only way you'll learn anything anyway. Forget about having the teacher cram stuff in your head without any effort on your part.
9. The debate about whether going to college is to prepare you for a more lucrative career or to enhance your general intelligence is over as far as I'm concerned. You can learn all the art, music and history you're interested in by reading books throughout your adult life. You don't need to go to college to study these subjects. If you do go to college, go simply in order to get a credential necessary for pursuing a line of work you want to pursue. And if you're not interested in history, why should you study it ever? You'll only do so to pass a test and it'll stick to you about as much as water on a duck's back. Many people go through life with very limited knowledge in areas they're not interested in and are none the worse off for it. Evaluate each credential (college or otherwise) as you would an investment. Does the rate of return justify the time and expense?
10. Finally, do you have control over your line of work or does it control you. Can you live where you want and pursue it? Will you be able to decide how long you want to pursue it or will someone else make that decision?. For example, if you work for a corporation and they outsource your job, someone else is making the decision that you should retrain for another occupation when you might have been perfectly satisfied with the one you had. Does someone else or you decide when to retire? You might want to retire when you're 50 or, if you love your work, you might never want to retire. Do you have control over it or does someone else?
11. Finally, finally, don't be intimidated by facing life without a college degree. Parents, teachers, politicians and the education establishment have endevored to create the Weltanschauung that you're a total failure and will never amount to anything in life unless you go to college. Plain and simple, it's bulllshit. Some of the richest and most accomplished people, including Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, don't have college degrees.
I read your website with great interest, especially the two articles that I wish I had read when I was much younger – this one on NOT going to college, and the one about living without a job. How much I would have changed if I could go back. How much I would have done differently. How much I missed out on by insisting on trusting the corporate and educational systems! But I can at least say a few words of warning as well as some words of hope for the future for those caught like I was. I am not saying they are worthless! But I am saying no one should just assume they will be protected, and even give up their independence for them.
Six years ago I would have laughed at your site and those articles. Six years ago I would have been sitting in my office working as a financial analyst, thinking I was secure in my high-paying, prestigious, white-collar job. I was so proud of my MBA and my material success and all it had brought me. Flashback six years: I would have been sitting in my corner office at my computer deciding what to do with the millions of dollars I was in charge of. I would have looked the part, too, down to the very last tailor-made detail: pinstriped Armani business suit tailored for me, starched white shirt with the monogrammed cufflinks, Cartier watch on my wrist, Coach briefcase at my side, French silk necktie perfectly tied, hundred dollar yuppie haircut with a razor sharp part, and on my dapperly attired feet a pair of $600 Italian wingtips, shined up like black mirrors, and designer socks. Does that sound obnoxious? Well, yes – it was. If it sounds like I was smug and arrogant – well, that about says it.
As you mention in your articles, I assumed I was completely secure in the job that an MBA had brought me. I had made all the “right” choices. I had trusted my career. I was certain nothing bad could happen to me in the professional world. I was the slave of my job, as you say – but I didn’t know it.
Everything had to be perfect. Every hair was in place. I was always clean shaven. The shoes were always shined. My Porsche was top of the line. Our condo was in the best suburb. My wife and I lived a lifestyle far beyond our means. Then one day the pink slip arrived.
How many thousands have experienced that? Yet for each it is a different story. At 52 I was out of a job. I was thrown out of the corporate world along with the trash. The corner office, the responsibilities, the paycheck, the prestige and the title: it all disappeared in one hour. I assumed, like so many, that another job would fall into place. But at my executive level and at my age, it didn’t happen quickly; finally, it didn’t happen at all. Then the house of cards that was my life started to shake and then to fall apart.
My wife decided it was time to start on her own; she left me and wanted the house. It was a rough divorce. We were both at fault.
The debts continued to pile up and the savings rapidly dwindled.
So many of the “friends” I thought I had disappeared.
Meanwhile, there was no work. I had never lived without a paycheck, since graduating school. I felt helpless and exposed.
I started to sell off some of my belongings. I traded that beautiful Porsche for a pickup.
Then reality finally hit. One day, after being turned down for yet another finance job, I had a call that our home had been foreclosed.
I looked down at myself as I stepped outside of the office building: perfect suit, tie, shoes, watch, briefcase. But there was something wrong with the picture. I had lost my job, my wife, my savings and now my home. I was all image and no substance.
Right there, in front of the office building, I stepped over the line into a new life. Suddenly, a light went on. It was as if I had been held back all my life. Now, for the first time, as I was still in free-fall, I didn’t care anymore what people thought. I was no longer the successful white collar executive I had been, and I had to face a very painful, almost unbelievable reality.
I did something I would never have thought it was possible for me to do: I untied and took off those too-fancy, too-tight, too-shiny, too-expensive Italian wingtip shoes and those overpriced silk dress socks and dropped them in a garbage can. I was unemployed, broke and homeless; it was time for me, Mister Former High and Mighty, to walk aound in my bare feet, like many people all over the world.
My mirror-shined hand-made shoes belonged to a world of privilege and power that was gone. I wandered around the local park, barefoot in my two thousand dollar suit and hundred-dollar tie. I became introduced to the world of the homeless that night. If anyone thinks it can’t happen to them: they are wrong. If it can happen to me, a corporate hotshot executive who thought he was immune and protected by job and education, it can happen to anyone.
That night I decided that I would not be destroyed. I would not descend into alcoholism. I was miserable, ashamed, humiliated, lost, but I was alive. I would learn the necessary skills to survive.
For the next weeks I lived in my truck. I begged for money on the street. I am not ashamed to say it now, but I was then. I found used old clothes at a homeless shelter. My real education had begun. For the next six months I took odd jobs, no matter how menial. I worked for a while as a janitor and then I painted houses. Slowly I earned enough to rent a very small one-room apartment in what might be called a slum. My old image fell away completely. I stopped shaving and covered my always clean shaven face with a beard. I let the carefully combed haircut grow long and straggly. There was no reason to look like an executive when I was living the life of an aging hippie!
I started to get creative with bartering. The remnants of my corporate white collar life now became a bridge to survival: an Armani pinstriped business suit swapped for two crates of canned food; my tennis racket exchanged for a lamp; my golf clubs “bought” a sofa; six silk neckties were swapped for a month’s supply of dairy products; the English leather wingtips I had bought to celebrate my promotion were traded in for a used mattress.
My watch and cufflinks were traded for a bed, and for the next few months, the rest of my business suits, ties, shirts and even black dress socks were exchanged for groceries. I remember the look of shock when I showed up with my tuxedo to swap for a rug! I was determined to survive, and I did!
I then found a small plot of land and started to grow vegetables. Did I ever think I would do this? Never. Not in a million years. I was learning basic survival skills. I also realized something else – I did not miss the corporate world. Not at all!
Of course, at that point it was doubtful that any bank would hire the bearded, barefoot, long-haired, overall clad “hobo” I had become! But I found that the destruction of the image brought a calm after the storm, and I wanted another type of work to fill my days. So I went against all the white-collar training and plans of my life and simply remained as a blue collar odd-job man! Recently I took a training course as a mechanic, and I now change oil for a living, part time. It’s far journey from the dapper gentleman who used to manage millions, but I found that I am at peace inside.
Now I have time to read and to paint, to garden and to make friends. I never had that before. People react to me with friendliness instead of guarded respect. Most find it hard to believe I was once a corporate financier. At times that world seems like a dream.
Well, thanks for reading this and keep up the good work on the blog! There is life outside the corporate world.
Posted by: Jim Wellington | April 10, 2007 at 07:03 PM