For most kids, they want to be something but they don’t want to put the work or effort in that it takes to make that happen. As a case in point, my daughter’s friend graduated from college with a sociology degree, and decided that she wanted to go into a trade instead of more schooling. She decided that she wanted to be an electrician. She applied for an apprenticeship, and she got turned down – 5 times. Her father told her to give it up, because a female would never get hired as an electrician apprentice. Instead, she went to several electricians in town and asked what they thought she should do to improve her chances. One suggested taking some basic community college trade classes. She did that, and taking a page from the “college experience,” she arranged an unpaid position as a helper for an electrician, as if it were a summer internship. She waited tables at night to pay her bills.
Guess who started as an electrician apprentice last week?
I think very often people like the idea of being something, but when the reality shows up in overalls and looks like work, they give up because they want it to be easy.
My great-grandfather was illiterate. My grandfather read at a third grade level. My uncle was CEO of a division of a Fortune 100 company. His son, who went to a state university and had to be browbeaten into not dropping out to work at Radio Shack, made his first million dollars without any help from his father at age 26.
My best friend went to law school; his brother works on a loading dock. His brother’s daughter has a PhD in psychology. Her brother is a high school drop-out, and works manual labor. My friend paid for his niece’s undergrad education, and would have paid for his nephew’s. At one point, the nephew wanted to be a herpetologist and work at a zoo, but his friends convinced him that studying wasn’t worth giving up time playing video games and hanging out.