Last updated on December 26th, 2023 at 01:24 am
In my list of Top 50 things I’d change if I Were President, there have been many action items that have come and gone. Over the years there have been many policy points and agenda items that I have grown out of. When I was 6, I wanted everyone to have access to free ice cream on demand. When I was 9, I thought every school child needed access to real strawberry milk in their school breakfasts again. When I was 11, I was lobbying for the U.S. government to create a chess sports league on par with the NFL and the NBA. The list continues on and on.
However, of all those items, one item that has stayed consistent since I was 15 has been the need to abolish useless majors. I graduated high school when I was 16, so, a year earlier, when I began the college application process and began researching majors, my eyes were opened. I saw schools offering majors in Art, Music Literature, Gender Studies, Archeology, Anthropology, etc. Basically ridiculous nonsense. These schools were robbing kids of thousands of dollars every year, sending them into debt, to “equip” them with degrees that would make barely past livable wages upon graduation.
Very quickly, there are 3 key topics I want to discuss regarding this today. Hopefully, we can glean some insight that can help us on the road to becoming Men of Might. We’ll start with the biggest chunk, then move into two lighter points. Let’s begin.
Your job isn’t always your passion.
This is the big lie being told today. The younger generations are especially susceptible to it. I call it the “follow your heart” syndrome. Let’s play out a scenario. Let’s talk about our mutual friend Mark. Mark is as smart as a whip. Top of his class. Easy-going dude. Mark has a passion for artifacts and fossils. He loved dinosaurs as a kid, and he likes watching the History Channel now. Mark decides, because he is smart, that he’ll apply to Harvard during his senior year of high school. He’ll follow his heart and become an archaeologist, so he can work with fossils and history every day. After a few months, he gets his acceptance letter in the mail! He gets in, but he’ll have to pay out-of-pocket because he wasn’t able to get any scholarships.
A year of tuition at Harvard is $59k (as of 2023-24). Mark goes and gets an archeology degree from Harvard. After 4 years of schooling, he graduates a gets an entry-level position making around $40k-45k..
But Sam, Mark graduated FROM HARVARD. Surely that means he got priority for something better. Haha. Funny joke. The median annual salary across the entire field is $61k! That means, upon graduation, Mark is over $200,000 in debt, and suddenly he has other bills to cover too, like housing, taxes, food, etc.
Even though competition was tough (because there were more archaeology graduates available than archaeology jobs available when he graduated) Mark was able to get a job at a dig site out in Colorado. Of course, now he’s in a pickle because he realizes he can only live near research institutions and dig sites, which means he can’t just move anywhere he wants. So, he’s in debt and he’s landlocked to just a few areas of work.
Mark meets a girl a year or two after he begins working. She’s a school teacher with an English degree, and she’s in the same boat. Her degree cost her WAY more than her job is currently paying her. Mark has to scrounge, but he manages to save up enough to buy her a ring while putting his college debt payments on hold. They get married. A year later they have a kid. The expenses keep increasing, but the funds don’t. Another kid comes along. Mark’s wife wants to take some time off from work to raise their kids. Because of finances though, she can’t quit work, and they can’t move out of the high-cost-of-living area because Mark can’t find an archaeology job anywhere else. Thus, they take the path that many Americans take and begin living paycheck to paycheck, supplementing their income with credit cards and slowly watching their debts grow bigger and bigger as they kick the can further and further down the road.
And to think… all of that could have been avoided if Mark hadn’t picked a dumb degree.
But Sam, that was his passion…
I’m just gonna shoot it straight with you fellas… there are certain disciplines, degrees, and majors that we have no business to be in, regardless of your passions. Some are downright wrong, like Gender Studies, and others are foolish, like Art and Archaeology. For instance, just because I have a passion for imported coffee doesn’t mean I’m going to get a master’s degree in Coffee Science. It’s simply not wise if you are aiming to become a man who has the ability to provide for his family to pursue these vapid, fluff degrees.
And, hot-take of the day, but many of these people complaining about school debts, and asking the government for loan-forgiveness programs and funding, are the ones who went out a got these useless degrees from overpriced institutions because they were either really passionate or really lazy. They were swayed by a professor in the Arts department to pursue a degree in filmography. Some of them let an advisor rope them into a Foreign Languages degree or a degree in general History. Don’t fall into those traps.
Your degree shouldn’t be about passion, it should be about potential. Hence, I give you Man of Might’s 5 Points of Potential:
- Is there potential for me to move up in this field?
- Is there potential for me to make decent money in this field?
- Is there potential for relocation flexibility in this job (can you do it in more than one place)?
- Is there potential for some form of fulfillment or happiness in this career choice?
- Is there potential for me to use this career choice to glorify God?
If the answer to any of those questions is “no”, then you need to move on.
Don’t get me wrong. You need to like what you do to some degree, but you shouldn’t forsake common sense on account of your passions. I am a software engineer. I majored in Computer Science with a minor in Math. I enjoy problem-solving, and I enjoy making people’s lives easier using technology, so I have found a way to enjoy what I do. That said, do I absolutely LOVE coding every day? No. Do I LOVE debugging code, fixing memory leaks, creating README docs, and the litany of other things I do day to day? Nope. Do I eat, sleep, and breathe bits and bytes? Absolutely not. That sounds like a nightmare. However, the funds and the freedom that the “bits and bytes” job affords me allow me to pursue my passions outside of work. That’s the kicker that so many guys miss.
You’re a man. You’re supposed to do hard things because you have a bigger picture in mind. That mindset doesn’t begin when you turn 21, you own your first house, you get married, or whatever huge life event you associate with adulthood. That mindset begins as soon as you decide it does. As a man, you’re supposed to be looking past what feels good in the moment or what is easiest in the moment. You’re supposed to be planning and building a life that can support you and those you care about. That’s what actually matters.
You need to find a balance. If you hate your job, then you need a new one, regardless of what kind of salary you make. However, if your job is tolerable, and it allows you to pursue your passions outside of business hours, then you’re on the right track. Ideally, you’d get the best of both worlds, but, if you have to sacrifice one, sacrifice passion over potential when choosing what educational path to take in order to segway into a career. A good tool to use to begin this process is a career quiz. Personally, I’m a fan of the tests on Truity, but there are many options out there to give you insight regarding all aspects of the process.
However, you need to be watchful, because some of these quizzes, tools, and tests will recommend fluff degrees. Make sure to weigh your results against the 5 Points of Potential when narrowing down the degree and field that you want to pursue. I would highly encourage you to take a physical piece of paper and write down your responses to the 5 Points of Potential worksheet. Moving the pen or pencil forces you to take time to physically work through your answer to each question. If you’d like, you can join the Man of Might family to get access to a printout below.
Stop viewing college as just “an experience”
Believe me, I’ve done it just like the next guy. I’ve scrolled through Instagram to see what all of my high school classmates are up to now. As I write this, I’ve been out of college less than a year, so many of my classmates and friends are still going through the process. I can say without a doubt that some of them are having a lot of fun. They are living the college experience (read that again and play ooh and ahh choir sounds in your head).
These guys are at every football game. They are either tailgating every weekend, or at the frat house at a party, or in some beach house having a party, or in some dorm having a party. They’re experimenting with drugs, guzzling alcohol like it’s no tomorrow, and having wild sex multiple times a week with vapid bimbos. Some are star athletes and others have climbed the ranks of student government. They’re loving every second. But… what have they really gained?
Step out of the simulation. Take the red pill. Look at it for what it really is. There are many boys who’ve stunted their growth into men by choosing to live in a fake world. Sadly, even in the fake world, they make terrible decisions. Go ahead and get it in your head now that college is a stepping stone, not an end destination. Boys who can’t handle the real world try to extend their stay in the fake one. They go into debt, blow off classes, chase girls, or pursue easy fluff majors because they want to live in the college experience. They want to experience the fun of independence without the consequences.
Many college-age individuals are away from home for the first time. Many go to liberal colleges chockful of ignorant professors seeking to drastically challenge and change their students’ worldviews. You pair personal immaturity with a lack of parental grounding and the nonsense of persistent professors and you have a mess. The quickest and easiest way to avoid this mess is to recognize college and your studies for what they are: a stepping stone. You go in with the mindset of getting out.
Now…that’s not to say you can’t enjoy college. I had a few late-night coffee binges, study parties with friends, and all-nighter cram sessions. I went to a few sports games and joined a club or two (even got myself an Upsilon Pi Epsilon t-shirt to prove it 😉). But, the activities of my college didn’t consume my life. I wasn’t so enamored with the experience that I let it consume me. For a while, studying for my major took up the majority of my focus (I graduated college early at 19), but, even so, that was because I was in a difficult major with high potential. I was in it to get out. I was going to enjoy my time without lingering around and forgoing opportunities that would have more benefits, like getting an actual job. I could look forward to what my future held because I knew I wasn’t pursuing an almost guaranteed dead-end field like Social Media Marketing or Music.
College doesn’t have to be 4 years.
Lastly, Some people decide to pursue useless majors because they have no idea what they want. Here’s a good idea… don’t waste your money and your time. As I write this, technical college is free in my home state, as well as 30 others. You can go and learn a trade in 2 years and make more 95% of four-year college graduates with useless degrees. Don’t believe me? In 2022, the median income for registered nurses (a job that can be obtained with a 2-year degree) was $81,220. The median income for a Physical Therapist Assistant was $57,240. Underwater welders got somewhere around $68,300. There are no excuses.
Many companies are in dire need of people who want to work with their hands, and the pay proves it. Not only that, but many of the jobs in technical school offer great relocation flexibility. Nurses can work anywhere, welders can work anywhere, etc. If you don’t know what you want upon graduating high school, don’t lock into a useless major. Go to tech for a two-year associate degree. Don’t take a gap year. Don’t attempt to go and find yourself. Perhaps, take the summer off before the fall semester and travel a bit. But, when school starts back, be ready to work towards something viable while you figure out what you want long-term. When you look back in 5 years, you’ll thank yourself.
