Posted by Hey, my business people. In today’s Lessons for Business and Motivation:
Recently, a local Dallas TV news station did a special segment on how parents can help their children who are graduating high school choose a career. A life coach was the expert providing guidance to parents on this topic. I don’t want to dox the person or the channel because a lot of experts provide similar guidance to parents and graduates. Long story short, what she said advised parents to do is to let their children figure out what they want to do. Parents should not inject their ideas, but just let their graduates choose whatever interests them, what they are passionate about.
Oh boy. No no no, people! The facts show that we suck at picking careers lol.
If you watched my other videos on this topic of choosing what to do after graduating, I can’t stand that word “passion.” I said it once, and I’ll say it a thousand times: A world that loves money will not break bread to pay you for your passion. It’s really as simple as that. Now are there outlier, one off cases where 1 in a million people get rich from pursuing their passion? Yes. However, those are not common.
More importantly, this idea of letting our graduating children just pick their own careers that interests them is insane. The facts don’t like. In a previous video a week or two ago, I flat out showed you guys a couple of charts and stats that shows that our people are the most vulnerable to jobs being automated.
Why? Because the vast majority of us are stuck in low wage, dead end jobs that are being phased out right now. This sad state indicates that for many decades, we have shown we don’t know how to pick careers that can double our median incomes. So letting our children repeat the same mistakes we did is unconscionable.
I have to respectfully disagree with any experts or life coaches who advocate that we just let our inexperienced, naïve children pick whatever career interests them.
I mean don’t get me wrong. I want them to find a career that interests them as long as it has a high chance of paying them well. In other words, they better pick a STEM career that they like. There are many to choose from, and I guarantee you that over 95% of our children can find one.
For instance, there are young sistas in our community who just love them some fashion. They love it so much that they either want to be models or go to some kind of fashion school. Ummm…hell to the naw. These are struggle jobs because it is not common to make above the low median incomes that black women are already struggling with. I discussed this in vides going back to last year.
Sidebar: This story of a teacher with over $300k in student loan debt popped up in my inbox after I wrote this article. Now the loan is in forbearance with no chance of the principal being repaid due to the compounding interest. Her [Cheryl’s] major was in English! Why, people, why? English is yet another struggle major:
“I’m totally screwed,” Cheryl said. “And now I’m trying to put a kid through college and he got a good scholarship, but it doesn’t pay for everything. I have no idea how I’m going to do it, I guess I’ll have to get another job.”
“During the payment pause, Cheryl was still making around $400 monthly payments on her private student loans, and not having to make the $200 federal monthly payments under her income-driven repayment plan provided a slight financial reprieve that helped her afford other basic necessities.
“I have $200 to get gas, and groceries and everything else, and there’s not much left after that,” Cheryl said. “It keeps you in this nasty little loop that you can’t get out of because I can’t afford to pay it down and the interest keeps coming.”
MSN News/Business Insider
Not many of us are looking at the competition for high paying jobs in this country. Have you not noticed that people from China, India, and other countries, even Ukraine, are coming here with STEM degrees or trade school training? Guess what this means? It means that not only are your jobs being automated, but even the entry level STEM jobs are increasingly being taken by them.
But there’s still a window of opportunity for you, my people. Because companies are automating everything right now, and they hire people like me to help them plan and design those automations, they are not quite there yet to be fully automated. Thus, you have time to go to trade school, learn a STEM trade, get on the job training, get cloud certifications in the meantime, and keep networking with yourselves and people like me who are in the industry and ready to help. But I have to warn you that you have to move quickly. We’ve been just going through life without a care in this world, thinking the government or someone else is going to just jump in and save us, only to find we still have the lowest median incomes.
Keep in mind that the Government didn’t create us; God created us. Why do many of us have this strategy that we have to only rely on government action to turn things around for our community? We’ve tried that failed strategy for over 60 years now. If our Heavenly Father created us, and He created this world, then which one is greater: He that is in us, or he that is in the world? I’m preaching now lol. We have the power to change our own destinies, and there is a rare, time sensitive opportunity right now for us to move up. The focus is on 2 year STEM trades or associate’s degree programs, unless you get enough scholarship money to go to 4 year universities, and even then, you bet not major in struggle stuff.
So to recap: Parents, don’t let your kids just pick any old major because just they are passionate about it. If you hear your kids want to become butterfly catchers, in two years after they graduate, I will come visit the unemployment office where your kids will be. We have to do like all the parents of nations like China and India do, reinforcing the importance of STEM careers because we’re just not that rich to be able to afford struggle majors. We don’t have time to see if minimum wage paying passion jobs will turn into a lucrative career. Those days are over. We have to compete before it’s too late.
I’m not disrespecting any life coaches or experts who, in their hearts, think they are doing the right thing. Our community has a very unique challenge where we can’t afford any more struggle jobs. We’re not all millionaires, so pursue STEM careers first, and then passions later. As I said in a previous video, within 3 years of graduating college, I was able to indulge in my hobbies and special interests.
Be sure to like and share to keep this channel growing. Do share this video with as many parents of graduating seniors as you can so we can stop the low income madness.
Until the next video, brothas and sistas, take care.
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Links:
Skilled Workers Are Fleeing Russia. Let’s Welcome Them. | American Enterprise Institute – AEI
US to welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees – CNNPolitics
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/us-to-accept-more-ukrainian-refugees/index.html
The STEM Brain Drain: Lifting the Immigration Cap on STEM Ph.D.s – AAF (americanactionforum.org)
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