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Wednesday, September 3, 2014

The Downside of Pursuing "Your Dream Job"

I Never Should Have Followed my Dreams (David Sobel) from Salon
"“You were right to leave that job,” my dad said as the nurses escorted me to intake. I no longer agreed. I stepped outside of the box to access my latent achiever and start a new career. Instead, I emptied my retirement fund and entered the psychiatric ward."
I remember reading about a study a few years ago pertaining to parents attitudes toward trade work, more specifically, why parents actively discourage their children from pursuing trade craft. Of course it is because trade work in the US is carries the stigma of low status. But I fail to see how a job at Starbucks is perceived as good and desirable. Every time I see a strong and intelligent young man at Starbucks, I want to grab him, and shake him, and say, “Why the hell aren’t you building somebody’s addition! Do you have any Idea how much money you’re losing here?” But of course his mom would have been so DISSAPOINTED if he had attended the local vocational-technical high school.  So you have a condition in the US where high school counselors push all the problem kids into the vocational school, and people wonder why they can’t get a decent contractor, and why their business graduate son is living in the basement.  
Posted by: hopeandespair

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