Cracked: The Occupy Wallstreet Generation

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-we-ruined-occupy-wall-street-generation_p2/

That is in my top 5 of top 5 lists. Thank you.

Gee, I thought Cracked was a comedy site, not a repository of sober thought.

That was very well written.

Ah yes, the great lie my generation was told, you NEED a college education.

Honestly, I don't think a high school education did me a ton of good. I played music and got laid a lot. That was nice.

I have a Degree ... and work in a field where higher education is not a requirement.

I was fed all that bullE36 M3 about how you won't be happy and you'll end up being a crackhead or whatever if you don't go to college. I was fed that line primarily by a guy a who didn't finish college; so I get a lot of what he's saying. I quit college this year to join the Marines (Anyone here an 03?). This generation is far from ruined...

I flipped burgers, I didn't go to college, I now have the job the recent college grads want.

Moral of the story, no matter how much education you have you still have to work your way up to it, you don't start at the top (or even in the middle)

Other moral of the story: Kids who played "Predator War" in the woods will berkeleying break pasty little berkeleys who play "call of duty" all day.

poopshovel wrote: Other moral of the story: Kids who played "Predator War" in the woods will berkeleying break pasty little berkeleys who play "call of duty" all day.

I don't get shooting at E36 M3 in video games when you can just as easily go outside and shoot real guns.

Solution: give kids more guns.

MG_Bryan wrote:

poopshovel wrote: Other moral of the story: Kids who played "Predator War" in the woods will berkeleying break pasty little berkeleys who play "call of duty" all day.

I don't get shooting at E36 M3 in video games when you can just as easily go outside and shoot real guns. Solution: give kids more guns.

i can find absolutely no flaws in your logic.

my brother is going to buy is 4 year old daughter her first .22 for her birthday in March. she's been eyeballing the little pink one down at her eye level in the display case in WalMart.

novaderrik wrote:

MG_Bryan wrote:

poopshovel wrote: Other moral of the story: Kids who played "Predator War" in the woods will berkeleying break pasty little berkeleys who play "call of duty" all day.

I don't get shooting at E36 M3 in video games when you can just as easily go outside and shoot real guns. Solution: give kids more guns.

i can find absolutely no flaws in your logic.

It's way cheaper than college too.

MG_Bryan wrote: Solution: give kids more guns.

No kidding eh? I am quite literally the biggest car nerd/racing nerd that 99% of people will EVER meet in their whole lives. They know being a nerd, I am also heavily into computers and the like.

"Hey HiTemp, have you played Forza 3425 or Dirt[hoon] 6000??!"

Why would I, I do that stuff in REAL LIFE.

Edit- That writer is scary though... because he speaks the truth. My parents to this DAY try and bullE36 M3 around a lot of those things he writes about, and it's like give it up already, I may be your son but I'm an adult.

Also, I will never push any kids I have to do anything education wise that isn't there choice. I don't think I should have ever went into engineering now, its not me even though I can handle it fine.

QFT:

'So you grow up in a culture that tells you maturity is for boring shiny happy people, and then suddenly you get dumped into a world that expects maturity.'

it's very true. Neither of my parents even went to college. Out of my aunts and uncles.. only one went.. and she dropped out ( think flunked out) in a year after spending most of her freshman year partying.

They still push the "you need college to get anywhere" BS though.

So... acting like a 12yr old at 43 isn't an endearing quality? I totally missed that update.

berkeley you. I'm taking my ball and going home.

mad_machine wrote: it's very true. Neither of my parents even went to college. Out of my aunts and uncles.. only one went.. and she dropped out ( think flunked out) in a year after spending most of her freshman year partying. They still push the "you need college to get anywhere" BS though.

Every parent should read Shop Class As Soulcraft while their kid is six or seven years old and then give some consideration to what sort of messages they give that kid

Good list, but the people they need to be pissed at are their parents, not me.

I didn't go to college, I don't flip burgers for a living. As a matter of fact, I never have. I guess my parents were smarter than the average wog. That and I didn't give them a choice.

My eldest is 24. He didn't go to college. He made some life choices that made that impossible. Like a wife and kids. I don't feel sorry for him. I did the same thing.

My daughter is 20. She's going. I'm paying on the condition that she gets a saleable degree. She doing a double major in graphic design and business. I'm good with that, and she will come out with no debit.

How do you get a History Major (or any other worthless degree) off your porch. Pay them for the pizza.

There are no worthless degrees, in my opinion. But there are lots of people with limited to no initiative who choose to pursue a degree because they don't know what to do with their lives.

I want and expect my son to go to university -- for the sake of the experience of going to university. I also expect that he will choose a career that he loves, and I will make sure he is exposed to all of them -- from trades, to entrepreneurship, to professional occupations. My job, as a parent, is to expose him to the choices, and give him the skills to be successful. Not to enable him to "find himself" or to feel a misplaced sense of entitltement.

Fortunately he can't wait to race cars -- and that costs money -- so he's already pretty motivated.

wow...this...all of it...

My parents did a pretty good job, and I turned out okay. I have a decent job, but not because of my degree. I got an entry level position and worked my ass off until someone recognized my abilities.

I am glad I went to college, because I would not have ended up where I did, but all in all, it was mostly a waste. Not all of us are berkeleyed, just the lazy ones who are ashamed of hard labor. (I lived on a farm, so I got used to getting my hands dirty).

(sorta related. I'm not sure "blockbuster" and "creative" are mutually exclusive. If it's creative and good enough, it will be a blockbuster. Ex. Inception etc.)

There is a lot of insight in that article but... if your key take-away is that college is stupid and people should aspire to dig ditches or flip burgers, I suspect ya may have missed the point.

Some said earlier "There are no worthless degrees". I'd say that depends on how you measure worth. If it is in dollars - there are certainly curriculum that should only be perused by the already independently wealthy or well married. For every self-made millionaire History major you can trot out, I'll order appetizers from 10 more. There isn't anything wrong with that lot in life - unless you borrowed $200k to attain it.

I agree that college is not worthless and that there are no worthless degrees. It is like anything else, a degree is a tool, what you do with it depends on you.

To some people, EVERY tool is a hammer.. to a select few, it is a surgeon's scalpel, most of us are in between.

I grew up knowing how to do hard work. I come from a military family (but am 4F) so getting down and dirty is not foreign to me. However, my niece WILL be going to college... even if I have to pay for it myself.

Back when only 10% of Americans went to college, it was the thing you did because you had the money to be educated and typically came from a background where that was expected by family and one's social circle. The point was not to find a job, but to be an educated person. Going to school for a job meant going to a trade school, not typically done by wealthier people in that day and age.

The job was almost automatic because an educated person was likely considered bright enough to adapt to the career, or connected enough for it not to matter.

I'm 30, so it's my grandparents' generation who told their kids that college was the route to success. For the most part, that was fairly true. We are now at a point where many view college as a very expensive trade school for white collar workers. For professions like teaching, the practice of law or medicine, engineering, and architecture, this has been somewhat the case for a very long time.

I went to college, and it actually was pretty useful for me. I came out with a BFA in Industrial Design. I presently work for a company that does design and custom fabrication of museum exhibits, large scale artworks, and extremely high end architectural elements. A good half of what I do falls under the broad term "carpentry" and would be considered blue collar by many. That said, I couldn't do my job without my education. From math to art history to writing, I use all of it pretty frequently. The most valuable thing I learned in college was how to think critically.

I think the "burger" quote has been misheard.

I've never heard a boomer say, "You don't want to have to flip burgers, do you?"

I've heard them say, "You don't want to have to flip burgers for the rest of your life, do you?"

Big difference. Make sure you listen until the end.

This^

Everyone should work a crap job for their first job, it teaches you that if you do a good job of it, you'll get something better.

If a guy can't run a broom, I won't let him near a toolbox.

The first six months of my apprentiship were spent cleaning and blasting parts.

Once they figured out that I didn't need a kick in the ass every 5 seconds to keep me breathing, I got to do real work and the next rookie moved into my slot.

Welcome to the real world, college degree or not.

Shawn