If you're anything like me — in college, moving closer to graduation, and thinking about what comes next — you're more than likely a little worried about the future. And who could blame you?
The average college student in 2019 graduates with their bachelor's degree and about $30,000 worth of student debt. This is a serious disadvantage for anyone coming out of school to try and start building a life for themselves. The problem with the norm of going to college to edge your way into the workforce is that now EVERYONE has a bachelor's degree. It's the new high school diploma. If you haven't gone to college, commuted to campus or lived away from home, ate crackers for dinner, watched some kid cry in the library at nine in the morning, and spent two of your four years paying for general education classes you could've sworn you just finished taking in high school, you're behind the curve! Everyone is expected to go and take out an exuberant amount of money to pay for the privilege of being exactly the same as everyone else to the prospective employers who have a desperate and indebted workforce to pick and choose from. But this new expectation of this coming of age generation puts them at an immediate disadvantage.
Being stricken with debt as soon as you reach the world of personal responsibility effectively removes the opportunity for you to take risks or follow your dreams. Maybe you would have liked to travel the world for a couple of months before you start looking for work or settling down in your own place? Try your hand at starting that business that you've been tossing around in your head? Or maybe you want to finally dedicate all of your time and effort into your one true passion by writing the book you've been outlining in all of your writing classes for the past couple of years? Well, you better forget about all of that for now, buddy, you have bills to pay. And God forbid you go broke and can't afford those student loan payments anymore, and you finally decide to declare for bankruptcy. Surprise! Those loans aren't going anywhere. Get back in the saddle, kid, you're not out of the woods quite yet.
We've been trained to believe since we were sleeping in a crib that money makes the world go round. Where did we go so wrong? If we don't turn our priorities away from this crass consumerism that has taken a hold on our society, and back to a more humanistic and morality based society that strives for knowledge and wisdom instead of money and status, we're going to run ourselves into the ground.
