Don't Whine to Me You Are So Well Off - Stay In School

What I wanted to say to the bright dropout University student but didn't--

I feel need to give you a reference to my perspective and you can make of it, whatever you want. So I will use myself as the example - here goes:

I'm from Alaska, I started working professionally at age 15 as a legal librarian and law clerk.Because neither of my parents saved money to send me to college I worked on the Alaska pipeline as a bullcook, seven days a week, 10-12 hours a day to save enough money for the tuition, books, materials, and living expenses.

This meant that I was a dishwasher on the Alaska pipeline camp that served meals for 400-800 men a day, and cleaned up the accidents that very drunk pipeline workers left in their beds, toilets, and the hallways where they got sick. I worked in Coldfoot Camp for 5 months with only a one day break. It was not the only job I had like that; I also slimed herring, and was a US Fish and Wildlife photographer!I went to the community college just like you did, starting when I was 16 years old.

At 21 I moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. I earned an undergraduate degree in fine art, which is in painting, finishing at the private college Cornish Institute - I completely funded my own education working either full time or part time while I attended school full time - it took ten years. Might as well say "would you like fries with that?" as they hand you your diploma.

After running out of money while on my own, and going without food for 4 days once in 1980 I decided I would take any job and do whatever is required to make a living.

To that end I took any job - the bottom of the barrel jobs as a support tech - while working for RealNetworks when the Internet was brand new -- I emailed someone I never met over the internet and told him I was copying his site so that I could learn to script HTML, and asked would he mind helping me a little bit?I took his site apart and put it back together as my own (http://www.wonderlane.com/).

I taught myself HTML. Once in a while I emailed him with a question and he looked at my work from Indonesia where he lived at that time. My Internet teacher and I still trade Happy New Years greetings via email - we have never met in person.From there I worked increasingly better jobs until I was earning a 6 figure salary.Now I am much older, after having worked since I was a kid, I decided I hate what I am doing for what is barely a living when I am lucky to have a contract. Like many people as I have gotten older I am earning less and less instead of more and more.

So I decided to go back to the university and earn a Masters in Information Science; I will learn something new and it is a challenge. I am not a good writer. And maybe if I am lucky and work hard to learn new things I will restart my career as a result. I follow my intuition -- one never knows what exciting thing one might do next!

One of the things that made a huge impression on me is traveling to India in 1989 and seeing starving people laying in the street and beggars with no clothes in the hundreds - standing around on street corners with nothing to do (and I thought I had it bad!) Even the educated people told me they had no jobs- so when I returned to work at Microsoft I worked to improve business relationships with India.As Americans we are such a rich people we can follow what we love to do and maximize the challenges presented to us in our lives, or we can make choices that make our lives easy.

Most of the other people in the world have no such choices. They work all the time until they die. They don't have "free time" or "disposable income" most people don't graduate from high school.According to UNESCO, at least 875 million adults remain illiterate globally, they never have any chance for an education, they never learn to read or write. Count out 875 million pennies and call me when you are done.

While in the backwoods of Nepal, one lady asked a friend of mine "is the sun that shines on your country is the same one that shines on my country?"30,000 people starve to death every day. Since you started reading this about 600+ people died. So after that grim baseline -Taking a class means taking initiative, to go through the materials, take the tutorials, and/ or work with other people, like following up on my offer to help you - I know both of those things can be challenging as learning experiences, alone, not even counting the subject matter.

And of course I have no knowledge of your background.My best advice is to follow whatever in life fills you with passion. But this was a once in a lifetime chance - everything is - it always is, nothing ever is repeated in just the same way or with just the same people. For example it is very unlikely I will be a TA again.We are very, very lucky, don't you agree? With that said we must take responsibility for every action.You have tremendous potential and only you know what that is and where to place your focus. I wish you every success.

But don't whine to me, because you are so much better off than most people it isn't even funny.

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