College education is a cruel joke like bait on a string.
I am a baby boomer. BA in biology. Never got a job with it. Parents made me major in science, believing that would get me a job.
Went to law school at night for 5 years and worked full time at the courthouse. Never got a job with a J.D.
Vocational school degree provided me with a well paying but extremely stressful job at the courthouse.
Spent years in crisis/panic mode over college, bad grades, flunking courses, verbally abusive relationships with hostile men, finding a job, losing a job, verbal abuse from lawyers and judges, inherent stress in my job, financial problems, etc.
I felt like a failure, becuse I didn't make good grades oftentimes. I was in the wrong major due to parental pressure. I thought the world was going to come to an end if I flunked a course or l lost a job. Had several diff stress-caused illnesses starting in junior high school.
I was extremely disciplined and motivated in college to go to class and do my work. My parents were very supportive. We were in the middle class because my dad went to night school on the GI Bill after the war and became an attorney.
I never had to take out loans (in the 70s) and my parents paid my way and I worked in the summers during college. I paid for the J.D. by working full time to an expensive, free-standing law school. The BA was also from an expensive private school, considered the best pre-med school in the state.
I'm a perfectionist. I had a long series of different stress-caused illnesses,starting in junior high school and continuing until after I was burned out at my job before I was 35.
I had a couple of chronic medical problems where I did not have as much energy as your testosterone fueled coffee drinking yuppie would have, and was called "lazy" and "slow". This was with an IQ of 145 (3 SDs >average, defined as 1 out of 1,000 people).
I don't know the right people to get a job and I would be considered as coming from a middle-class family as it was defined in the 50s and 60s. I also feel that my career as a cog in the judicial system was utterly meaningless.
Spent 12 years in college that I consider to be wasted as far as being appreciated and getting a job I was truly qualified for, let alone making substantial money and having a real career. Didn't have mentors. Too much dog-eat-dog competition. Only people trying to STOP me, lie about me, fire me for stupid reasons, not hire me for stupid reasons, not pay me, tell me I'm incompetent when I'm overqualified, etc.
Crashed physically from stress & exhaustion in 88 with near-fatal pneumonia. Sick on and off constantly for 7 or 7 years
The baby boomers are the best-educated generation in history and we got shoved out the door 15-20 years ago.
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