You are what you eat, right? Well, your choices are based on what you consume also.
Feeding your mind and thinking critically will allow you to know the broader choices available to you. Kind of important if you're going to spend the equivalent of a mortgage to reach your goal.
The Information Diet is what you feed your mind. If there are big choices in your future, get data from many sources, starting with those that go against what you think or believe. Humans will always emphasize data that confirms their already-held beliefs. You need to expand your information pool to make good choices.
This blog is not about ignoring an education. What people don't understand is that education is about being able to read a book and learn how to do something. And it is not supposed to end, especially when our culture and economy is changing as fast as it is.
This blog is about getting an education about you: what you want, where that is, and how you can get it.
If you are the typical high school student in the United States, the idea of college is drummed into you as the only choice to reach the middle class. If by "middle class" they mean exposure to new ideas, reading certain books and discussing them, getting to know people from different backgrounds, that is a large part of being middle class in America. If "middle class" means salary level to you, you don't really know what the middle class is.
The idea of college is also sold as a means to get to a certain level of material comfort and success.
Question that assumption.
Behind the sales pitch for college is the thought that college graduates cannot be replaced by computers. No longer true. Lawyers are being replaced by computers. Right now. Not some far off, fairy land of full-time leisure. People with mammoth student loan debts, those with teenagers and a mortgage are finding a living is not easy to make in the legal field.
To get past the messages that tell you to incur debt, that college is a must, that there is no choice, take a risk. Allow yourself to consume, eat, other information sources besides the ones being thrown at you.
Look around you. Talk to people about what they are doing and what it is like. Ask them how they got there.
It is a truism that you always learn more from your enemies about yourself than your friends. Your enemies will question your assumptions and force you to articulate ideas you took for granted. Do that now.
Feeding your mind and thinking critically will allow you to know the broader choices available to you. Kind of important if you're going to spend the equivalent of a mortgage to reach your goal.
The Information Diet is what you feed your mind. If there are big choices in your future, get data from many sources, starting with those that go against what you think or believe. Humans will always emphasize data that confirms their already-held beliefs. You need to expand your information pool to make good choices.
This blog is not about ignoring an education. What people don't understand is that education is about being able to read a book and learn how to do something. And it is not supposed to end, especially when our culture and economy is changing as fast as it is.
This blog is about getting an education about you: what you want, where that is, and how you can get it.
If you are the typical high school student in the United States, the idea of college is drummed into you as the only choice to reach the middle class. If by "middle class" they mean exposure to new ideas, reading certain books and discussing them, getting to know people from different backgrounds, that is a large part of being middle class in America. If "middle class" means salary level to you, you don't really know what the middle class is.
The idea of college is also sold as a means to get to a certain level of material comfort and success.
Question that assumption.
Behind the sales pitch for college is the thought that college graduates cannot be replaced by computers. No longer true. Lawyers are being replaced by computers. Right now. Not some far off, fairy land of full-time leisure. People with mammoth student loan debts, those with teenagers and a mortgage are finding a living is not easy to make in the legal field.
To get past the messages that tell you to incur debt, that college is a must, that there is no choice, take a risk. Allow yourself to consume, eat, other information sources besides the ones being thrown at you.
Look around you. Talk to people about what they are doing and what it is like. Ask them how they got there.
It is a truism that you always learn more from your enemies about yourself than your friends. Your enemies will question your assumptions and force you to articulate ideas you took for granted. Do that now.
No comments:
Post a Comment