A likely sequel to the 2009 career book "You Majored in What?" could be "You Spent 3 Years Studying to Be What?'
The first is by Katharine Brooks and it hammers Gens X, Y, and Millennial with the reality that earning a buck no longer comes from linear strategies. We over-educated know them well: The right schools, the right grades, the right recommendations, the right first few jobs or clients. Instead, the game has morphed almost overnight to what Brooks calls the "chaos" approach. Essentially, that's a shrewd and opportunistic assessment of what we know about our marketability and what's marketable, what we don't know, and what we can and should learn.
Daily and on weekends there is discouraging news, present and longer term, for those who spent 3 years studying to be lawyers. From talking with them, both as a ghostwriter and coach, I don't see signs of any lessening of magical thinking. Everyone still believes he or she is the special talent or the best connected or the hardest worker who will beat the odds for getting a job, keeping a job, and even becoming partner.
Example: One seasoned attorney attempted to foist on me the assignment to ghostwrite a book on X niche subject. As a preliminary he emailed several hundred pages of a rough draft. I actually asked this attorney: Are you bipolar. Nothing made sense. Not the draft. Not his Hail Mary Pass to produce a book he could sell retail for $70. Not his unwillingness to learn what publishing and promoting a marketable book are all about. If he doesn't embrace chaos theory, he probably has 18 months at max in the current job. It's a new one for him. He didn't tell me why he and his former employer parted company.
"You Spent 3 Years Studying to Be What?" could tell it straight that education, beyond a certain point, not only has diminishing returns but can be counterproductive. Solution: Wake up, smell the desperation, consider what's next, go after it, fail fast and fail often. Meanwhile pick up a day or survival job. I had a couple of those before something new took Download Geezerguts.
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