Sometimes tough economic times make for opportunities. I hope it works well for you, Rich.

I finished my first Bachelor’s degree in 2002, which turned out to be a very bad time to graduate. I had a year of unemployment, then went back to school to retrain in something I thought would be more likely to get me work. I was wrong; the present Great Recession sent me back for a Masters degree just so I could avoid being totally underemployed for the last two years.

I’m 32, and like a generation of people around my age I have gone underemployed (and, in many cases, over-educated) for most of our adult lives. This isn’t changing, but there is a silver lining: The economy has now gotten bad enough that it equally risky to search for regular full-time work as it is to pursue one’s own dreams. I know which one I’d rather be doing.

Anyway, great post. One of the things I feel strongly is that, you know, a college education isn’t necessary a trade school. I know you might get a degree in engineering, and that’s the job you’re looking for, but hopefully your education was still broad enough that you can do other things.

My degree was in microbiology and public health. Now, 20+ years after getting the degree, I’m a full-time freelance writer. Yes, much of what I write about relates to medicine, but not exclusively. And I write fiction. The fact is, I’ve tried to treat my college education less as training me for a trade, but for training me to educate myself. So I educated myself how to be a professional writer. And within that I’ve educated myself on how to write market research reports and how to educate technical articles and how to write novels, etc.

People, especially college-educated people, would be far better off if they kept their minds opened and continued to learn.

Quite a number of years ago my cousin married a gentleman from Beirut, Lebanon. When we met the extended family, we were introduced to his uncle, who at one time was the mayor of Beirut apparently. Now, in the US, he ran a bakery, a very successful bakery of pitas and other Middle Eastern breads, and he was distributing all over the midwest. My brother asked him if he’d ever worked in a baker before he started the business. He said, “No.” His background was, I believe, in political science. So how did he learn to bake and run a bakery? And this I can quote verbatim because it’s stuck with me over the last 25+ years. “Books. You can find everything in books.”

Twenty years ago, I ran into the small version of what recent grads are experiencing now: I had followed all the rules and graduated with a degree in communication (technical writing) from a reasonably good college. According to all the “rules” I grew up with, I should have been able to land a job as a technical writer for a computer company with no problem.

But I graduated in May 1988, after the October 1987 tech crash. I found out that path was hopeless when one potential employer took pity on me and explained that the guy he interviewed just before me had ten years experience and wanted the same entry level tech writing job. But I didn’t know what else to do. I took temp jobs while I still tried to find work as a tech writer. After a year, though, with another year’s worth of tech writing grads hitting a job market that was just barely starting to recover, and student loans coming due, I had to accept it was over. I took a small job in an insurance company, worked there for 15 years and moved to another company when the first one folded.

Now, I’m in my forties, dreams postponed for so long I don’t really remember what it was I wanted. I’m the guy who worked, and paid all his debts and bills, and twenty years later is financially stable (since I was a “victim” of an earlier stock crash, I never invested much in the market). But in my case, the dream postponed is the dream forgotten.

Here’s hoping that those who still remember their dreams will read this, then take their chances and follow their dreams while they can.

That prospect has haunted me for a very long time, but I’ve looked at my current expenses/debts/obligations and concluded that I could never go “full-time” until I retire. The math just didn’t add up any other way. But you may have given me a different way to look at the dilemma, in math terms the equivalent of non-Euclidean geometry.

For now, I’ve got to work on my skill level. Until it improves, nothing else matters. But while I work on that, this post may have pointed out a different path to my desired destination.

You’re welcome, Laura and Ryan. 🙂

I found this especially powerful.

Especially today, my first Thanksgiving without my sons (they were a reason i postponed) and seeing I have so much opportunity to pursue this dream, and while 51 isn’t old, it’s not young either, and the dream won’t wait forver.

Thanks for reminding me I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

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