I Am a Believer In Education

I do believe in the value of education, but I also recognize that it's not the only path to success in life.

My parents don't have a high level of formal education. They're farmers, and they're doing well for themselves without needing to seek higher education. To be sure, they had to work very hard and they did catch a few lucky breaks in their life, but that's true of a lot of people.

Similarly, my brother is a plumber. He received some education from a trade school, but far from the amount of time and money that a typical undergraduate college student spends earning their degree. He also worked hard, received a lot of on-the-job training from the company he works for, and stayed curious/inquisitive even after he had enough experience to start working on his own jobs.

And I say all of this as someone who's currently on course to receive a bachelor's degree. I think it'll be great for me to have a degree. I think I'll earn more than I would have otherwise and that having the degree will help catapult me into the middle class. But that's just my own life path. Maybe not everyone needs to follow that path, even though it feels increasingly expected of young people. People can diverge from that path and still have happy, successful lives :)