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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wow this resonates for me! It feels like shit that people without guidance or role models [b]can often end up making all of the wrong decisions out of pure class ignorance.[/b] It sucks because everyone thinks there is something wrong with you.[/quote]

I don't get it. If you were really working class/middle class, why did you major in English? Pretty much all the non-wealthy students at my Ivy majored in STEM or went to law school or finance. [/quote]

DP: Because the message that many of us got was simply: “Go to college, get a steady job with benefits.” And no one, anywhere, including at our colleges told us anything that went beyond that.  I also think you might be wrong about what “pretty much all the non-wealthy students did”. —and/ or the students you went to school with had access to a lot more information than the students that I went to school with, possibly a decade or more before you.

Let me keep repeating this until you get it:  You don’t know what you don’t know.

And if no one goes out of their way to show you, teach, you, and expose you to what you don’t know — you still don’t know.  
Nice that all the “non-wealthy “ students that you knew went to law school. That takes time and money and support that many of the “non-wealthy “ students that I went to school with simply did not have.

[/quote]

My counselors all said “follow your passion” and “do what you love and the money will follow”

Major really doesn’t matter anyway. I know a Russian Lit major whose first job was at Goldman. I know many English majors in corporate roles at Disney and Microsoft.  The most important things are really internships and those first jobs — it needs to be the right pedigree/path.  And most jobs/internships are obtained through networking, so a random MC student won’t have any connections — I literally did not know any professionals except for my pediatrician and dentist and teachers. How would my factory working parents know even an accountant (does H&R Block seasonal worker count)?[/quote]

Your parents would not know any more than my small town lawyer dad knew anyone in big law or how to get there.  I like what a pp said: you don’t know what you don’t know.  As hard as it is, it is the students job to learn as much as they can.  All internships are not based on who you know.  You need to collect mentors.  No one tells you this.   Someone should.  But you have to try to do the best you can.  In my case I was clueless.  But I heard a friend apply for something.  When I heard it I just knew that was for me.  I had better grades,ect so I got it and the rest flows from that.  I would not have figured it out on my own.  [/quote]

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