I have always been the type of person, even early in life who thought learning as many skills as possible was always going to be a good thing.
I’m not saying that someone should not have a specialty. What I am saying is that while everyone should have a specialty, they should also be competent in enough things that they might be useful in another area should the opportunity arise.
I’ve had this happen in several jobs in my life. I worked for years as a television antenna installer, back in the day when we were worth our weight in gold.
Now, decades later those skills might not exactly be in high demand. This is why I made a good career for myself until recently building small custom tables and desks for folks.
It never made me rich, but it was always enough. The point is, that you need to know how to do as many things while still being an expert at one.
I know that the kids going into college or ones that have graduated college in the past five to six years have been going against the advice I just gave all of you folks. They have made it their life’s mission to be good at one thing and one thing only.
Well, what happens if that industry suddenly dries up and no longer makes sense to employ anyone? What if you get let go from a job for whatever reason and can’t get another job because you don’t have a minimum functional literacy in any other field?
That thing happened with a friend of the family’s son recently. Poor fool went to four years of college to get a marketing degree. Got a pretty good job, paid good money, and then one day he was let go. He hasn’t had a job worth having in over a year now because he only concentrated on one skill set.
That’s why so many college graduates lately have found themselves working in jobs where they are on the low end of the retail totem pole or flipping burgers.
Nothing against either one of those two things, both honorable pursuits, but if you spent that much money and you had to go BACK to that; you didn’t spend your money wisely.
A study by Burning Glass Institute recently came out and it revealed that just over half of recent college graduates are what they called “underemployed” over a year after graduating.
It’s pretty maddening that we have reached the point in America where folks would rather live the dream for a year or two than make money for their entire working life.
There’s nothing wrong with telling your children they are special, but never telling them the truth about how the world works leads to things like this.
