Survivorship bias
An Irrefutable Data-Based Argument for Going to College
I'm putting this up largely to remind myself that in life, there are no guarantees. Even with skill and hard work and talent and luck and dirty tricks, you might still come up short. We need to take a hard look at the data - those who succeeded as well as those who didn't. What are the relative proportions between the two types?
It seems cold, but you only get one life. If you need to sacrifice for something, it would be good if you could guarantee something for yourself and your loved ones. Yes, the loved ones as well - because whether they are agreeable to it or not, they do get roped into our shenanigans. We owe it to them to make our shots count.
I wish I could say this to my college-age self; I was a bad student then, hung up on pipe dreams and distracted from the business of actually earning a degree. I struggled to finish my major, and up to today that still rankles. The humiliation is not only on myself, it's on all those who scraped to give me that education that majority of the world's population could only dream of. It's also on the institutions I learned under, who had great expectations for me.
But I learned my lesson and did otherwise when I went to technical college to learn programming. This is my personal family-unfriendly aesop: your study determines your work. You work is your life. Friends are fine up until you need help paying the rent. Work hard, don't be distracted, choose your battles. Politics and fitting in don't really get you paid. Do the job in front of you, and achieve things. Save up for when you truly need it, for when your loved ones truly need it.
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