Today was a good day for reflection. I attended a fundraising event where a famous actor spoke about his childhood growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Like myself, he never took school seriously and cruised through with charm and a mindset of just getting by. Again, like myself, he saw no importance of a 1.7 GPA (I had a 1.996 GPA) or a high diploma at graduation, until trying to get into college. Luckily, I did very well on my SAT, which showed me that I was smart, but was not applying myself. My mother always told me, “You’ve always had your own agenda since birth.” Having been born premature, I fought for my life from the very beginning.
As a young child, I was very energetic and curious, like most kids. I wanted to grow up fast and know about everything. I grew up in a middle-class household: my mom was a bank teller, and my dad was a truck driver and entrepreneur. We were a blended family, and I was the youngest of four kids. Like most, our household was not perfect, and because of those imperfections, I gained a chip on my shoulder. Three elementary schools later, I landed myself with a psychologist at the age of 12. I was diagnosed with ADHD, and back then, nobody knew what that was or how to deal with it.
I was surrounded by negativity
Throughout school at an early age, I was told by some teachers and school administrators that I would be nothing. At the time, I never thought these messages would stick, but they did. My entire focus shifted to life outside of school. I started skipping school, and all I wanted to do was make money. I literally only attended school enough to be allowed to play for their sports teams.
As a teenager, I was always upset with my mom because she would push my brother to do his homework, go to class, focus on college, but for me, it was “stay out of trouble.” I never knew why until years later.
After my high school graduation, my mother told my brother and me, “You’ve got one shot at college. If you mess it up, I’m done.” I lasted in college for eight months. After leaving school, I landed a job on the back of a garbage truck. Many people would think I was a failure, but at 19, I was making a $42,000 salary throwing garbage.
The value in this is that I was open-minded with my job hunt. My job hunt was about money, not the job. I didn’t care what I did as long as it paid well. Some people only want to do what they want to do instead of doing what they have to do to earn a living. Being a garbage man was tough work, and I knew I wanted more out of life than that.
Having a plan
By the time you graduate high school, you need to have some sort of plan for your future. When you first step onto a college campus, you get hit with credit cards, student loans, and many more expenses. It has always seemed like a hustle to me. If you get some time, research the authors and publishers of college textbooks. College is a big business!
Society has taught us from a young age to work hard in school, go to college, get a job, start a family, buy a home, and retire; is that it? They don’t tell people from a young age about the financial cost of accomplishing these things, and that they are likely to go in debt if they are not from a well-off family. So many people get into college debt while earning a degree in fields that do not have many possibilities for a well-paying career. There is not anything wrong with these degrees. Still, mathematically, if you can’t make enough in your career to pay out your loans and maintain a decent quality of life, is it worth it? The problem is that schools and society in general often fail to explain that from the beginning.
Progress is being made
One thing I am happy about is learning that in July, my home state, North Carolina, passed a bill that will require all high schoolers to take a financial literacy course, starting with the freshman of 2020-2021. It became the twenthieth state to require such a class, and numerous high schools and colleges offer these classes without being required to do so. I have hope that the next generation will be better educated from the start about how to be financially secure.
