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SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Thursday December 29 2016, @01:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-the-money-is-good dept.

It didn't dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I'd just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn't have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn't succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. "Ivy retardation," a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn't talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

It's not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society's most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:06AM (#446999)

    FFA was that for me. but I lived in a now quasi-rural area for high school.
    if you want a relatively safe way to get your ivy league knuckles dirty, volunteer a few weekends at a Habitat For Humanity build. And be just a bit humble. It can be fun, even if it's just doing schlep work.
    The real crew will be used enough talking to people like you. And chances are any real tradescrew they have, like plumbers, have probably worked for Habitat for Humanity too, so may have some people skills.
    just be willing to listen. and do. It's a work sirte after all.

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  • (Score: 1) by theronb on Thursday December 29 2016, @11:09PM

    by theronb (2596) on Thursday December 29 2016, @11:09PM (#447222)

    I'll second that on Habitat, and you might just learn something that you'll find useful and rewarding even if you don't have to make a living at it. Also, "And be just a little bit humble." Ask a few questions, show you're interested in what they think and know. You probably already know to do that with your Ivy League friends and acquaintances; it works with anybody.