Around his sixteenth birthday, every North American man begins to be hounded by the admissions/outreach departments of all the local universities. The con-artists who work therein are master liars, whose job it is to fill your cute little head up with big ideas about the future.
Competing with these liars are their internet counterparts. Big names in the so-called manosphere, who think they know something about the world, will encourage you to abandon your quest for self-sufficiency. Subsequently, they’ll encourage you to drop out of society and get on welfare. If you like the lifestyle of the author of these stupid books (hint: he doesn’t live well) then you’ll want to stop here.
Ya boy Boxer has been on both sides of this process. I have been all the way through graduate school as a student. I have also been employed in both faculty and administration jobs. While the best thing for you is based upon some specifics I can’t know, I am qualified to give you some general advice that nobody in the sphere has yet divulged. If you’re curious about how best to navigate the academic process, read on.
The first thing a high-school boy needs is an honest appraisal of his abilities. Do you have a specific, definable talent? Make an appointment, today, to speak to your guidance counselor, and have him review the results of those standardized tests with you. They aren’t nearly as worthless as the internet poseurs tell it.
Part of the challenge is being honest with yourself. Even as the admissions people lie to you, in order to part you from your money, you’ll be tempted to lie to yourself. Caught up in this echo chamber, you’ll be tempted to brush off your own mediocrity. A healthy masculine attitude is embracing one’s own faults, and this is the first step toward overcoming them.
It may be that you scored in the 98th percentile on the language part of the test, or on the math part. It may also be that you scored in the 50th percentile on everything. It may also be that you scored in the 30th percentile in everything. Whatever your results, your destination will be the same place.
The biggest mistake I made, in my own youth, was matriculating at a big private university. This wasn’t catastrophic, because I had funding to go to this big university, but it was still a dumb thing to do. If I’m honest, I’ll cop to the fact that I was motivated by a need to get away from my dysfunctional mother and hyper-religious stepfather, as quickly as possible.
Wherever you live, there is either a community college, or a satellite mini-campus for a public university. In almost every case, this needs to be your immediate destination after high school. Why, Boxer? It’s because of a number of different reasons…
- A High School diploma is worthless.
- The junior college is cheaper than the big university.
- The junior college offers a much wider variety of options than the big university.
- The junior college is more convenient than the big university.
Even if you’re made of money, you should still matriculate at the community college. A junior college degree (called an “associates”) or certificate is the minimum accomplishment of a self-sufficient man.
Suppose a young brother reviews his standardized test scores, and finds them all to be sub-par. He should go to community college anyway, because they have programs in things like drafting, nursing, firefighting, and auto repair. You don’t have to score well on a standardized test to get such a job, and these jobs will help him become self-sufficient.
True story: An old friend, in my cohort at graduate school, got all her documents changed, to reflect her degree. For some reason, I was with her when she needed new windshield wiper blades for her beat up old Volkswagen. We went down to an auto parts retailer, and she whipped out her checkbook to pay, with her fancy checks that read…
Doctor Jenny Michelle McDougal Ph.D.
“What’s your Ph.D. in?” The greasemonkey behind the counter asked her, with a smirk.
“Pure Mathematics!” She shouted, all proud of herself and shit.
“I’ll come and install them for you,” he laughed.
Now, I don’t know what sort of car that guy drove, but I bet there’s a real theorem someplace that suggests he drove a much nicer car than she did, and a nicer car than I did. I’m absolutely positive that he made more money than we did. He probably also has a longer and thicker penis than I have, and I’m sure he’s fucking a much hotter woman than “Doctor Jenny.” I don’t know what his standardized test scores look like, but I suspect that guy went to community college. If you’re smart enough to read standard English, you can do the same thing.
If you’re interested in getting the most bang for your buck at junior college, read part two here.
I knew what I wanted to be early and from what I can tell God gave me the gifts and talents to be in the career I wanted. I had a good grasp of math and science which is almost 100% of the career.
As a guy who took the JUCO-big uni route in the early 2000s…I’d agree with this advice. Actually it was my father who suggested it and for many of the same reasons.
If they force you to learn about ‘social science and humanities’ which have nothing to do with what you are going into to get the paper…take them at a place that charges 1/5 of what the uni does. My associate degree also guarenteed all that education I spent for didn’t get struck down by the uni when I transferred and I’d have to retake them at severely increased pay.
Not only that a smaller school was a lot more tight knitted than the big boys. I would see a lot of the students almost everyday.
I still got out of the university mill with debt…but between working my ass off during the time I was in school I had over half my education payed when I graduated. I’d estimate I came out about 1/5 the debt most students had when they were done. When some wimminz told me their debt they were shocked to learn I had mine payed off.
And not only that…at that JUCO I saw a lot of guys who got into auto-farm machinery repair, linemen, and other trades. They weren’t the smartest shards of glass in the broken window…but they learned valuable skills to pay the bills.
So the guy who knows how to fix an AC unit, the power lines, the car breaking down, digging ditches, carpentry, a plugged up sewage line means more than some paper on the wall.