Debt is not the only pathway to success for school leavers pondering the future. Avoiding it is the key, writes self-taught media hunk, Mick Cartonne.
Just as quickly as you ran out of the school gates for the last time, you want to get back into the routine of structured learning. But this time Mum and Dad aren’t paying your next set of tertiary-school fees. You are.
Welcome to the adult world.
University. It’s a place where if you don’t feel like turning up to class on a Monday morning, nobody gives a shit. On the flip side if one day of recreational leave turns into a six month bad habit and you start falling behind in exams, assignments and study tutorials, you’ll still get an education.
It’s called learning the hard way about the pitfalls of poor self-management.
According to a 2009 report from the Australian Council for Educational Research, teaching staff expect one in ten students want to drop out.
Which leads me to ask how many teachers also want to drop out and spend more time with their peers at a nude beach? Sorry, no figures available for that yet.
If you do happen to become a graduate from the school of hard knocks by taking out honours in dropping out, the ghost of HECS will haunt you.
And if you don’t drop out of school and manage to complete your Law degree after starting out with an Arts degree and then a year of Business Studies, you'll definately be spending the rest of your life trying to win powerball lotto to pay back Julia Rulia if you don’t land a prestigious high-paying job.
The yellow brick road has two routes and both seem to offer dead ends.
If you don’t go to uni, you don’t get a look in at the best paying jobs. And if you do take up an offer to study for a degree in law, commerce, medicine or communications, you definitely end up in debt.
Getting a good job (and keeping it) to pay off that debt, buy a trophy home and become a leader in your field is not guaranteed.
So perhaps it’s time to take another approach.
Forget climbing the educational ladder of opportunity if you want to become an overnight success story that people are talking about.
Throw away those text-books you took out a loan to pay for and go out and conquer life's opportunities without your liabilities overtaking your assets (if you have any after you turn 18).
The only thing you need to know is rule number 1 in Ben Stein's hit title, 'How to ruin your life'.
'Don't learn any useful skills.'
Why not?
Stein points this out very clearly when he sardonically writes:
'What kind of education did Rhett Butler have, after all? What kind did Elvis Presley have? I didn't see Madonna in grad school or P.Diddy (or whatever name he's going by these days) either.
Yet look at how far they went. You'll do at least as well with good luck and fortune that just happen to drop into your lap."
With that philosophy in mind, it may be time to call upon a contemporary approach to getting ahead in this world faster than you imagined.
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| The cast of Jackass in action. |
Call up any of your friends who own a video camera, run down to the end of your street, find a couple of abandoned shopping trolleys, use an ice cream container as a helmet and then drag race down an extremely high slope, over the edge of a ramp you designed in woodwork class and right into a brick wall.
Design, perform and film another 20 similar stunts and then send your cinematic masterpiece to Hollywood. Like the cast of Jackass, you too will be able to gross over $64 million dollars in North America from 1 film alone.
By discovering your inner stupidity, globalizing and selling it on-screen to dysfunctional families and teenagers, then, and only then, may an education in this country be free.
