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Along the same lines, there's the ridiculous cultural meme that is recited to kids: "Follow your dreams" implying that it's a perfectly reasonable and even admi
by galdosdi 10y ago
Along the same lines, there's the ridiculous cultural meme that is recited to kids: "Follow your dreams" implying that it's a perfectly reasonable and even admirable idea to fixate on some particular career early on in life and pursue it despite any setbacks.
This is awful, because a young kid may only have heard of a handful of well-known "classic" careers like journalist, lawyer, athlete, nurse, and then they end up fixating on achieving one of those simply because they committed too early -- before they had a chance to hear about careers less likely to be in a Richard Scary book like forestry, mechanical work, system administration, helicopter piloting, whatever, even though one of those might be just as exciting or more.
As a result the "popular" careers that everyone's heard of by the age of ten are all oversubscribed, and all other careers are undersubscribed. Because "follow your dreams"
- SilasX 10y agoAlso, any academic post-graduate role is oversubscribed because too many people go to college, and in college, hear a disproportionate amount from people who did well through the post-graduate route. (Though that's changing as the actual instructors are increasingly made of famished adjuncts and TAs.)