Adults are feeding high schoolers a lie: “Pick a major, get a degree, land a ‘safe’ job.” Here is the reality: The system is rigged, the rules keep changing, and nobody actually knows what the hell they’re talking about.
We’ve turned 18-year-olds into gamblers, betting six figures on a degree that might not even matter. The unspoken rule? Choose wrong, and you’re screwed. But here is the kicker: only 27% of college graduates work in a job directly related to their major. That history degree? Now a marketing manager. That biology major? Works in HR. The system isn’t designed to prepare you: it is designed to extract tuition and shuffle you into the workforce.
And if you think STEM is the “safe” path, think again. Stanford computer science grads are struggling to find entry-level coding jobs because companies would rather hire two seniors and an AI than ten juniors. The “safe” major of yesterday is today’s obsolete punchline.
I majored in psychology because I loved understanding the human mind and behavior. The “standard” path for a psych major is counseling, but I realized early on that sitting in a room listening to people’s problems all day would make me want to shoot myself. It was emotional labor that drained me instantly. Instead, I angled my studies toward experimental psychology. I wasn’t interested in therapy: I wanted the science. I spent my time running experiments on memory and language learning. I should have seen the clues back then:
- I could program experiments for hours.
- I loved the granular process of data analysis.
- Examining findings felt like solving a puzzle.
It is no wonder I ended up as a business intelligence analyst. I didn’t get there because I followed the “Psychology” script: I got there because I followed the tasks that made time disappear.
In our corner of Tennessee, the pressure isn’t always about Ivy League prestige. Living in Clarksville, right next to Fort Campbell, the school system tends to push students toward the military. It is a path many take, but my son’s internal compass pointed elsewhere: toward the machines. He has always loved taking things apart to understand how they work. By all traditional logic, that should have pushed him toward a degree in mechanical engineering. On paper, that is the “respectable” version of his passion.
But he looked at the finances. He saw the looming shadow of impossible debt that comes with a four-year engineering degree and realized the ROI didn’t add up. He chose trade school to become a mechanic instead. Why? Because:
- He will graduate with skills, not a mortgage-sized debt.
- He is following the same mechanical curiosity for a fraction of the entry price.
- He will enter a field where his hands-on expertise is the ultimate job security.
Passion is a luxury, but debt is a prison. He didn’t just choose a career: he chose a different kind of freedom.
We are living through what I call The Great Inversion. For decades, we assumed robots would take the “low-skill” manual jobs first, while the “high-skill” cognitive jobs remained safe. We were wrong. It turns out that teaching a computer to pass the Bar Exam or debug code is relatively easy, but teaching a robot to fix a leaky toilet or install drywall is incredibly difficult. This is why knowledge work is getting automated first. The economic incentive is just too high to ignore. Replacing a $200,000 software engineer or a legal assistant with AI yields immediate, massive profits.
Meanwhile, replacing a $70,000 mechanic requires expensive hardware, sensors, and maintenance that simply don’t make financial sense yet. The same goes for the electricians, plumbers, and HVAC technicians, all jobs I was taught to look down on. They are the ones with the real leverage now because their work is anchored in a physical world that is messy, unstructured, and stubbornly difficult to automate.
If you’re looking for a way forward, remember this: your degree is a receipt, not a destiny. It proves you can learn, but it doesn’t define what you can do. Focus on building a portfolio of work, not just a collection of credits. The real safety net is your skill set. In a world where AI can replicate logic and data, the “Human Premium” matters more than ever. Focus on the messy, physical, or highly collaborative skills that machines struggle to copy.
Follow the energy, not the hype. Pay attention to the tasks that make time disappear for you. Those are your real career clues. If you love the puzzle of accounting, go for it: but go because you love the work, not because it sounds “safe.” Use college as a tool, not a default setting. Trade school was the right move for my son, but college is still an incredible resource for those who need specific, high-level training. Just make sure the debt you take on is a calculated investment, not a blind gamble.
Adults mean well, but they’re selling you a fantasy from a bygone era. The real world rewards self-awareness and resilience, not blind obedience. The system might be broken, but your potential is not. Focus on the skills that make you uniquely human, and build a future that machines simply cannot replicate.