Aaron Clarey - Worthless: The Young Person’s Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major

By

Aaron Clarey

Copyright 2011 Aaron Clarey

Published by Paric Publishing

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

ISBN: 1467978302

ISBN-13: 978-1467978309

To Varmint

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Lucky You

Chapter 2 Basic Economics

Chapter 3 What to Study

Chapter 4 What NOT to Study

Chapter 5 Grad School Blues and Litmus Tests

Chapter 6 Why Didnt Anybody Tell Me?

Chapter 7 Debunking Myths

Chapter 8 The Moral Importance of Choosing the Right Major

Chapter 9 Parting Advice

CHAPTER 1

LUCKY YOU

I Dont Care About Your Feelings, I Care About You.

You are lucky. And the reason you are lucky is because somebody cares enough about you and your future to have given you this book. Oh, sure, at first it may not seem like a huge or caring gesture.

A book, yippee!!! Just what I always wanted!

But what you dont realize is the courage it took for that person to buy you this book.

This book isnt a touchy feel good book. It isnt a book about finding yourself. Its not a romance book where vampires protect their human female love interest from Ebola-infected wolfmen. And its not one of those lame self-help books like Find Your Inner You or Yea for Us, We're All Winners. Its a cold, harsh, blunt book that delivers the strongest belt of reality youll ever have. A much-needed belt of reality. A belt of reality so harsh and blunt that it may even offend you and make you upset at the person who bought you this book. However, thats precisely why you must appreciate that person.

Understand it takes nothing to say nice things to nice people. The average person could go all day paying compliments and platitudes, giving everybody warm fuzzies in their stomachs. Theres no risk and theres no (immediate) drawback. But what takes real guts and real tough, fatherly love is to tell somebody the truth. No matter how much they dont want to hear it. No matter how much it may hurt their feelings. And no matter how much it may risk their friendship or relationship, telling the truth is the ultimate sign of somebody who genuinely cares about you because, frankly

the truth is not optional.

Understand, no matter how much you may not like the truth, the truth is the truth. Its reality. It cannot be avoided.

Oh, sure you can lie to yourself and tell yourself what you want to hear. And oh, sure, you can rationalize reality away with warped and unrealistic thinking. And oh, sure, theres no limit to the number of people who will gladly tell you what you want to hear because theyll profit from it at your expense.

You can live in La-La Land for quite some time.

But ultimately, in the end, reality wins. And if youve lived your life ignoring reality because you simply didnt like it or because your environment was programmed to tell you what you wanted to hear, you will suffer great and unimaginable consequences. Conversely, if you lived in reality and made your decisions based in the real world, you will reap great and unimaginable benefits. And that is the aim of this book:

To make sure you make one of the most important decisions in your life based in reality and not your feelings.

One Hell of a Decision

You are about to make a decision that will affect your future more significantly than any other decision you have made thus far. It will determine how much money you make, what kind of standard of living you will enjoy, how healthy you will be, how healthy your children will be, and what you will do with the majority of your adult time.

You will inevitably work eight hours a day for 30-40 years. This will be, hands down, the single biggest plurality of your conscious time on this planet. It will not be spent with your loving husband or wife. It will not be spent with your future children or dogs. It will not be spent drinking margaritas on a beach or playing video games. It will be spent working for somebody else. How enjoyable and rewarding all of this will be boils down to one simple decision what are you going to major in?

Naturally, such a decision should not be made lightly, nor should it be made in haste. You should spend a lot of time thinking about it, studying and researching various majors, and doing whatever you can to come to a wise decision. But for all the importance associated with this decision, and the huge effect it will have on your life, the truth is most young people receive little to no help or guidance in making this decision from their elders. It is the epitome of irony that you have this monstrously huge and important decision to make, and yet nobody, be it your parents, your guidance counselors, or your teachers, can provide you with any real, concrete help and insight as to what you should choose as your future profession. This relegates most young people to make this daunting decision on their own who do not have the experience, background, or wisdom to choose a major wisely.

Making matters worse, there are adults out there who have no problem taking advantage of young people like you and your situation. They'll tell you what you want to hear, cajole or convince you to attend a certain school, or pursue a certain study simply because they will profit from it. There are entire industries based on convincing you to spend your education dollars on them, while effectively offering nothing in return. And perhaps most despicably, there are politicians, special interest groups, unions and lobbyists who have no moral qualms about using you and other fellow innocent youths as pawns to advance their political aims and agendas.

Thus, the reason for this book.

Worthless will help you navigate this minefield and choose the major that is right for you. It will explain to you how the labor market works, why some professions make more than others, review starting salaries and explore different options when it comes to undergrad and grad school.

It will also show you how different people in society prey upon youth, such as yourself, and take advantage of you for their own personal gain so that you can identify these threats and avoid them. But ultimately, however, this book is nothing more than the wisdom of your elders who have gone down this path before, who want you to learn from our mistakes so that you might have a better, easier and happier life than we did.

CHAPTER 2

BASIC ECONOMICS

Below are excerpts from several articles during The Great Recession. There is a common thread that is blindingly obvious to any adult that has ever searched for a job, but it may not be blindingly obvious to you. Read through them and see if you can identify what all five of these people have in common.

From Oregonlive.com, June 12th, 2010;

After a yearlong search, Jackie Mroz, 22, of Oregon City, is about to get some experience, but at a cost.
She put everything she had into her studies at the University of Oregon, graduating in 2009 with degrees in international studies and sociology and a double minor in nonprofit administration and African studies. She studied abroad in Senegal, took challenging courses, earned a 3.8 grade point average and raced through college in three years.
It has gotten me pretty much nowhere, she said.
When she graduated, Mroz figured she would quickly land a job with an international nonprofit. After two months, she took on a catering job as she broadened her search. Still living with her parents in Oregon City, she sent out more than 70 carefully prepared job applications and resumes.