I Don’t Want What You Have
…and that’s totally okay.
Everyone views their life through their own filters of experience. These experiences shape our reality. It is fair to say that everyone has their own individual reality based on their filters and life experiences aside from what would be considered an agreed-upon reality of the way things actually are.
Generationally, the Baby Boomers had a different set of filters. This caused them to have an entirely different set of rules for how their adult lives unfolded as opposed to the generations that came after, specifically Gen-Xers and Millennials.
I am friends with many Boomers and they still feel as if full-time jobs are just waiting out there for the taking. That I should be able to step out my front door and just trip over any number of opportunities like they remember. Many of them can’t quite seem to grasp why neither myself or my husband, despite not having Bachelor’s degrees, can’t find good paying work with all the benefits they received and are now using, such as pensions and retirement accounts.
They hear news reports about a good economy and unemployment being low and they wonder why folks of later generations can’t find full-time work. This is partly because when Boomers were entering the workforce a college education wasn’t mandatory. You could get a good full-time job with perks and not have a college degree.
That is not the case anymore.
Nowadays a college degree of any kind is essential for getting your foot in the door of an entry-level job. The news reports that the economy is doing well and that unemployment is low; they’re not considering just full-time jobs with benefits. Most jobs that are available are part-time jobs or three quarter time jobs: just enough hours under full time so that it feels like you’re working full-time but you don’t get any benefits of being a full-time employee. 37.5 hours a week.
Times have changed where companies no longer are looking at the best interests of their employees but instead the best sources of their shareholders. Because of this, the employees are the ones that are considered expendable and nothing but a line of overhead on the budget sheet. Companies rarely care about their most valuable resource: their people, as they can just burn them out and hire another one who is eager to have some sort of money coming in.
My parents were Boomers. Neither one of them really thought about college, except my mother did spend a year at the Cleveland Conservatory of Music, but my dad left the military and went right on to being a police officer. As a child growing up in the 80s, my dad being a cop made us a blue collar family but we lived well. We took the occasional vacation, we did stuff, my mom was a stay-at-home-mom and we survived in the suburbs on one police officer’s income.
When they divorced, my mom got a job selling ad space at a newspaper. She had no degree and still doesn’t. She worked at the newspaper for awhile and then pursued another sales job working for a technology firm selling pagers. Remember those? She did well for herself and she did it without a college education. She was a fast learner, extremely personable and immensely clever. She rose up through the ranks and eventually retired from that large company as one of their best salespeople. She HAD NO DEGREE.
By the time I was a teen and my parents were still working decent jobs with no college educations, they didn’t really push my brother and I to get one. My dad made some snide comments about it being wasted money and my mother just didn’t talk to me about it.
High school was flying by, teachers and counselors were pushing me into college prep level coursework, which I could do, but felt it was unnecessary because college wasn’t on my radar. I felt that if my mom could do what she did, then I could, too. There were some fundamental differences between her and I that became apparent later which caused me to not have the same success that she had.
I did decide late in high school to go to a fine arts college to pursue photography, which was my thing at the time. I borrowed a ridiculous amount of money to attend The Ohio Institute of Photography in Dayton, Ohio. I really liked it and I did well. I ran out of money, though, as a private fine arts education at that time, 1989–1991, was stupid expensive. I didn’t finish. I did work in photography for awhile and again, really liked it. As stated previously, there are some things about me that kept me from having success as defined by my mother, who was my primary parent at that time.
Decades have gone by and I have tried several times to get a “good job at a big company” but have found that the “Corporate” way of life is just not for me. It doesn’t mesh well with my personality. I ask questions I guess I’m not supposed to ask, I question those in authority to understand their motivations but I guess I’m not supposed to do that either. This explains why my father gently guided me away from enlisting in the military like he did. He knew my personality would not be a good fit for that way of life.
At 48, I still don’t have a college education.
Well, wait, let me rephrase that.
I feel as if I have a college level education. I’m insanely curious about any number of things at any given time. When that sparks ignites, I’m off to the races. I devour information. I read. I ask questions. I seek out what it is I want to know. When I am satisfied with that, I move on to the next thing. I can speak intelligently on any number of topics ranging from statistical analysis to astrobiology, quantum physics to the history of Europe. When I’m piqued, I go with it.
What I don’t have is a piece of paper from an accredited university that states I successfully completed their curriculum that they’ve determined makes me an educated person. Because of this one thing, I am often unable to even get an interview for any entry-level job that earns $11 an hour.
“So, go get that degree. Problem solved. Take away that obstacle.”
This advice was given to me by someone I respect and I have tried, many times, to complete a curriculum in anything just to get the piece of paper that says I did it. That I jumped through hoops and learned what someone wanted me to learn. I would say that I am about 1.5 years away from completing a Bachelor’s degree in Film Studies.
Thing is, I just can’t.
I cannot justify the cost. I cannot justify the stress. I cannot justify the time. For what? For that one thing to be the thing that makes some person take me seriously. Screw that.
Then I think: “Well, my kids will see that I did it and then they will have no excuse not to do it, too.”
I talk to my kids about going to college, if that’s what they want to do. Right now, my ten year old is considering the idea but he’s ten, for cryin’ out loud. He can barely decide what he wants for breakfast let alone what he wants to major in at University. My four year old still wants to be a princess ballerina horse doctor. I don’t know what the future holds for them in regards to a college education. And no, I’m not saving for it. Not yet.
I was telling myself that I was going to school for my kids. To give them a better life. To make things better for them. Then I thought, “Is my being stressed out about finding time to study and do my work doing anything for my kids?”
My husband has two jobs. One is a part time job that sustains him through the winter months and from March to early October, he is working insane hours as a native plant landscaper who does consultations and installations, et cetera. During those months, it is all 1950s up in our house. I do everything. Cook. Clean. Laundry. Child care. Animal care and I tend to the native plant nursery we are building. You get the idea. He does help around here. He’s mildly obsessed with laundry workflow and he cleans the bathroom every Sunday morning but most of it is on me, most of the time. (Come winter, it is very equitable around here and that’s when I work more.)
I didn’t feel that I was able to do all of the things that give my kids a good childhood AND be a full time student. I didn’t like the amount of money I was spending for something I didn’t really want.
Sadly, gone are the days where your work history and personal references were enough to get the interview and through the conversation you had with your interviewer, you were able to make a good enough impression to either move on to the next interview or get the job.
If you want to work for “Corporate”, you can’t even get past “the stack” if that box isn’t checkmarked for a college degree. If that isn’t there, you don’t get invited in.
As for me, the deck is stacked against me for any Corporate job. I’m middle aged with two young kids. I have a deep work history and yet no degree. I have skills and experience but no degree. Ageism. Momism. Degreeism. All kinds of -isms in place where I am concerned that make me less than desirable as a candidate.
Here’s the thing: I’m totally okay with this.
This is where my mother would pearl-clutch and gasp.
I am okay with it. I’m not built for Corporate the way she was. I’m okay not having a college degree to hang on the wall. I’m okay with having to beat my own path down with a machete while I parent my two kids. I’m okay with this “difficult” life I have.
I don’t want what everyone else wants and that’s okay. You can have your corporate job and your college degree. I don’t want it. I know who I am and what I am capable of. I don’t need a university to tell when I am ready.
I want to sit at my kitchen table, writing, among other things, while my daughter watches a movie in her underwear and my son tries to pop wheelies on his bike.
I want to build my life on my terms in conjunction with my husband. I want to parent my children full time. I want to continue learning what I want to learn, when I want to learn it and at the pace that is right for me.
This is what I want and if that means that I don’t have what others have, including a piece of paper with an embossed seal from a university, that’s fine, too.
