A Mind (and Money) Is A Terrible Thing to Waste

After God and my health, I was raised to believe that education was extremely important and is the key to living a successful life. Being a child of poor Haitian immigrants I was raised to believe that an education would be my ticket out of poverty. So I made sure to get good grades in school. I was determined not to be poor like my parents.

I went on to get a bachelor’s in international business, an MBA in management, and I will be starting law school this fall- however I have yet to escape a life of poverty- if anything, pursuing these degrees has pushed me deeper into poverty.

Frustrated and confused, I’ve been on a mission to find jobs that pay what I deserve because given my education, volunteer and work experience, my current salary is below par. I’ve seen countless positions for secretaries with salaries starting at over $50k and only require an associates degree or work experience. Yet my current position as a senior accountant at a well known financial company doesn’t even start at $35k. Am I being punked? Are my BA, MBA, and future JD wasted investments?

Per a recent biography issued by my company, even my CEO doesn’t have a master’s degree, or even a bachelor’s in business, and I’m pretty sure he’s not living in poverty like I am. Does getting an education matter anymore? Does getting an education still lead to socioeconomic upward mobility or is it really who you know not what you know? When we think of self-made billionaires like Bill Gates who dropped out of college; or if we look at all of the people who make millions by going on a reality show or being one of Tiger Woods’ mistresses, it almost seems stupid to even consider going to college as a means of living a better life. We’ve been programmed to think that education equals economic success, yet as the costs of higher education increase our incomes seem to stay the same. What’s the point?

As if being underpaid weren’t enough, as I’ve tried to find more interesting and potentially higher paying jobs I encounter complications. When I was younger I was constantly being denied employment because “I needed more work and educational experience.” Now that I’ve been working for ten years, and have two degrees you would think it would be easy to find a decent paying job right? Wrong! Now I’m being told that I’m over qualified. Where is the balance?

Had I known then what I know now I would have never listened to my parents’ belief that getting an education would lead me out of poverty. Instead of accumulating thousands of dollars in student loan debt, after high school, I would have pitched a reality show idea to some network, or become some rich man’s mistress. My degrees are supposed to mean that I’m some what intelligent, but given the less educated people that appear to be better off than I am, it sometimes makes me feel like getting an education was the dumbest decision I ever made.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

It’s been a few short days since I’ve heard anything stupid in the news that is blogworthy until the controversy over Barack Obama’s speech yesterday. As always, it was divided among Democrats and Republicans.

Very rarely do I call people stupid, but those who opposed his speech are. Those who pulled their kids out of school so they wouldn’t hear a speech on education are even dumber. I didn’t have the chance to see the speech live, but I did read the text, and I’m appalled! How dare Obama tell our kids “don’t ever give up on yourself?” Or “If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying?” Or that “you can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job?”

God forbid Obama has “The Audacity of Hope!” Hope that we will become great doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other great contributors to our society. Most students liked his speech. One girl said “he made me think I can do anything I want to.” Others were motivated to study harder.

One guy from Texas said “there are few moments in my life when I’m embarrassed to say I’m from Texas, this is one of them.” Being from Dallas, I totally understand!

The one thing that he said during his speech that stuck with me the most was “we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.”

This is the root of America’s problems (well of the roots anyways). Our schools are the best in the world, hence why we’ve got an influx of international students flocking here to get a great education only to go back to their home country to make it better. We don’t value education as much as people in poor countries do. In some countries, students can’t even afford to go to public school because their families can’t afford the required uniform. We take education for granted in America, and here is a man telling our future to stay in school so we can better compete with foreigners and we’re mad?

One lady said that she did not appreciate Obama’s telling the kids to do well in school and succeed because “it is the parents’ job to be their kids’ role models and to instill these values in them.” I totally agree, but the problem is that most parents aren’t instilling these values in their children. Most children are being raised in single family homes, and a disproportionate number of black children are being raised in fatherless families. For these kids to see an intelligent black man stand there and tell them they are valued and they can achieve anything they put their minds to makes all the difference in breaking the cycle of young black men turning to lives of crime to ultimately wind up dead or incarcerated.

I wouldn’t expect most conservatives and republicans to care about the welfare of black people in America, but I do. Party politics, race, sexism, and all other divisors aside, we need to realize we’re all in this together. We are only as strong as our weakest link and Obama was trying to motivate our youth to study hard and stay in school. Think about it, these children are our future, and they are more concerned with their friends, their clothes, their iPods, their Myspace page, and which Jonas Brother is dating Miley Cyrus this week, than with school, and their idea of a complete sentence is OMGWTFFML and we’re mad that our president is encouraging them to focus on school??? Stupid is as stupid does people!

feel free to check out the text to his speech here: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/09/07/obamas-long-awaited-back-to-school-speech/