Midnight Thought on Economics: Work. Make Money.

 I crouched down on the floor yesterday next to an old woman and cut hair and strings out from the bottom of a Dyson vacuum. Her hair was short--evidence of her recent visitations with chemotherapy. I wanted to object to clearing out the vacuum because it was time-consuming and tedious to clean it out like that, but she insisted.
"You finish high school?" she asked with a thick accent I couldn't place. Before she'd started treatment for cancer, she had been the housekeeper. I'd been hired to clean because she no longer could.
"Yes."
"You go to college?"
"No."
"That's good! Make money."
I was surprised, but I said, "Yeah."
"All my kids finish high school. It's good! They don't go to college. They work. Make money. College too expensive. And then--no job! You know? Millions, millions. Waste! You know?"

I marveled at how I'd just had this conversation with her--Schooling vs. working. It's not one of those conversations that you can have with people without having to help them make an ideological leap. Some people wouldn't understand the wisdom hiding beneath the graying cap of the old lady, cleaning out the bottom of a vacuum. They'd just see an old housekeeper and me, wrestling with a pair of kids' scissors and tangled hair.

I was listening to a podcast today, and on it, the guest said that there are two kinds of education. The first is the kind of education you get with hopes of using it someday, the second kind is education you seek out in order to use it right away. I've been learning the difference between the two for the last nine months because I work. I make money.

You might want to work. Make money. You don't have to leave school like I did--it might be part of God's will for you--But don't hesitate when opportunities arise to learn things that will allow you to start changing your life now, instead of later.