Everyone knows the story. The speedy hare made fun of the slow tortoise, which prompted the tortoise to challenge the hare to a race. The hare, confident in his abilities, made the mistake of taking his foot off the gas, which allowed the tortoise to win. The moral, we are told, is that the slow and steady win the race.
Sadly, we restrict ourselves to that one lesson. This tale has so many more lessons for us – some more important than the obvious one. Today I’d like to discuss one.
Let’s zoom out a bit, shall we? Let’s run that race a hundred times. I guess it would be safe to assume that the hare would win the other 99 races. The slow one never wins unless a set of unique circumstances converge to enable the surprising outcome.
Similarly, we take the wrong lessons from other such unique outcomes.
Bill Gates, who never finished college, went on to create the world’s biggest software company and in the process became the world’s richest man. He is held up as an example by children who want to quit college – sometimes even school.
Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, The Weeknd, abused drugs and alcohol before giving it up and going on to become a huge star. Other addicts think they too are using to unleash their inner creative and then they can quit to achieve the success due to them.
These are the outliers, not the norm. These successes required events to come together in a specific way for the success that followed.
College Dropout Employment Rates according to a study by Education Data Initiative.
While college dropouts earn lower wages than college graduates, some college with no degree (SCNDs) earn more than high school graduates.
Workers with some college but no degree have a 5.5% unemployment rate, which is 17.0% higher than the national average.
Workers aged 25 and over with some college but no degree make an average of $899 weekly, which is 14.9% less than the average worker.
Workers aged 25 and older with some college but no degree make 7.1% less than associate’s degree holders on average.
SCNDs make an 11.1% higher income than the average worker with a high school diploma only.
Compared to workers with no high school diploma, SCNDs make 43.6% more income.
Workers with bachelor’s degrees make a 48.4% higher income than SCND workers.
More often than not, college dropouts, drug abusers, people who get incarcerated during their youth, never go on to escape the downward spiral and have successful careers. They lose 99 of the 100 races.
Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero! No, Andrea....unhappy is the land that needs a hero. - Bertolt Brecht
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