Work Reform

In what way is working a more physically demanding job "advancing yourself"?

It's not the physical part - which isn't even all that great of a difference - but getting familiar with physics. Working your brain rather than your muscle. That's an advance.

There's also a risk element - you fuck up on a powerline - you're potentially dead. Fuck up a burger? You get yelled at.

Besides, I’d also argue that most customer facing jobs are just as demanding as most physical trade jobs. They just fuck you up mentally instead of physically.

All jobs suck the soul out of you. If you don't want that - build a career. That requires one doing something one's great at. It requires an internal drive.

Not even degrees mean much anymore, a lot of job positions require one cause they can, not cause you’d actually benefit from that knowledge. Spending all that time and money to get a piece of paper can Aldo hardly be called "advancing yourself’.

You're not wrong about job requirements, but I'd argue your whole world view is skewed.

You get a degree to advance your understanding of a thing you give a shit about. If you get one because your parents told to or whatever - then of course it's useless. Many reasons for that, but one of them is going that to that internal drive.

Quick personal example: I got a CS degree. Out of ~150 people who started ~40 graduated (which I think is probably usual), but of those 40 only 3 were people actually interested in computers. Others were there for all kinds of wrong reasons. Some of those people are now loudly screaming into the ether how degrees are useless. It worked out very well for the 3 of us. As of upcoming August, I will have literally 10x the income I had before starting my degree in 2016. Now, granted, small numbers are easy to get impressive multiplication on, but I'm still proud of it.