When I finished with my undergraduate year degree, I had close to three degrees (two and a minor that was 12 hours short of another degree). I always sought out the difficult professors, the ones that failed everyone, because I wanted to toughen up. I often crammed multiple 300 and 400 level math and science classes into a single semester and usually was overloaded, despite being bright. I did this year after year, and when classes left me bored, I took it upon myself to check out books from the library. I'm not saying this to brag, I'm this because THIS is what a college education should look like. Despite having close to a 2.0 GPA (hey, you try taking 22 hours of 300/400 level math and science classes, and then try balancing that with a degree in music, also balance that with a part time job because the parents were broke), I replaced a guy with a Phd for my first job out of school. How did my employer know that I was a good risk? I took it upon myself to study my field of expertise outside of my coursework, much as I studied music. When I went in, I had a portfolio that could demonstrate my competence. I had learned all of the tools needed to do my job. This level of common sense never occurred to most of my peers.

Compare this to my peers. Most of them only took a single major. Most of them ran away from hard professors and real work. Many of them cheated, some of them in nearly every single assignment. Most of them emphasized cramming and bullshitting over real learning. And, guess what happens next? If that were a plot to a movie, would it end well for the protagonist? Do you think that guy with a Phd knew he was going to be replaced by a guy with a super low GPA from a state school? What does that say about our educational system when there is no difference between a Bachelors and a Phd according to employers? What does it say about our Universities' honesty when they claim that there IS a massive difference, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? Do you think some of my paper genius peers who ran away from real work were prepared for the real world?

This is the problem with our society. We are teaching people that grades, credentials, and what's on the surface are most important (that's narcissism). By the time people realize that maybe cheating the entire way and avoiding hard work weren't the best ideas, it's too late. I'm not saying that you shouldn't care at all about grades, but also, I got a ton of shit from peers, professors, and my parents over them, and most of those peers are struggling today. The fact is, a society based on bullshit credentials and inflated grades can only function for so long. Eventually the market makes corrections, and this is what we are witnessing. The fact that my employer was willing to hire me 15 years ago should give Millennials pause. They were already catching on decades ago to the fact that grades and degrees aren't everything.

The most successful guy I went to school with dropped out the year after I graduated. Again, here's the description. He was super-motivated and always learning, both in and out of school. He got jobs in I.T. on top of his C.S. degree. He also pursued music (in other words, he was well rounded and wasn't avoiding work like the plague). He failed his last semester because he was sitting behind a computer for so many hours getting his startup off the ground that he couldn't handle all his commitments. Do you see the difference between trying hard and failing, and coasting and bullshitting? The first will eventually lead you to success, the second will doom you to a lifetime of mediocrity.

Some millennials might object and say they aren't trying to bullshit their way through, they just want someone to give them a chance. I would say that if you truly have something to offer and no one is hiring, why not start a business (or some other endeavor)? Why would you wait for someone to hire you, giving most of your profits to your employer, when you could take a chance right now? Waiting around for years to get a job are the actions of a group that believes they have nothing to offer, and they might be right about that. They aren't the actions of people who believe they have a lot to offer the world.

My guess is that we have taught millennials to seek the easy professors, the soft majors, big money professions over authentic interest, pursuit of money over trying to help others, and when all else fails, cheat. We've encouraged them not to take initiative and start their own company/charity/movement/whatever, but instead to just wait around for another parent (their employer) to take care of them. To the extent that many of them do these things, they usually do it cynically, as a means to an end (example: a high school student that starts a charity to get into Harvard only to drop it completely once the objective of acceptance is achieved.) For this group, actual learning isn't even a concept. That's not the fault of Millennials, that's the fault of narcissistic parents who put the exterior ahead of everything else.

Here's the deal. If you are taught to pursue money, power, and status above all else, the money and power will always be a generation ahead of you. First comes need, then comes the people and businesses with enough empathy to care and satisfy those needs, next comes money/customers/investors, then comes the bubble, and finally the bubble bursts. If you get in the game at the bubble stage (in other words, at stage 4), you will always be late. Bubbles are like magnets for sociopaths and narcissists, as they aren't interested in stages 1-3 (in other words, work), they go after stage 4 only, and they wonder why they keep getting burned. Are you going into a major because that's where a lot of money is? Guess what, by the time you get there, the bubble will likely have burst. If you approach the world from a selfish, narcissistic perspective, you will always be late. Do you want to know what happened with the housing crash or the stock market crash of the early 2000's? It was the same thing. When people invest cynically, without a desire to actually help and invest, but only to extract wealth, then inflation, bubbles, and devastating collapse is what we get. The solution is to get in at stage one. The solution is to not be a narcissist. You have to give enough of a shit about others to look around and say, "What do others need? How can I serve others best?" If you start with that question, you will always be in at the ground floor, and your authentic desire to help will show. Empathy and having a vision of improving the world is what separates successful people and businesses from narcissistic failures that constantly chase the wrong career and the next bubble. The gist of the idea is that your career goal shouldn't be about satisfying your own needs first. It should be about satisfying the needs of OTHERS, that's why they pay you. The goal should be self improvement and authentic contribution, in the service of improving the world.