If not for me, your own family

If you don’t buy this chalkboard mug from me, I’ll be ruined and it would be on your head. If you don’t buy this mug, I will lose my job and it would be your fault. My whole life will be ruined if you don’t just buy one. Just because you wanted to go buy some silly sunglasses later and not simply give me a few dollars I would lose everything. I’ll not only become a laughingstock and lose my job, but I will never go to college and never get a job again unless you buy one right now. If you walk away right now, I will lose everything in my life just because of you. My life would become a failure and it would be all on your head. You’ll have to walk around the rest of your life knowing that you have caused this if you walk away right now. I’ll lose all the confidence I ever had and my whole future would just disappear if you won’t do this small little thing for me. As you leave and go to the mall and spend those few dollars, the key to my future, I’ll be fired from my job and be forced to watch in shame all that future that was ahead of me dissolve like a dream. But you’ll go happily along your way and never realize how you so easily destroyed everything I’ve worked so hard for. I will lose everything, but you’ll keep those few dollars, green pieces of paper that are nearly worthless to you but worth everything to me, and it would be your fault.

Fine, if you won’t do it for me and all that I have ahead of me, at least do it for your family. Have a heart and go home today to create some lifelong memories with your family. Take home this awesome chalkboard mug and go home and sit with your kids and wife by the fire and have a real family moment. Don’t you love your family? Don’t you want your kids to grow up and think of you fondly? Make it up to them with this mug; go bring them this and sit around the fire drinking hot chocolate and drawing with chalk. Let your kids actually have a childhood and a true family moment without the internet if you actually love them. Let them sit with you and play some games over a chalkboard and some chalk as you did when you were a kid. Don’t you want to go back to your own childhood and live those warm family days and play once more with chalk? Give your children a chance to have those amazing memories that you cherish now. You’ll be depriving them of their childhood if you walk away right now. Take this mug home and stop to smell the roses for a bit and show your family some love. Let them play and draw on this mug with you and one day let them think back to their childhood with smiles. If you actually love your kids, you will buy one of these.

 

Private Education--Oppression or Benefit?

Should the government ban for-profit private education such as private universities and private schools? On one hand, the government stopping all for-profit educational institutions would be a devastating move to the economy and the quality of education. On the other hand, however, education would no longer be a business but more so as a service open to all so someone’s quality of education and even life will not be decided, for good or for bad, by their parents’ wealth.

If the government actually made private for-profit education illegal the results would be devastating in both the short run and the long run. Despite good intentions, the repercussions would be crushing because a whole industry in the economy will be closed down and the quality of education would be lowered immensely. The government already is immensely in debt so it would only increase the debt more if the government were to absorb the whole education industry. Moreover, the economy as a whole would be dealt a massive blow as all the business bent over universities and private schools would have to collapse and the job market would only worsen. Economically, it simply would not be feasible. Worse, the law would backfire and lower the quality of education for all because all the best education institutes in America are private and for-profit. If they were all collapsed by the government, even if the government set up public institutions that were non for-profit in their place, the quality wouldn’t be matched properly. In the short run the economy would just crash and in the long run the quality of education will be lower than ever before.

On the other hand, though, private institutions are currently doing even more harm, the result of years and years of oppression through high costs for high quality education, than the consequences of enacting legislation against for-profit private education. In this day and age, higher education isn’t at all a privilege but an economic necessity. To find a high end job one needs high quality education. But if a kid has what it takes to get into Harvard and has the prospective outlook of becoming very successful in his career, but his parents don’t have the money to send him there, how is it fair that he gets sidelined. Of course there are plenty of scholarship opportunities for students, but it is in no way egalitarian of America to allow easier admission to students from high-income families but force students from lower income families to pay through scholarships. Unless there is equal opportunity for every single person the people of America will remain oppressed. If all men are created equal truly, then why is it a child from a wealthier family stands a far higher chance of going to a higher quality university and becoming successful in his life than a child from a lower income family. It is in no way enough than all children stand a chance through public universities and scholarships, but all people must stand an equal chance in life or else they will be very much oppressed. The key to allowing all people to stand equal opportunity is through education being equally open to all. Very fundamentally, education should never have been and can no longer possibly be a business, but must be a tool that is open to all people, regardless of absolutely anything. Moreover, this sort of legislation can be enacted with ease if the government simply buys out each major higher education institute, and keeps the quality of the institution up, but lowers the cost so its doors are open to all. There may be short term repercussions, but in the long run our society will finally be equal for every single person will stand an equal chance at education, the key to success.

The Only Path to Success--Your's

On more than one occasion each and every one of us has been presented with the very best well-worn out path but cut out our own path to success. But is it legitimately true that even listening perfectly to the very best advice would not be as successful as one’s own thinking and decision? Each and every one of us have been told and advised on what would be best for us allegedly by those who are “experienced”. By following it we never glean or learn any knowledge, the whole point and fundamental key to being successful.  This has been best put by the late G.K Chesterfield, a man famed greatly by his quote “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.”

Theoretically, in no situation will doing what we think is best ever lead us away from learning. As humans it is our nature to learn best from trial and error. So we, humans who succeed in life from learning from our mistakes, must not ever blindly follow advice on a matter. If we do what we think is best, then we can learn from our failure or find that what we thought truly was the best. Conforming to advice will only lead us away from success because we will never learn anything.

Let’s say you are trying to do your homework, but one question just has you completely stumped entirely. Your friends, the great experts on everything who always know what to do, advise and tell you to just leave it blank because your teacher normally is relaxed with this stuff. But on a whim you decide not to take their advice but to just try out whatever comes to mind and show it to your teacher. Incredibly, not only is your teacher okay with it, but even gives you extra credit for trying such a difficult problem. Your own path of trial and error has just led you to find the very best success, understanding of how to deal with your teacher. You just learned and understood how best to deal with your teacher. A great lesson earned from nonconformity and individualism, true success has just come your way through your own path of trial and error and now you have reached true success.

Say you are walking into your first ever job interview. Those who always take the conformist approach and never try anything new, the “experts” have been advising you all week on how to dress and how to look professional, but you decided not to follow them.  You take your own approach and wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt to the interview because you think it will help you connect better with the interviewer. When you arrive you find yourself surrounded by professionally dressed people, so you lose all your confidence for the interview and don’t get the job. Are you still successful? Very much indeed because you still learn a very valuable lesson, that could never be learned for you by other people. You will now know that being dressed professionally works out better and just how valuable it is, a lesson those that simply won’t be received by following advice blindly to dress professionally. True success, knowledge gleaned and learned from humanely natural trial and error, cannot be achieved by listening to even the very best advice.

 

 

The Very Best Advice

On more than one occasion each and every one of us has been presented with the very best well-worn out path but cut out our own path to success. But is it legitimately true that even listening perfectly to the very best advice would not be as successful as one’s own thinking and decision? I personally owe all my success to not conforming to the strict path of everyone else but doing what I believe in sincerely. More specifically, when we are all told explicitly what is best for us, true success can only be found if we do what we think is the best for us, for only then will we ever learn.

Theoretically, in no situation will doing what we think is best ever lead us away from learning. As humans it is our nature to learn best from trial and error. So when we are given advice on something and anything, if we conform to it, we don’t learn anything. But if we do what we think is best, then we can learn from our failure or find that what we thought truly was the best. Conforming to advice will only lead us away from success because we will never learn anything.

Let me now prove that success cannot be derived from success with specific examples and situations. At a conference earlier this year, I was placed into a team of kids and presented with a global challenge. The team and I collaborated together and collected many diverse ideas and when we were done I compiled them all together and reorganized the separate ideas into one main concept. But the whole time the clock was ticking down to our presentation, and I had yet to prepare my own speech. Our team counselor gave me very good advice on working on what I had to say and I paid very meticulously close attention to his advice, but went off and did the precise opposite. I kept working and helping everyone else’s presentation to make sure they captured the right idea and all the pieces would fit together cohesively instead of doing my own presentation. About an hour before our team’s presentation only did I compile what I would say myself and found that it was in no way enough time to become fluent in my long speech. My team won the challenge because the presentation was so cohesively pieced together and I learned to allocate myself more time in general, so in the end of the day it was not listening to the very best advice that allowed me to be successful.