I was talking to my housekeeper about college recently and I said to her that the single most important thing I found out about college is that if you get used to making a lot of money working full time it's hard to go back to college. For example, in my own life I went to college the first time in the fall of 1966 when I was 18 years old. My best friend also attended the same college "Glendale College" which was and is a community 2 year college in Glendale, California in the Los Angeles area. He studied Jet engine maintenance so he could join the Air Force and not get drafted and die in Viet Nam during the war. I had a a 4 F from a concussion and resulting seizures at night from ages 10 to 15 years old when my cranium grew enough to release the pressure on my brain (My skull grew as I matured). So, at that time this gave me a 4 F Classification which meant I would only be called up if America was attacked sort of like during World War II.
So, I could then think about college and getting married and having a life and not worry about dying or getting PTSD from fighting in a war somewhere.
But, one of the really big things about college is once you start making a lot of money and can buy cars and date and travel it's really hard to go back to college.
When I first started college I dropped out because I was raised to be not thinking in Darwin Ways because I was raised to be churchgoing by my parents. So, I dropped out of college when I took a Social Science Class and people were believing in Darwinism. It took me until i was 21 I think to get all this thinking in perspective so I could deal with everything by the way. I got to a place where I realized that Darwinism is a theory and so is Creationism and I realized I didn't have to really believe in either one of them because they were only theories. Once I got there I was ready to live my life in a better way where I saw these things both as theories rather than laws so I was free to think whatever I wanted to about anything.
But, when I dropped out of college in my first semester because of my beliefs I got a job working for Travel Publications company in Hollywood in the mail room then in late 1966. My mother needed an operation and my parents didn't have health insurance even though my father owned his own business so they asked me to keep working for a year to help pay for my mother's operation which I agreed to as a good son. After all, I didn't have to pay rent either so I had no problem giving them most of my money so my mother would be okay.
However, working this year I got used to having more money and then going back to college was much harder for me after that. I returned to college in fall of 1967 and studied computer programming and computer operations and got a job part time working for the Glendale Board of Education on their mainframe IBM 1620 computer which was interesting. Then I worked for Foremost McKesson in North Hollywood as a computer operator and then finally I worked for Reynolds and Reynolds which was a computer Accounting firm as a computer operator. I made so much money I could afford to buy a brand new 1968 Camaro which was an incredible muscle car then with a big engine. However, my father wouldn't let me get a stick shift because he didn't want me street racing like some of my friends. However, even with an automatic I still got the car up to 145 miles per hour one time with oversize wide tires.
So, the point I'm trying to make is once you get addicted to having enough wealth for buying cars and traveling and dating and such it's really hard to go back to college and to get your degrees.
So, if you can get kids interested in college without them starting to work full time this helps them finish their college degrees much better. It makes it more likely that they will finish their degrees whether it be a Bachelor's or whatever along the way.
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