"But it's what I do!"

Let me set this up for you:

I was rushing the last week of school to get through the last unit of Financial Literacy. Unit 7 is titled "Your Career: Doing What Matters Most." It talks a lot about the reasons people work, beyond just having to pay the bills.....you know, job satisfaction, making a meaningful contribution, learning new skills, adding value to your life.....stuff like that.

Realistically, I know the vast majority of my students will never see the inside of an institution of higher learning. So I try to gear it toward identifying what they enjoy doing and what they already have some expertise or experience with. This course if now required for high school graduation, so the text is aimed at typical 17- and 18-year-olds who aspire to actual careers where they will pay taxes and get benefits and such.

My students, on the other hand, proudly talk about:
a. the precision required for making meth
b. the use of fractions when splitting 8-balls for drug deals
c. the amount of time needed to properly strip a car
d. the money available to top-ranking car thieves
e. the downside of not being able to get insurance and benefits for a
job well done!

I take a deep breath, quote a line from Pretty Woman ("Your parents must be so proud of you.") and dive into the value of a good education. I'm telling you, it's an uphill struggle some days.

So when we get to the part about the statistics of lifetime earnings, broken down by years of education, where I point out that the average worker who has some high school but no diploma earns about $1 million (that's in a lifetime), and the worker who has a bachelor's degree typically earns about $2.1 million, I'm thinking this is where they'll really "get it".

No such luck. These are the comments I got:

1. "$1 million over a lifetime? Are you kidding me? That's why I'm a car thief."
2. "Benefits aren't all that important anyway. My family is all on welfare, so that's not really an issue."
3. "Do you know how much money I'd miss out on if I took 4 years to go to college? I'm already 26 years old!"
4. "Miss Gae, do you have any idea how much it costs to get together everything you need for a topnotch meth lab?"

Now, granted these are only some of the comments I got. Of course there are the ones who understand the intended message of the lesson, even if they can't see how they're ever going to get a job, pay child support to 3 different mothers, pay court-ordered restitution, and somehow manage to procure a college education!

Some days, my job is harder than other days.