Tony_Scarpelli
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Tony_Scarpelli
One of the situations where I believe an education really pays off in spades is if you are from a family that has very little/no college and/or low-moderate business/work success. In otherwords a low socio-economic class.
Most of our development, experience and knowledge growing up comes from our family. Some from class of people we go to high school with, hang out with. So if your family/friends situation is modest in education and success then it becomes paramount to get either a mentor and/or an education at all costs-IMO.
We do not know what we do not know. It might be that what we need more than education is good outlook on life and work ethic which we have to get somewhere. Perhaps a mentor is more important than a college degree. College sometimes gets the credit for success when it could be that the mentors we meet in college are more the result of success than the information we learn. There is no way for us to accumulate this type of direction, knowledge, attitudes, even ethic without a mentor.
We no longer live in a time where corporations hire all the grads and give them work mentors. Most grads do not make it that far. So you need find your mentor before college-IMO.
My family growing up was in the bottom half of no college/middle class. I did the Army thing at 17 years old, Special Forces as enlisted man then used the Vietnam era G.I. Bill of Rights to help me through a public University Degree. I wish now I did engineering but I chose Business Admin. Luckily for me, A high school job introduced me to my first Mentor who taught me how to buy real estate for rental purposes. While I was going to college I bought a fixer upper home to live in. I then bought and fixed up 13 more rentals over the next 4 years and ended up with a higher than average income from that even before taking a job from college. I mark this up 100% to having a mentor.
I then used excellent public university grades/test scores to get a scholarship for a top private University MBA.
I cannot honestly say that the MBA made a big difference in my life. My post MBA job offers from a prestigious University were less than what I had already earned as a top car salesman working through college.
I am unaware exactly when and where I picked up some aspects of business acumen that I might not otherwise have had. My feeling is that it helped me very little although I had fairly good personal success. I am convinced if I did not find a good mentor; go into the Army; and/or get that public University Degree I likely would not have had the same level of success I have enjoyed. But did the next 2 years of graduate education and $200k of tuition and opportunity cost add that much more value to my life?
Judging by my 24 some odd cousins/siblings I think it 95% likely I would not have had any success at all without a mentor and college. (measuring success as having a substantially better lifestyle than my parents/siblings/cousins who did not get a university degree).
Which comes first ambition/work ethic to get an education and other tools required to be a success? Maybe education is nothing more than a yardstick of people who are already motivated, organized and smart enough to succeed without an education. The completion of 4 years of aggravation is nothing but a chance element in success that self selects those who went to college but would have had success regardless.
Are Harvard grads more successful because of Harvard or who they were before they got to Harvard? Of course there are issues of networking/friends and such but how do you qualify the success separate from a specific education?
My feeling is that a mentor is more important than an education and the single biggest success factor. I have to rank education #3 behind a good mentor #1 and some basic ambition and motivation #2.
Most of our development, experience and knowledge growing up comes from our family. Some from class of people we go to high school with, hang out with. So if your family/friends situation is modest in education and success then it becomes paramount to get either a mentor and/or an education at all costs-IMO.
We do not know what we do not know. It might be that what we need more than education is good outlook on life and work ethic which we have to get somewhere. Perhaps a mentor is more important than a college degree. College sometimes gets the credit for success when it could be that the mentors we meet in college are more the result of success than the information we learn. There is no way for us to accumulate this type of direction, knowledge, attitudes, even ethic without a mentor.
We no longer live in a time where corporations hire all the grads and give them work mentors. Most grads do not make it that far. So you need find your mentor before college-IMO.
My family growing up was in the bottom half of no college/middle class. I did the Army thing at 17 years old, Special Forces as enlisted man then used the Vietnam era G.I. Bill of Rights to help me through a public University Degree. I wish now I did engineering but I chose Business Admin. Luckily for me, A high school job introduced me to my first Mentor who taught me how to buy real estate for rental purposes. While I was going to college I bought a fixer upper home to live in. I then bought and fixed up 13 more rentals over the next 4 years and ended up with a higher than average income from that even before taking a job from college. I mark this up 100% to having a mentor.
I then used excellent public university grades/test scores to get a scholarship for a top private University MBA.
I cannot honestly say that the MBA made a big difference in my life. My post MBA job offers from a prestigious University were less than what I had already earned as a top car salesman working through college.
I am unaware exactly when and where I picked up some aspects of business acumen that I might not otherwise have had. My feeling is that it helped me very little although I had fairly good personal success. I am convinced if I did not find a good mentor; go into the Army; and/or get that public University Degree I likely would not have had the same level of success I have enjoyed. But did the next 2 years of graduate education and $200k of tuition and opportunity cost add that much more value to my life?
Judging by my 24 some odd cousins/siblings I think it 95% likely I would not have had any success at all without a mentor and college. (measuring success as having a substantially better lifestyle than my parents/siblings/cousins who did not get a university degree).
Which comes first ambition/work ethic to get an education and other tools required to be a success? Maybe education is nothing more than a yardstick of people who are already motivated, organized and smart enough to succeed without an education. The completion of 4 years of aggravation is nothing but a chance element in success that self selects those who went to college but would have had success regardless.
Are Harvard grads more successful because of Harvard or who they were before they got to Harvard? Of course there are issues of networking/friends and such but how do you qualify the success separate from a specific education?
My feeling is that a mentor is more important than an education and the single biggest success factor. I have to rank education #3 behind a good mentor #1 and some basic ambition and motivation #2.
