What’s a Young Man to Do?
Which way from here?
Someone I particularly admire recently raised the question about her 15-year old son’s next moves. Her background is elite — Princeton degree from the selective Woodrow Wilson School, Harvard Law Review where she was a member of the Harvard Black Law Students Association alongside Barack Obama, and a string of senior corporate law jobs, business ownership, and organizational leadership. She made it every which way but isn’t just reflexively guiding her own son to follow in her footsteps. Instead she mentioned that he might be better off at a trade school. Given this mom’s pedigree, this is a fairly shocking commentary on the state of our universities. So what should he do? If I were in his position today or that of my son of his age, I’d want to find where I could grow up, add value, and find adventure. Where?
As I was thinking about this question, I heard a neighbor who made a fortune consolidating rural trash hauling lament the fact that he has too many people who produce emails and not enough people who drive trucks. More white collar workers aren’t worth five figures to him while he can’t find enough good blue collar workers, even if they’re offered six figures. We need fewer people to make emails and more people to make things. Unfortunately, we’ve fixated on cultivating DEI and ESG virtues along with soft modern empathy; these are great for weaving into emails but utterly useless when it comes to tangible production. Email recipients like empathy, but nothing in the periodic table cares for it. Getting it out of the ground, moving it, and transforming it demands strength and determination.
Where to go to college? One answer: don’t. Instead apply to the Thiel Fellowship — $100k for young people (under 22 years old) who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom. I don’t know how many of their companies Peter Thiel has invested in but he might end up coming out ahead in this philanthropic venture — they’ve had a staggeringly success including a dozen companies worth over a billion dollars, outperforming the Rhodes Scholarship at entrepreneurial success.
Consider military service. Serve your country, get paid to get educated, and pick up valuable skills that you can carry over into the civilian world. For example, is the best place to learn to fly, which is fun, useful, and could be lucrative. Not sure if it’s for you? Attend West Point’s summer leaders experience (SLE). High School juniors can spend a week of camp that combines academics, fitness, and leadership. Or skip the officer route and enlist. The hardest and perhaps more rewarding selection process is going through the process of becoming a SEAL. Don’t let it be over before it starts by hitting the minimum physical standards before you apply.
Another option is joining the French Foreign Legion. They teach such combat specialties as sniper, paratrooper, machine gunner, and rocket launcher. It’s helpful to arrive as a strong runner and swimmer and to be able to do a lot of pull-ups. After serving, there’s further opportunities for service in private groups such as the Free Burma Rangers. And write about your experiences — you’ll probably have more to write about after a few years in the French Foreign Legion or Free Burma Rangers than you would at college. So start a Substack and find out if anyone cares what you have to say.
Get a petroleum engineering degree. There is a faddish craze in intermittent energy sources alongside vilification of petrochemicals. But the same periodic table that doesn’t care about your empathy also doesn’t care about your politics. And the supply and demand for energy requires decades of oil and gas production before any meaningful shift away from it could occur (and that vacuum would need to mostly get filled by nuclear, which is also vilified). This has driven down the number of petroleum engineering graduates from its high in 2017. There won’t be enough to handle the demand for the next several decades. Its hard to find such a disconnect between theoretical aversion to something that the same people demand in practice. People that profess to hate the energy industry like the lights on at night, and prefer to be warm in winter and cool in summer just like everyone else. They just don’t like the people that do the hard work to make them comfortable.
Want to get strong enough to handle what the world throws at you, get paid, and learn to lead others? At the moment, the only people heading to elite colleges to do that are the cops called in to quell the rioters. There are so many other directions to go. People, especially young people, take far too much risk with their reputations for honesty and reliability but far too little risk everywhere else. If you head out into the world seeking fortune, honor, and glory but blow it then at 25 or 30 are penniless, scarred, and humbled, that is okay. It will make a great interview. There’ll still be cubicles, W-2s, and HR orientation waiting for you later. First do something epic. Risk greatness.
