I know a guy who wasted 3 years going to poly to take a diploma in accounting. He doesn’t understand what is being taught and just pass with c and d grades.
He tried to do accounting jobs but he couldn’t do it. He changed around 20 jobs in 7 years, most of the jobs is because the company did not confirm him during probation as he does not know how to do accounts.
Than he found a admin job with salary 2k. He find the job easy and he likes the manager too. But the company is very stingy and only give the staffs around $50 increment a year.
After he work for 5 years, he found another admin job with salary 3k so he resign.
He work in the job for 1 month and feel stress so he resign. After that he couldn’t find another admin job.
Now he works as a cashier in supermarket earning less than 2k a month.
I ask him does he feel sad that he wasted 3 years to study accounting in poly. He say yes but he comfort himself by saying that during poly, he wanted to work part time but he was very nerd at that time. He didn’t know where to find jobs. He didn’t even know that jobstreet exists.
After graduating from poly, his salary ranges from 1.7k to 2.2k. If he does not have a diploma, the salary at that time is about 1.2k.
He calculated during poly at that time, a part time job pays about $5 a hour. If he works on weekends he can earn about $100 a week. If he works during his school holidays 5 days a week, 1 month he can earn about 1k.
He did a calculation. In the 3 years poly, he lose about 13k salary. He calculated that with the extra salary he gets for about 13 years that he works, he still earn more than the 13k that he loses during his poly time.
This is how he comfort himself.
So whats the lessons from this story that we can learn?