the american dream

Because you're basically told from the moment you learn to walk and go to gradeschool, that you have to grow up, get good grades, go to college, get a job, and then work until you die, and that's what you're supposed to be doing.

Except good grades don't get you into college anymore, money does, and you have the choice between joining the military or falling victim to predatory school loans that you will never, ever pay off by design, if you don't meet the highly restrictive standards of government aid.

My principal in highschool, actually held a seminar in the gymnasium, where he told all of us that we had to go to college, or we'd never amount to anything, and end up in the same boat as "the garbage man." well, mr. beckett, the "garbage man" makes more money than you do.

And even if you manage to even get access to a further education at all, which I personally didn't, once you get through that, you have to learn that your degree doesn't actually mean anything, and usually just earns you a couple of dollars above minimum wage. IF you manage to get a job at all, because despite the bitching and moaning from employers that they "can't find employees," they won't fucking hire anybody and make their poor staff do three times the jobs they're actually paid for to save money, and get grants as government "aid" for being "unable to find employees."

My life is fine, and yet I can't even live comfortably, because of the constant stress that I am not doing what I was taught my whole life that I was supposed to be doing, despite the fact that that reality doesn't exist, and probably never even did. And I'm probably NEVER going to be able to just enjoy my peace because of this bullshit propaganda we were raised with, and that pisses me off.