The first time I ever really considered the career options available to me was in the 8th grade. My science teacher at the time, in an act surely straying from the recommended curriculum, had us spend a full week doing a thought experiment about careers, budgeting, and the American Dream. Although it sounds like the last thing a junior or middle school-aged student would want to do, it was one of the most interesting and eye opening experiences of my life.

The Thought Experiment
The teacher started the experiment by passing around a hat full of folded up pieces of paper, instructing us each to take one at random. When the hat finally reached me, I reached in, grabbed a slip of paper, and opened it: Doctor. The teacher then informed us that we would be planning a life, each of us around the profession we had drawn. Mine, by chance, was the highest paid in the class. Others received such careers as store clerk, laywer, mechanic, waiter, and warehouse worker -- the earning differences were huge.

He continued to explain the remainder of the rules: each person had to plan a budget for one year using the salaries given to him or her, making sure to include all of the essentials such as food, an automobile, and somewhere to live. He passed out newspapers to each of us, telling us that we could find prices for houses, cars, and so on. He told us that we each had $10,000 to invest in the stock market, where we could buy individual stocks based on prices from an old newspaper and then see how much we made (or lost) if we looked at the present prices. We would be graded on how sensible our financial choices were.

Our Choices
An interesting observation that I can make now that I've lived a little more and experienced the real financial limitations of the average working person is that humans must be born with poor spending habits. Every student, based on their own personal salaries, chose to purchase the biggest house and the flashiest car they could afford. Even with the teacher's lectures on the benefits of having a retirement fund and emergency cash, few students chose to budget much of their earnings for savings.

Sadly, this even included myself. As the "Doctor", I was able to purchase the best rental house I could find in the paper and finance the sportiest car. I was actually struggling through multiple newspapers to find a better house and car since I thought they were too below someone of my profession and earnings! Instead, I ending up making up crazy expenditures for the entertainment category so that I felt like I was using enough of my money (a.k.a. season baseball tickets). I purposely placed next to nothing in the retirement section and I used the $10,000 of seed money to purchase penny stocks (which, ironically,made me a good deal of money), but that's another lesson in itself. Looking back, I'm pretty darn ashamed of myself -- I used to think I was pretty smart.

When each of us presented our budget reports to the class (complete with cut out pictures of the houses and cars we purchased), most of the students (all of those other than the lawyer, CEO, and doctor) were quite frustrated. Even in this completely fictitious scenario, students were jealous of each other for having less money and less ability to purchase what they considered to be commonplace objects like a new car. Many of the jobs drawn were in line with what the students hoped to get in the future, but what was not in line was their financial goals.

Rethinking the American Dream
Of course no part of this experiment helped us to realize, for example, the utility (and evils) of credit or the difficulty of becoming a doctor and the career-specific strains it can put on a person. But the message was clear: the lifestyle many of us hoped for -- the lifestyle that we all felt entitled to as part of our American Dream -- would not be possible for the majority of us. Although many (if not all) of my fellow students have likely forgotten that week long lesson entirely, it has stayed with me for all these years. While most of my friends ended up dissatisfied with their ill-chosen careers at 30 and were forced to rethink and reinterpret their American Dreams, I had no such need. Luckily for me, I knew to choose a career where I could simultaneously enjoy myself and earn the money I needed to fulfill my own, personal American Dream. And no, I am not a doctor.


Did you ever reach a point in life where you were disappointed and felt like you were not achieving what you felt entitled to? Do you wish that you had learned much earlier than you did that the American Dream (in its classical form) is not available to everyone, no matter people are generally led to believe?