No One Ever Told Us That: Money and Life Lessons for Young Adults

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MEDIA TRANSLATIONS

You have already read a lot in the media about the crisis in American education. We don't have enough students concentrating in mathematics and sciences. Often what we read about what I call the “Oh, my Gods,” which prove to have nothing to do with what we should really worry about. The Oh, my Gods are headlines about the horrors happening daily in the world or the many predicted disasters over the years, for example, the headlines about the Y2K moment when all computer systems would crash and the headlines in the early 1980s about the Japanese taking over the world. Just in time to go into a 20-year depression. What really damages us are the bolts from the blue that no one could foresee: Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the Kennedy assassination. It's a total surprise in life that can damage us the most, not the inflammatory headlines. As for the daily news here's the first lesson: in a conversation years ago I had with a good friend, a consultant, I asked him whether he'd seen a certain article recently in the Wall Street Journal.

“I haven't read a newspaper in years,” he said. This is the man who, as mentioned in Chapter 2, found that whenever he read about two subjects that he knew all about in the press, it always got them wrong, which caused him to stop reading newspapers. He planted the seed. And every time I read stories about subjects I think I understand, I agree that the press seldom gets them right. Just be skeptical about what you read, and ...