system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
I remember being told I’d end up in a manual labour job if I didn’t pay attention (and that was a fate worse than death, according to these people) and not a single fucker told me that joiners and sparks get paid more than most office positions.
gpt
When I was 22, fresh out of the Army, my dad's good friend, who was a master electrician, offered me an apprenticeship spot with an official union contract. I turned him down so I could start college, not having any idea how good the opportunity I turned down was. I probably should have noticed that this dude in his late 50s owned three houses and was parking a new $70,000 truck in my dad's driveway.   


I'm happy now in my mid 40s, managing to get a career in marketing, but my 20s and early 30s were a massive struggle bouncing from one dead-end cubicle monkey job to another after college, never being able to find the ladder up.