Good post by Megan “Jane Galt” McCardle, who’s filling in at Instapundit this week. It’s about how mind-numbingly boring high-paying jobs can be, and how severe the winnowing-out process can be.
I have a pretty unromantic job, editing a pharmaceutical trade magazine. It’s not what my teachers and professors had in mind when they told me I’d “be a writer,” but I do it well, have learned a ton about this industry and business overall, get paid nicely, and have been to a lot of places I’d never have seen if I wasn’t working in this sort of job (next up: Madrid and Nashville!).
When I went back to my old college a few years ago to speak on a panel about “independent publishing,” I tried to explain to the undergrads the importance of flexibility, and learning how to do something in a field you never thought you’d be in, “mainly because you’re almost guaranteed to end up hating whatever it is that you’re specializing in here at college.”
They thought I was joking.
Anyway, Megan’s post is a pretty good, so give it a read:
There is a tendency among liberal arts types to think that it is grossly unfair that investment bankers make so much money, when said artsy type’s clearly more socially valuable work is so pitifully renumerated. Having spent a summer doing it, I personally think that anyone who is willing to spend his Saturday night going over the fine print in an SEC prospectus until 2 am is welcome to all the filthy lucre they will pay him.