1 in 2 new college graduates are jobless or underemployed

Look at all the 'follow your passion' articles that appear on HN.

Young folks also take bigger risks, like doing music or art in the hope that they can make it. Add in an education system that rarely considers humility a value and realistic assessment of your skills and that's why people don't have marketable skills.

Mind you, there are places like the School of Music near me where for every incoming class they tell them that they won't get a job and most of them will not make it. It's really honest, but on wildly optimistic 18 year olds it doesn't have much impact.

I personally reject the notion that a degree in Anthropology, English or some other nonmarketable major is a bad idea. Doing something that makes a significant impact in any given field, especially considering the sizable advantages of web distribution, is easier now than ever.

If you feel the deep passion and need for bringing your ideas into the world, you will be successful.

The issue is motivation, you're either working towards doing great work or you aren't.

Most people aren't.

a) No, in fact, I benefitted from the semester. I learned interesting things about, for example, the role of gift giving in society and what it means to be a social anthropologist. I don't regret the semester, but I do think I would have regretted a degree.

b) I never said CS didn't interest me — that "study what interests you" is bad advice doesn't mean to do the opposite. See my reply above for more explanation and a short description of my thought process.

This is overly personal and about to be a little Horatio Alger, but it's a relevant anecdote to the bubble comment so I'll throw it out there -- I personally don't come from a household making more than 25,000 a year, I lived in the esteemed estate of 'Mountain View Trailer Park' just a few years ago and have always attended public school, My stepfather was a construction worker and my mother taught ESL.

My insistence on refusing to believe that you are the result of forces beyond your control perhaps comes directly from this experience. Plenty of people told me that escaping my class was impossible because of the various capitalist systems of control, yet here I am today, hobnobbing with high HN society (kidding).

I'll accept that our medical system imposes undue stress upon those within it, but equally so, it's tough to not concede that many medical problems are ultimately self-induced through poor diet and exercise habits spanning over many years.

I'll reiterate -- your life is yours to create.

"Learn to program" is probably going to be a repeated answer here but I'm not so sure this attitude is going to be doing any good. Enticing people into technical professions that do not have the inclination is not going to make things much better - instead your going to end up with a significant band of people disinterested in their work. We all know how much "negative" work can be done by bad apples in software.

The problem is that everyone has natural competencies, personalities and cognitive methods and only a relatively small sliver have the type that will fit software development. If you think I'm saying were special, I am not. Every discipline has a relatively small sliver of people who will be naturally inclined to do it and enjoy it.

The real problem is us... meaning society. We currently aren't culturally organized in a manner to take advantage of everyone's abilities and part of the main reasoning I'd say is a lack of diversity in terms of what is appreciated and rewarded. From my limited perspective our culture seems to have a maniacal focus on money and a growing monoculture that is focused on how to become a millionaire at whatever cost. Right now software development seems to be a good way to get rich partly due to our monoculture's love of video games, apps, business processes etc. so our industry gets green lit for now so to say.

The problem is that there is a lot of important stuff to us humans all living a better life that the majority falsely considers unimportant and lowly for the most part because of its current low correlation to the almighty profit ... things like culture, art, anthropology, farming, geology, architecture, care-taking, etc etc The sad thing is that we have swaths of people with great skills and inclinations that should be going into these different segments but essentially can't because we collectively don't appreciate people doing these things.

In other words if you ask me our real jobs problem is that we don't have diverse enough "consumers" who appreciate the interesting niches different humans fill.