No One Really Cares What You Do For A Living

And if they do, they’re probably the shittier person — not you.

We are not very good of late at actually defining who or what an “elite” is, but we talk a good amount about “elitism” and “being controlled by elites” and the like. We have even had some (more nuanced) discussions about the overpopulation of elites, sometimes framed as white-collar vs. blue-collar and/or “Does everyone really need to go to college?”

I myself was raised by educated Upper East Side (Manhattan) liberals, or faux-liberals (I think my dad was probably 2-for-2 on Reagan), and I went to pretty-”elite” private schools and then Georgetown for college. At the broadest sense, it was drilled into me that certain types of jobs are “elite” and one should pursue those, and other jobs are somehow “beneath” you and they should be avoided.

At the time this worldview was being shaped, when I was maybe 17 to 22 or whatever, all I really wanted to do was either write or work in sports. I eventually got a job at ESPN at 24, so I did both pretty quickly. In some “sliding doors” narrative of my life, I am still there decades later (comical because I would have been laid off four times by now) and maybe producing the Big 12 Tournament last weekend. Who knows? Life is weird.