By
grapsfan |
Published
Dec 25 2007, 12:17 PM
The clichéd justifications most people give for quitting school to play poker full-time are threefold:
1) "I'm not getting anything out of my classes and I don't go, so I should quit."
2) "I can't see myself working for someone else."
3) "I can't see myself in a 9-to-5 job."
I have no doubt many people look around their present situation and believe one or more of the above to be true. I also have no doubt many remedies are less drastic than dumping it all to be a professional poker player. The justifications may themselves not be as cut-and-dry as you think – let's try and expose the truth.
If you're sitting in a freshman or sophomore-level class and don't see the point of what your professor (or worse, T.A.) is droning on about, you're not alone. The general education track at most universities is full of stuff that may not interest you. Don't assume your entire college career is like this. You grind the required humanities, math and background courses for a year or two to get to your major class track, also known as "the good stuff."
The grind isn't forever; it's 12-18 months. During this time, you are learning how to budget time & live on your own, learning how to learn and maybe discovering subjects you never knew you liked. And if you find your chosen major isn't the "good stuff" either, switch majors. You'll probably have only lost another year. Considering that you're thinking of making a decision which will affect the next 60+ years of your life, 12-18 months is nothing, a speed bump on the road.
It is now time to let the 18-24 demographic in on a little secret that most people learn in their 30s. Other than indentured servants, NOBODY works for someone else. I have an employer, a company where I do my job. I feel fortunate to have been at some good companies over my career. I've learned a lot about some interesting technologies, met a lot of smart and funny people who have become my friends, and been challenged to grow as a professional. In general, I really enjoy what I do. I give my employer the best of my skills, and in return, they pay me. But I don't work for them. I work for my family, to provide food, clothing, shelter and recreational opportunities for the ones I love.
The reason many young people (and trust me, I feel really old at 38 using the phrase "young people") can't envision working a 9-to-5 job is because the 9-to-5 jobs available to them suck. Internships and summer jobs are full of grunt work that nobody else wants to do. You get stuck with crappy hours, nights and weekends. You go from the cutting edge and challenging projects at your university to tedious research and "status quo" maintenance. When you go full-time, the job is easier to embrace and far more interesting to execute.
In my normal day as a software test lead at MTS Systems, I get up around 6 AM. Unless I'm deep in a tournament the night before, it's usually easy for me to get out of bed with the alarm clock because I’m enthused about what my day will bring. I'm in the office by 7:30 or so. There are times of intense focus, times of casual discussion, and a varying amount of superfluous hallway chatting as well as reading ESPN.com (or depending on the firewall, PocketFives). I have a great deal of professional and social interaction with others members of my project team. Within my job duties are a wide range of tasks, from lab scheduling to release planning to test execution and reporting. The company will pay for me to continue my education, and train me if I want a new position on a different product team or in a new functional role. I usually leave around 4:30 or 5:00, depending on where we are on a project schedule and what I need to get ready for the next day. If I need to get away early or come in late, I can. If I want to work flexible hours or do some things at home, I can.
Some days are difficult to brush off and leave at the office, to be sure. But in general, my job, and most jobs you get with a college degree, is not nearly as tedious or draining as multi-tabling tournaments or cash games hour after hour after hour. I love poker, but I find myself scratching my head in amazement at people who just assume they can happily play massive amounts, all day, every day for the rest of their lives, simply because they've been doing it for the last four months instead of going to class.
I see Poker Discussion comments like this all the time:
"According to PokerTracker, I'm running 4.2BB per 100 hands playing $1/$2 NLHE. If I can 8-table, I'll see about 500 hands per hour. So that's $42/hour. If I do that 50 hours a week, I’ll be making $100k a year! I think I’ll go pro!"
I've never been one to tell anyone what to do with their lives. Just be honest about how much better a poker life would be than your projected future with a college education. Don't kid yourself that taking on this kind of schedule isn't a job. On the contrary, poker can be a job in the truest sense of the word. It's a job with little variety, small amounts of controlled social interaction, limited room for career growth, and no customer for whom you're providing a benefit; all of which are intangibles that make a white-collar job worth doing. A poker table, either online or in a casino, can be just as tedious and demanding as any office you can imagine.
And I’ve never left my office with less money than I had to start the day.
For those who are interested, I've found a couple of YouTube videos that illustrate what MTS Systems does. The first is from an ESPN episode of "NASCAR Today" where they show how racing teams use our 329 Road Simulator product line:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er0CgUGQlYU
The product line I work on operates similarly to the 329, only on a larger scale, for airplanes instead of automobiles. The previous product in the Aero family was used to test the Boeing 777...we make the actuators that apply the stresses, the sensors that take measurements, and the software that coordinates the equipment and performs data collection and analysis. Wanna see an airplane wing bend 28 feet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uo0C01Fwb8