Comment on ambition
troyunrau@lemmy.ca 2 weeks agoNot true, really, presuming we’re talking about “working for a space agency” versus “becoming an astronaut”. There are at least 100x more opportunities if you’re willing to sit in a desk and review regulations for a living – but at a space agency.
Really, the minimum barrier is being good enough to get into a STEM focused undergrad program, and qualifying for student loans. Assuming you make it through and are smart enough, grad school is typically wholly funded by the universities (or their funding agencies). Which means the barrier of requiring wealth was already passed.
Source: I made it to grad school and I am from a farming family that went bankrupt when I was a teenager.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Wealth will always be a barrier for a child to grow up in a decent home environment. A minimum amount of wealth is required from the parents in order to feed the child proper nutrition for the first ten years of their lives. If they don’t have that good early start, it won’t matter how smart they are, the individual won’t progress very far and definitely not to their full potential.
I’m Indigenous in Canada and I basically grew up poor, my parents were hunters and trappers that were born and raised in the wilderness. I honestly believe that nutrition at an early age is basically what saved me. We were never wealthy so we could never afford store bought food but my parents were skilled hunters and trappers so we had more than enough wild meat all the time. I grew up eating moose, goose, caribou, beaver, a variety of fish and smaller animals. Mom also gave us a steady diet of oatmeal every single morning when we were kids. We seldom had much sugar or processed foods because we couldn’t afford it.
I did pretty good in school and I might have even been able to move up to post secondary but we could never afford it. I had the grades but not the wealth or mobility.
I compare my life to those I grew up with. A few of my cousins were like me and they were bright people but the majority of everyone else didn’t have parents like mine and they suffered through school and didn’t gain much of an education. They didn’t have the same upbringing or parents as mine and they didn’t do as well … even though we all lived in the same circumstances.
So like I said … generational wealth will always be the first barrier that an individual has to break in order to make it in this world.
There is a lot of freedom and opportunity in the US and Canada (where I’m from) but as the saying goes … “It’s a free country … as long as you can afford it”