> If you managed to learn more from your fast food than your humanities degree...

It's not about learning "more". It's that earning a degree is an academic undertaking whereas working at a coffee shop is "real life".

There is no need to treat one as more or less valuable/useful than the other. They're just different kinds of human experiences. Learning is possible from both.

If you find that sort of work, tedious and monotonous, then I think that says more about you than the job. I’ve been a janitor, a barista and a software developer, and they all are fascinating and fulfilling in different ways. Of course if purely measuring on status, comfort and financial renumeration software dev currently beats them all handily, but to imagine there is nothing you could learn, nothing interesting, nothing fulfilling in other types of work is pretty arrogant. The lefties might even call it privileged.

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