Last week I got to meet Matt Forte in Slidell. He is the star running back for the Chicago Bears, but he got his start in Slidell by playing in the Slidell?Youth Football Association league and then at Slidell High.
Forte brought a great message to the young, hopeful athletes in Slidell last weekend by talking to all the kids about how getting an education is numero uno to being successful in life. That way, if sports doesn’t work out, you’ll have a back-up plan.
Forte played college football at Tulane and graduated with a degree in finance. Of course, he’ll never need that degree because he’s one of the top running backs in the NFL, but he can use his education to count all of his money.
Nowadays, just having any college degree isn’t good enough so students need to make sure they are getting a degree that can be used. A college degree is better than no higher education, but a degree in general studies won’t help you make much of a living after your four years in college.
The top paying jobs are for engineers, doctors, pharmacists, computer science majors, financial advisors and education administrators.
Even with two-year degrees, healthcare practitioners, business analysts, engineers and computer systems managers make a good living coming out of college
The key is that you should do your research before picking a degree. My husband, who played Division-I basketball thought it’d be nice to get a degree in sociology. He chose that after majoring in three other things before that. Then he graduated college and couldn’t find a job making beans. So he went back to school two years ago to get a nursing degree. He had a job within months with a chance to continually move up the ladder and make enough to support his family.
He frequently says that he should have majored in nursing from the beginning. But he was just focused on making good enough grades to keep playing basketball. While you need to make good grades, you need to look at the long-term plan for your future.
So listen to people who have been there before you — like Matt Forte and my husband. Choose your degree wisely.
(Chrissy Smith is Sports Editor of the Slidell Independent, and a former college athlete. She can be reached at chrissycsmith@gmail.com.)
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