Read More, Learn More, Earn More & My Love of Starbucks Coffees

A cycle of industrialist production, lesson, and investment revenues that I briefly stowed aside in my peanut-sized hippocampus spaces.

It pays to be reading and learning.

I do not just see a $6.75 Starbucks coffee anymore in the morning, afternoon, and longer evenings of ordering a cafe drink & doing studies.

Reading was not always my strong suit. I often fell into the duality thinking of “this-or-that, one cannot be both.” It often felt like the notion of:

“you can only become a strong mathematician and computer scientist or become an awesome reader and writer”

That was often fallacious and consequential thinking of divided subject classrooms focused on specializations instead of blended teaching.

I have always known this at a young age being surrounded by world-class astrophysicists, university lecturers, scientists, and engineers from a fortunate encounter however that reading unlocks a better future.

I was part of the admissions to learn about research methodologies with one of the world’s oldest and possibly first American research universities, Johns Hopkins, receiving a big envelope package with acceptance information at age 8.

I would have forgotten about the experiences if they were not so profoundly impactful over the years and life’s forcible changes.

I was being housed, fed, taken care of, maintained, flown to, and scheduled with while I got to study astrophysics from lecturers typically charging fees to universities at sums of $500,000.00+ for their time at institutions.

As I became older, I wondered what happened to the investment model that I was familiar with- I showed up to learn and I would be taken care of.

Why did it become harder that I no longer got paid to study?

People no longer wanted to invest in providing free education a generation later as often or as readily. I happened to learn about something my University of Chicago traveling lecturer would call intentional program structures while investigating the intersections of civic policies and their systemic effects on poverty studies.

What about the premise of only investing in teaching people that would work with you and for you later on as well? That happens at for-profits.

There were many different kinds of credit and recognition programs touting their usual advisements, counseling, suggestions, and enticements to join their organization and enterprises.

As I continually continued in the workforce. I wanted money.

Academic units, grade markings, and a thing called unpaid internships were largely swarming and saturated into job and economic markets.

The idea of where a business or company offers training for a candidate and mentorship in exchange for the laborious effort is really awesome for the creation of talents within enterprises.

However, it should sound very similar to the structures of academics and prestigious credit unit award recognition for the attainment of skills, training, and signatory approval that leads to better work.

One of the challenges though is the recognition of rigor, successfully transferrable abilities, and its impact on future lines of work within a specific enterprise or the generally broadening industry afterward.

I still wanted to be paid to study. I didn’t want that to change.

I earned various scholarships while studying at the goals and laddering up towards the expertise found at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, and other academically enticing campuses that could take care of their studentship while pursuing studies and creating production means.

After a while, it felt more laborious to pursue this route.

There is a large conflict of time equity being spent. If I were busy trying to fundraise and collect funding that secures the budgetary wins of affording education, that opportunity cost too can longer be spent on the core goals of academic educational attainment & progression.

I couldn’t be reading and interviewing for another non-profit contest, a banker’s philanthropist line, or shopping to be crowned a Burger King scholar, at the same time, all the time.

Why are libraries some of the only free resources left in the world?

Libraries amaze me. It is one for the $0.00 for learning spaces.

I still wouldn’t get paid to learn…. but…

They have subsidies that keep them running and largely from the revenues of late fees, charges, and menial collection or earning opportunities. Yet they are still some of the only generational, completely free, and supportive environments for free informational materials.

Authors can charge for the writing through book sales. Companies can exchange time and labor for earning for ulterior motives including expecting future employment at their own firm and enterprises.

Libraries can be much more expensive and inaccessible… however, there is a structure that limits them only as much as the volume of customers, open hours, employee retention costs, and the connection between them that can become summed up. Barnes & Noble with their $6.75 Starbucks premium coffee is an excellent sample of a commercial version of the publicly free-facing accessible libraries that most are familiar with.

Libraries could be expensive but they aren’t sometimes. Good people work hard to keep them free and accessible in that manner for a long time.

So why can readers earn much much more?

Readers are able to mass a large broad or specialized skillet of knowledge. I find that the more information I read from various directions can influence my thinking and allow for perceptions in the world that lead to competitive advantages.

I can see the opportunity cost between deciding on iced water with a $0.10 lid fee or purchasing a $6.75 drink. I can see that the uniforms of teammate employees build team morale for their management teams. I can see a truck doing its shipment morning runs and revisiting a studied graphic about the processes behind procurement as a function for businesses. I can see that each process is limited by the hands and means of production and labor available.

All of that information gives a competitive market advantage.

I can understand there are different practical and monetary aspects involved in the working realities of the world that a reader cannot conceptualize not having done reading or long-winded observations. Alternatively, others taught or could have told of it.

Readers ultimately earn more because:

(1) Readers develop broad or specialized knowledge that lets them see processes, structure, and the money involved in each segment. Each process and segment is an opportunity for a role, task, high-ticket employment, or development process.

(2) Readers can see and think about the things that ordinary people would pass up on. Sometimes people just see a $6.75 price tag and a coffee. Not everyone is thinking about the attractiveness of green design marketing, branding equity & loyalty, or procurement supply chains to consumer satisfaction front-facing services.

(3) Knowledge equity rarely ever goes away. Reading attains knowledge and that information is very hard, if ever, at risk of disappearance. It’s similar to how hard it is to unlearn to ride a bicycle once it has been learned.

Knowledge equity achieves higher pay rates, offers, competitive bids, and salaries for in-demand expertise needs.

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