These skills are necessary from tech to trades and everything in between. #degreefree

I just finished working in AI machine learning for the past three and a half years. Here are the ways that you can AI proof your child in this job market. Number one is public speaking, public speaking of any kind. Your child needs a job that teaches them basic sales, basic customer service, or take them to a local Toastmasters where you live and make sure they are working on their ability to speak to other people. Make eye contact huge. And this doesn't matter if they are going to be physically talking to people in their line of work or if they're going to be communicating remotely, because you need even more energy if you're going to do it remotely. And learning to speak in physical public will help with that. And I say that as somebody who struggles with public speaking myself. Number two, portfolio, portfolio, portfolio. They need to be able to show their work. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter if they were closing sales. It doesn't matter if they were picking up garbage. It doesn't matter if they were just upselling the checks at the restaurant that they were working at. It doesn't matter if they were working at Home Depot and they did a good job. It does not matter. Built their own PC? Document it. Document it. Before, after. Created a children's book? Before, after. Show your work. People do not care about paper. They do not care about anything except for what you're able to do. That is what skills based hiring means. And the last thing is going to be the most controversial, which is that they cannot afford to be in college for four to six years paying a premium in bankruptcy exempt debt for people to actively kick them in the knees while they're trying to use the tools that they are going to absolutely need to survive. What I see going on with college campuses right now and the way that they're trying to prevent students from using AI is equivalent to watching them try to keep people in the early 2000s from using the Internet. And people are paying for that. That is one of the biggest and most final nails in the coffin for academia and where its place is going to be in the future. It's not going to make it. Parents are paying professionals who have never worked outside of academia to try to fine kick out their kids for using AI, while those same professors use AI to check if the students are using AI and then simultaneously turn around and use AI to make their presentation, to make their syllabi, write their thesis papers. It is backwards to be paying for that unless it is legally required for a license and your child has to do it. There are only 7.7 percent of jobs that fall into that category. So most of your kids don't need to be there. It's a giant waste of their time and money. Tell your kids to paint. Tell your kids to write books. Tell your kids to build websites. Tell your kids to design products. Tell your kids to learn CAD. Tell your kids to learn how to public speak. Tell your kids to learn sales. Do literally anything and then build portfolio and then make sure that they're not wasting time or money on degrees unless it is absolutely necessary for them to do so. Because that time they will never get back. And that effort is better spent on literally anything else.