When I saw the title of this thread, I thought, "Oh good grief, not another lengthy post about someone's bizarre world-view". But then it turned out to be a thread with a short OP about doing things you like because you like doing them, even when you hate doing them. And that's pretty cool.
<br />Most of the people I knew in high school who went into a field 'for the money' dropped out within a few years and went into a completely different field (often real estate sales, for some reason). Some did that, then gave in and followed their passion in their 30s or 40s, and missed some good years of doing what they want. Many had no passion and just fell in to some job they're unhappy with and counting the days until they can retire on full pension.
Ah, real estate. People really bought it that the value of this one type of asset, unlike any other, will always go up. That is not investment. That's more descriptive of a Ponzi scheme, but especially into the late 90s and early millenium, people greedily drank from "Rich Dad"'s Kool-Aid. That really turned out well, didn't it?
(edit: For the record, I also know that the roots of the real estate crash go far deeper than the line of books by Robert Kiyosaki, so that's a really specific shot at him and maybe a little unfair. People like Kiyosaki are the face of that crisis, but in the higher echelons, people like Angelo Mozilo are worse. Even the application of Ayn Rand's ideology by her pupil, Alan Greenspan, has been just great for the world around us. But all in all, that says nothing of the greed that drove individual home owners to borrow way more than they could repay, buy way more house than they needed, and bankrupt their own futures and those of entire neighborhoods. That was their call.)
