Brush With Poverty, Financial Survival And Warning For Humanity’s Future

“Refugees only exist in our world because governments go bad. Wars only take place because governments fail to protect the peace. Today’s failed system of medicine is held in place entirely by government corruption and monopolistic practices, trapping hundreds of millions of world citizens in a system of medicine that only causes disease, suffering and financial destitution.” M Adams

MikeAdams(NaturalNews) Believe it or not, I know what it’s like to live in poverty. I’ve been there myself, and in this article I’m going to share an intimate part of my history that most Natural News may find unexpected.

I’m sharing it because as the reach of Natural News has rapidly expanded across the globe, more and more people know what I stand for but they don’t necessarily know WHY.

Here’s the why.

I grew up in a middle class family in the Midwest and was gifted with tremendous cognitive abilities that were strongly encouraged by my parents through early reading programs. In school, I always performed at the top of my class, usually without any real effort. When the day came to take my college entrance exams, I was one of a small number of people in the nation who aced three out of four sections, earning a perfect score on mathematics, science and writing and getting the attention of many top universities around the country.

In my senior year of high school I was accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to become an electrical engineer, and I had completed college credit courses in microbiology and genetics. With extremely high aptitude in both mathematics and the sciences, career counselors insisted I go to an engineering school to study electrical engineering.

This path was not to be, however, because my family did not have the funds to pay the private school costs of an expensive, out-of-state learning institution like MIT. We were middle class, remember, and definitely not sitting on the kind of funds needed to cover an expensive high-end university.

So I went to college at a state-run university which offered me enough scholarship money to make a college degree affordable. But it wasn’t free, so I worked jobs during college to pay for housing and food. My parents also helped out as much as they could, helping me cover costs while I pursued an education. One of my jobs during college, by the way, was working as a computer salesperson for a custom PC manufacturer, where I learned to build PC computers and install them at customer sites. (One of my customers at the time was a local VA hospital, where I caught my first glimpse of veterans being given shockingly bad medical care, even decades ago.)

I got my degree, but graduated with enormous personal debt

Instead of pursuing a technical route, I found myself enjoying writing so much that I studied English composition, creative writing and numerous technical subjects including mathematics, economics, anthropology and communications. I ultimately graduated with a four-year Bachelor of Science degree in technical writing. My specialty was writing English documentation for technical concepts, especially those related to computer hardware and software technology.

Upon graduating, I took the GMAT with the intention to explore graduate school. My high score got me invitations from schools like Stanford, but I knew I couldn’t afford to stay in school any longer because, like many of today’s graduates, I had funded a large portion of my living expenses with credit cards.

Fresh out of college, I was sitting on a mountain of personal debt and no way to pay it off. The U.S. economy was in a deep recession at the time, and jobs were very difficult to come by. So, in a leap of faith that would forever alter my life plan, I decided to move to Taiwan.

I realize this sounds odd, but I had recently married an extraordinary woman who was born in Taiwan, so it wasn’t as outlandish as it might first seem. Plus, I relished the idea of learning to speak Chinese, exploring a new culture and possibly finding work in the emerging Taiwan-based technical industry.

Our brush with poverty

Continue reading . . .

SF Source NaturalNews  July 19 2014

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