I hope she goes to college. I think that is something a good role model should do. But I get that she wants to live for herself and not for other people, not for the opinion of people who don’t know her. On the other hand, if a person doesn’t want to be in the public eye, they could remove themselves from the publicity of things like tours and social media.
Simone will be fine she will probably be an influencer or something. If MLR, Nastia, Gabby and Shawn can make a career of just being themselves I’m sure Simone can.
Shawn isn’t someone who I would consider the poster child for making it without a college education. She depends heavily on people who have an education and work experience. It’s true she didn’t go to college, but her husband has an undergrad degree in civil engineering, an MBA, and he inherited a family business (beekeeping and selling honey). Even though she didn’t go to college, much of her current success as a YouTuber is due to her husband who has an education and seems to be editing and producing their YouTube videos. I think her father and maybe father-in-law, too, are building contractors, and her father helped with some of their home renovations. It seems like her parents babysit for their children sometimes.
There are other YouTubers who are in front of the camera, creative, artistic, traveling, gaining recognition, while their husbands are like electricians and working in the background, with far less recognition if any, holding down the business, and their relatives who maintain their merchandise website and do their accounting.
It’s like the quote in the advertisement for the PBS show “Escape to the Chateau” where the woman says something like “behind every romantic tale is the reality.”
Another example of where it seems like someone made it just by being themselves was Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, “Eat, Love, Pray”, which could alternatively have been titled “How I got by on a trust fund life style with a $200K advance from my publisher and my aunt and uncle who supported all of the logistics of my travel adventures.”
That said, if they save a few million dollars, they can probably live on 3 to 4% interest pretty comfortably. But it seems like that describes only one or two gymnasts per quad. I once met a formerly professional tennis player who had a knee injury, which derailed his career and he was working at a minimum wage job. Labor statistics say that people who go to college earn more than people who don’t. An education also gives you a more fulfilling intellectual life. Less education usually equals more boring, repetitive, menial, tedious, underpaid work. A lot of employers in the hiring process sort resumes by degree, and the applicants without a degree are on the bottom of the pile. Which is not to say that people with higher degrees are always good to work with or get along with, or that some highly educated people aren’t narrowly educated.
College is no guarantee of a good job, and it is expensive, but in the long run, not going to college is usually more expensive.
