My first tour I sailed with another deckhand that had recently quit a Fortune 500 company. He was in his early 40s and told me once, "I grabbed my nest egg and decided to do what I really wanted to do and work on a tugboat."
He was a great shipmate and on top of that he was quite entertaining.
A couple of tours later he left for a job as a deckhand with a better company to work for. (I stayed and when I retired found out it was worth it because I wound up with a small pension.)
I have worked with people of every educational level and in fact it really never made a difference as far as the work went. I have seen a King's Pointer get busted from captain to mate and replaced by a guy that might have had a GED, if that. I have seen the opposite happen, too.
In the tugboat world the ability to handle a boat is what matters and you don't learn that in the classroom.
We just like working on the water for whatever reason.
The last guy I worked with had a master's degree in Constitutional Law from an Ivy league school.
It was an interesting career.
I had similar occurrences working in construction. Jobs like these are truly not DEI positions. I loved it!
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