I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated.

The quote argues that academic credentials alone do not constitute “education” in the fullest sense. By proposing stints as a bartender and cabdriver—jobs that demand patience, quick judgment, emotional intelligence, and exposure to a wide cross-section of society—McGuire suggests that empathy and practical knowledge are learned through direct human encounter. The bartender hears confidences and manages conflict; the cabdriver navigates a city’s geography and its social realities while meeting people at their most candid. The exaggeration (“everyone should”) is rhetorical: it elevates experiential learning as a corrective to elitism and as training in humility, communication, and understanding how ordinary lives actually work.