So...how was your rapture?

On the 31st, I may dress up in a costume in hopes that the rapture mistakes me for some desirable to be saved.

 

Reason #632 why I'm looking forward to Hell: it'll be a huge reunion of everyone who's ever posted on this forum.

 

I thought Hell WAS this forum?

 

at breakfast (Sartre)

 

If that's true, I'm never eating pancakes with any of you bastards.

 

Nah. This is self-induced purgatory. It's closer to using "the stranger" on yourself than it is true suffering.

 

I'd still hit it.

 

I think you have the right mindset here, but I do have to disagree with you on this point. I went to school for a very specific field in heath care that has a known demand and it's already paying dividends. I think those people who went to school for a bullshit degree in "communications" or "philosophy" or something like that (without a job path EXPLICITLY known or guaranteed ahead of time) are now finding out that 100k in debt with a degree in jack shit means you're in for tough times.

Aside from my school loans (which I'll pay off in like 6 years total) I'm in the same boat as you. We live in a debt-based society, but that's what it takes to live in that sweet house or drive that awesome car you really shouldn't be having anyway. Buying a reasonable car outright that I could afford instead of taking out a loan for some expensive thing I don't need is the kind of decision I'll never regret.

 

Personally I educated my brains out and indebted myself to the eyeballs with no real view to a career or income at all.

I know I'm terribly autistic or idealistic or both, but I still reckon sweet delicious learning is worth more than the human society +/- debtometer.

Then again, I don't recommend it to anyone else.

 

The whole debt issue is why I've decided to become an engineer rather than a theoretical physicist. I'd still be able to take physics for fun, but with the engineering courses I'd be able to find a well-paying job right after earning a bachelor's degree. Still want at least a master's, though.

 

To some extent, that is why I chose engineering over teaching. At some point in my life, I think I would like to give teaching a go, but my parents talked me out of teaching in favor of an engineer's salary.

Working as an engineer alongside people who do not have degrees, I do not understand why the pretense of a degree carries so much weight. I think it would be far more efficient to hire a graduate of high school and train him the job-specific skills of the position rather than hire somebody who has pursued a degree and acquired all of the skills that will go unused along with it.

All autism aside, learning for the sake of learning is a noble pursuit, but it can be achieved without accruing debt for example, at a local library.

More to the debt discussion, a friend of mine complains of her sister-in-law for pursuing her education degree at an expensive, prestigious university. Her point is that the market for elementary education instructors is not competitive enough for the degree to give her in-law an edge over other applicants and that it will not improve her salary. In short, she'll get the same crummy return on her absurd investment as every other educator.