---
title: "Boy, I sure love college"
date: 2020-10-05
description: ""
---

This semester, I'm finally, _finally,_ finishing up the last class in my
bachelor's. I started this degree in the Spring of 2016, _after I'd finished
my associate's_. So, I've been after this stupid thing since Fall 2014, and
I'm sick of it. Thanks to a scholarship, my tuition has "only" totalled
somewhere around fifteen, maybe twenty thousand dollars. Might be good to know
the exact figure at some point, but since I could technically still drop out,
it's best that I don't think about it too much. 

To think I'm still luckier than so many people. I have seven or eight thousand
something in loans left to pay off, but that doesn't touch the tens of
thousands that people can have racked up against them. And that's if they can
manage to get into a useful school. And that's if they can even afford to spend
time on an education, instead of working to survive.

Even if higher education were free -- great idea though it is -- some people
_still_ couldn't afford to go. It would help a lot of people, but it
doesn't change <span title="Hint: it's Capitalism">the system we're in.</span>

<!--
<a href="../assets/cap_full.png" title="View full size">
<img src="../assets/cap.png"
 alt="The phrase 'It's Capitalism', in wobbly, old-MS-Office-style word art.">
</a>
-->

## Speaking of school

I don't know if you knew this, but people are really rolling the dice on the
lives of teachers right now. Especially in my state. There's an
idiot-and-evil-fueled pandemic going around, and they're dealing with children
by the dozen. The people making these decisions don't have to deal with the
consequences, so why not?

There are teachers who have a master's in education, who are being exposed to
god-knows-what at work every day, and are making less money than any schmuck
who knows what C is. It's madness. I like programming and I've done some tough
work, but it is not as important or as difficult as teaching,
_obviously_. My partner is a teacher herself, and right now the
employment opportunities are essentially:

* Online tutoring with no hours
* Die

I'm even in the office while training at my new job, but there's never more
than 10 people here, and none of their hands are ever inexplicably sticky. I
know that a lot of individuals respect teachers, but the system clearly
doesn't.

My life is not more important than theirs.