56 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
56 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Boy, I sure love college"
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date: 2020-10-05
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description: ""
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---
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This semester, I'm finally, _finally,_ finishing up the last class in my
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bachelor's. I started this degree in the Spring of 2016, _after I'd finished
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my associate's_. So, I've been after this stupid thing since Fall 2014, and
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I'm sick of it. Thanks to a scholarship, my tuition has "only" totalled
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somewhere around fifteen, maybe twenty thousand dollars. Might be good to know
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the exact figure at some point, but since I could technically still drop out,
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it's best that I don't think about it too much.
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To think I'm still luckier than so many people. I have seven or eight thousand
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something in loans left to pay off, but that doesn't touch the tens of
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thousands that people can have racked up against them. And that's if they can
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manage to get into a useful school. And that's if they can even afford to spend
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time on an education, instead of working to survive.
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Even if higher education were free -- great idea though it is -- some people
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_still_ couldn't afford to go. It would help a lot of people, but it
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doesn't change <span title="Hint: it's Capitalism">the system we're in.</span>
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<!--
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<a href="../assets/cap_full.png" title="View full size">
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<img src="../assets/cap.png"
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alt="The phrase 'It's Capitalism', in wobbly, old-MS-Office-style word art.">
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</a>
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-->
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## Speaking of school
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I don't know if you knew this, but people are really rolling the dice on the
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lives of teachers right now. Especially in my state. There's an
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idiot-and-evil-fueled pandemic going around, and they're dealing with children
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by the dozen. The people making these decisions don't have to deal with the
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consequences, so why not?
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There are teachers who have a master's in education, who are being exposed to
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god-knows-what at work every day, and are making less money than any schmuck
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who knows what C is. It's madness. I like programming and I've done some tough
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work, but it is not as important or as difficult as teaching,
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_obviously_. My partner is a teacher herself, and right now the
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employment opportunities are essentially:
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* Online tutoring with no hours
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* Die
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I'm even in the office while training at my new job, but there's never more
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than 10 people here, and none of their hands are ever inexplicably sticky. I
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know that a lot of individuals respect teachers, but the system clearly
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doesn't.
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My life is not more important than theirs.
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