quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

i would never ever send a kid to college unless they were trying to learn specific skills toward a vocation: law, medicine, whatever. If they wanted to do anything, they'd be better off going out and doing it unpaid and learning in the field rather than going into debt learning what Joseph Conrad had in mind.
If someone asks if you have a degree, lie. No one checks degrees. They check work history.

i've realized that, barring an insane stroke of luck, i will be "working below" my education for a while. i've tried to put a premium less on what i'm doing and more on what it pays and the people that i may be working with/working under. thankfully i haven't had to slum it on a dock or at a home depot or as a vomit wiper. i've gotten hooked up w/ a few secretarial (more or less) jobs with decent hourly wages, which is in itself a pretty nice stroke of luck and/or the fruits of relative privilege. the work isn't the greatest, but it isn't the worst, either. and i've had an agreeable amount of time to pursue ~other career interests~

yeah I always find that interesting! I don't think it's going to be the case 5 years from now, I think there will eventually be some centralized linkedin-type way that everythinggg is verified. but at the moment it really wouldn't be hard to give yourself a fake degree. xp

most of my incoming interns are less than a year out of college and living with their parents.
Halfway through the internship they get a subsistence level job, cut their hours in half and generally become a lot less productive.
the ones that don't tend to be great.
We have generally hired internally through intern pool for base level jobs. I think most organizations do. Four years paying at college will not get you a job. Four years apprenticing for free at basically ANY job WILL get you a job in more or less any field.

yeah, the one thing i learned about journalism, is that you're p much guaranteed to get a paying job in the field if you go to nyu, live solely off loans/grants, and work for free at various places for four years

iatee, I think I'm saying the opposite of what you think I'm saying. I didn't mean "bumming around", there were more jobs then, granted, but I think people were more likely to stick with them because while that freedom may have been taken for granted, it wasn't as much an accepted notion. You HAD to stick in your shitty job because that was the only way to have a career. Nowadays it's like 'I don't care if there is a job or not, I'm gonna pour drinks and sell aprons on etsy no matter what."

I've always been impressed by musicians and artists who make sacrifices so they can have the time and freedom to work on their "art", andI just think the economy is something of a motivator. A few years ago a kid might bounce around shitty jobs, or even "good" jobs that are still soul-crushing and lead nowhere, because it's what's expected of them and what they expect of themselves.

xp tbf, you could do the same thing to become a butcher, a music exec, a copywriter, an animator, whatever.
just y'know, not a pediatrician or a paralegal or a notary public

Four years apprenticing for free at basically ANY job WILL get you a job in more or less any field.

in the end this is more a quid pro quo arrangement than a reflection of how valuable they are / that 4 years of work experience is. back when we had a real economy entry-level people trained on the job - it's not like that can't happen today, it's just not a logical use of resources when you have people willing to give you free labor.

btw i'm amazed by this but it appears there is NO STIGMA at being a college graduate and living with your parents based on my world of young interns
they're all like "oh yeah, i live with my parents, so there shouldn't be any problem maintaining the internship" and there's not an iota of shame or discomfort in saying this.
When i was fresh out of college, everyone i knew would rather have cooked and eaten a foot than moved back in with the 'rents.

and again, technically most internships are already illegal

yea but now they're all missing feet, think abt it xp

kinda depends on where your parents live
i moved in with my parents and turned into a waitress
some people can live with their parents and have meaningful internships

btw i'm amazed by this but it appears there is NO STIGMA at being a college graduate and living with your parents based on my world of young interns
they're all like "oh yeah, i live with my parents, so there shouldn't be any problem maintaining the internship" and there's not an iota of shame or discomfort in saying this.
When i was fresh out of college, everyone i knew would rather have cooked and eaten a foot than moved back in with the 'rents.

― thank got forks showed up (forksclovetofu), Friday, September 2, 2011 12:18 AM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest

heh, this is pretty accurate. i've def sensed a mutual jealousy, too, like, "oh you have a place? that's cool, you can have sex freely" vs "oh you live with your parents? that's cool, you have money"

and again, technically most internships are already illegal

yeah, that's the truth. I make every effort to make sure that internships are learning experiences and beneficial to the people I'm working with, but that's almost entirely because I'm aware I'm milking free labor in the most fucked up fashion. And I tell them this! And they shrug and say "whattayagonnado?"
Dunno if I mentioned this elsewhere, but i had three interns over the summer who were PAYING to work with me. They were taking my internship for college credit, which meant working 125 hours for free for me and paying their college the cost of a semester's worth of classes. They they write a fifteen page paper and get the credit. It's utterly insane.

oh man

btw, i'm not pissing on living with your parents, especially IN THIS ECONOMY tm
just noting a paradigm shift

living with your parents is pretty nice. i made a decision after nine months (nine!) that i felt like was wasting my life from a social standpoint, but now that i've decided to move out i'm kind of scared shitless. but what're ya gonna do?

kinda depends on where your parents live

yeah people w/ parents who live in major metro areas...areas w/ jobs are in a wayyy different situation. I moved back with my parents when I came back to the country after college, but it didn't even make financial sense to stay - neither close enough to anywhere w/ real job opportunities. how I wish my parents lived in greater nyc, I would totally live with them til age 40, euro-style

I graduated in May and I live with my parents and don't have a job! My other friend who is in this boat is very ashamed but he's got serious self-esteem issues in general. I'm mostly just bored and frustrated because I don't have friends who live around here anymore. No shame though, really. It's safe, comfortable, and free.

Just a data point I guess.

relevant:

http://i.imgur.com/7Nanx.gif

Dunno if I mentioned this elsewhere, but i had three interns over the summer who were PAYING to work with me. They were taking my internship for college credit, which meant working 125 hours for free for me and paying their college the cost of a semester's worth of classes. They they write a fifteen page paper and get the credit. It's utterly insane.

― thank got forks showed up (forksclovetofu), Friday, September 2, 2011 12:22 AM (8 minutes ago)

yep this is pretty much the last 3 years of pharmacy school for me

well i mean, that's one class out of like 8 per semester i'm getting credit for

when i left college, i lived in a shitty apartment with five other people and biked back and forth to my job at the salvation army where i sold baby underwear and carried ratty sofas out to people's pickups. did that for most of a year. That got my priorities in order pretty fast.

if i could get a tattoo of a gif...

calling the dockworker MBA--or whoever is out there saying "i have a degree, i should be putting it to use"--elitist

just to get back to this for one sec because dockworker MBA isn't really saying this! not really. he wants his mind to be engaged in work and he probably wants a certain lifestyle, that's fine, but i am not so sure he understands how it goes! his doctor dreams, to me at least, sound like a continuation of the cycle, like he expects going to med school will solve his problems when it probably won't. he's a guy who didn't couldn't bear to work the phones, started a "longevity drugs" ecommerce site (read: snake oil spammer), turned to manual labor, and now wants to go into medicine... so he can become a snake oil salesman with an M.D. or what? i dunno. i can't divine all his intentions of course. i just... don't feel great defending the guy.

http://twitter.com/#!/longevitydrugs

Longevity Drugstore follows 1,846 people

People: 1,846
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You both follow
ow3np4llett

one of the key moments in my life was when i worked the salvation army cash register and some poor redneck couple came up with brood in tow and the guy sorta looked away a little ashamed from me and the woman put a handful of not-so-gently used children's underwear on the counter and meekly asked if we'd be willing to do a quarter apiece instead of a dollar. following the moment i just put them all in a bag and said thank you, i think you're all set i said to myself, FUCK THIS NO MORE RETAIL EVER AGAIN and thus rejoined my grand adventures in the exciting world of waiting tables for another ten years or so.
i still wake up with panic nightmares that I have to go to work at a restaurant. may be scarred for life.
so what i'm saying is that I Wish I Had Known Then about the intern system cuz I'd never heard of it at the time.

a handful of not-so-gently used children's underwear

new board description

Four years apprenticing for free at basically ANY job WILL get you a job in more or less any field.

haha but not in consulting or medicine

At least not after the Nineteenth Century.

living with your parents is pretty awesome if you get along with them I don't know why everybody doesn't do it

I guess I'm lucky to be someone with a high tolerance for doing things that seem boring and uncool. Out of college, after some initial trouble finding a job, I took a job at a really, really shitty newspaper in NJ for $20,000 a year. From there I moved to and spent several years at a really monotonous and lonely job that was barely journalism at all but paid considerably better and left me time to play in bands. When I got tired of that I went to law school and basically made doing well in school my life. I did internships throughout school to build experience and contacts. After a LOT of interviewing I got a job, then lost that one because the firm couldn't afford to hire me, then scrambled to find another one and now I have this job in an area of law that wasn't even one I thought I was interested in, although it turns out to be more interesting than I thought.

I think the economy sucks and that's a bigger problem than any of us, but I also think people are coming out of school, especially nice private colleges/ivies, with too narrow an idea of what they could/should be doing at that moment. It's like "I want to work at the New Yorker one day, so I need to get an internship at the New Yorker ASAP," which just doesn't seem like how life works.

I mean what's so bad if you work on a dock for a year or two? At least you'll have something to write about in your first essay for Granta or whatever.

That's a good pt although in my life I seem to have dealt w a weirdly high number of low paying but high stress and long hour occupations, few of which I'd say were learning experiences. I can chalk this up to some poor decisions, certainly, but also just have found that there are more than a few employers at the bachelors deg level willing to take advantage? idk maybe this is getting too personal but I kind of feel burned by the 9-5 opportunities in a plethora of industries

I mean what's so bad if you work on a dock for a year or two?

Nothing at all. Except it's not just a year or two as of 2011. I graduated in 2002 from college, and I've had to take assistant-assistant/ad hoc/one-off/minimum wage/intern/low-level contract positions for seven years since then, even w/ 2 post-bac degrees. In exchange, I'm massively in debt, I've got terrible credit, negligible healthcare, mediocre references, and a spotty, incomplete, employment history that spans about 5 fields. For a combined total of 20 months I have been employed in a position that makes use of my education, and I'm currently applying for jobs that are at a "lower" level than right when I had just graduated from college. I've been repeatedly turned away and discouraged from seeking "professional" work because I am (a) "old to be starting out" (b) "got a lot of gaps in employment" and (c) will need to "start at the bottom - and wouldn't be happy doing it."

It's been my experience that employers will actively discriminate against those with higher degrees, either out of insecurity, to take advantage of a "better, more thankful" workforce, or because they (speciously) claim that more educated people 'wouldn't be happy' in X job. Education has been the worst for this. When I was 22, I was able to get work as a substitute teacher no problem: I'd taken education courses, and I was willing to show up at 7:30 in the morning. Then I got a MFA, and I was too expensive to be hired by the publics, and my certification process lapsed. To re-complete it, I got an M.Ed., but now I'm priced out of the job market w/ 4 (desultory) years in the classroom and 3 degrees. I've been told – recently - that I shouldn't bother applying in certain districts because budgets are so tight, and I'm too expensive to "gamble on." To get myself back in the schools – a job I held competently at 22-23, and have more training and ability for at 31 – I've had to complete a supervised 1-year internship for which I paid $30,000+, and soon I'll begin working as a part time teacher's aide at $12/hr for 20 hours a week to a 23 year old first-year teacher who's spent less time in the classroom than I had a decade ago. And this is a huge bet: I'm betting that next year the school will see my value and hire me, without guarantee or assurance from them. I'm betting a year of low-paid, low-esteem, high-stress work that my 'value' will be seen, even if it traditionally hasn't. I know anecdotes don't prove anything, but I've got a lot of friends – JDs, MBAs, MLISs – who are in very, very similar situations. I don't "deserve" the job any more than the 23 year old does, and I can't be bitter at her for taking it, but I have every right to be angry with her insistence that she is somehow more worthy and prepared for it than I am.

In other words: fuck the guy who worked on a dock for a year or two. Big whoop.

you guys, MBA dockworker graduated last year, and is on his third consecutive (not concurrent) low-wage job. not worth defending.

I also think people are coming out of school, especially nice private colleges/ivies, with too narrow an idea of what they could/should be doing at that moment.

I'm sure, but the rule-following, over-achieving mindset that gets you into, and through, a nice private school/ivy does does not then poof disappear on graduation day.

^^^ good points both, elmo/laurel

I've been avoiding this thread because I have some irrational thought that a good college education is still somehow an inherent good, but I'm trying hard to get over it.

In the old days, and I'm extrapolating based on what I know since I obviously wasn't around for them, a college education was prized because it was both a social mark and a sign that you'd be qualified for a tier of jobs that may have been attainable by working your way up through the company. Not that it was a way to skip ahead, but that positions seemed to have a higher worth if they required or were populated by an educated person. College took money to get into, or you'd work your ass off to pay for it, or you were somehow qualified for a scholarship.

I keep thinking of the jokey part of the movie The Graduate where he's taking time off after finishing school, presumably some sort of liberal arts degree, and there's this assumption that he's going to be able to find some sort of office job, in an era when non-office jobs still outnumbered office jobs by a lot. The jokey "plastics are the future, get into plastics" thing is unreal these days. I mean, if he's doing sales or copywriting or whatever else in 2011, he's going to just try to get a job wherever the hell he can! If you want to get into a field, you're probably studying chemical engineering or some shit if you think plastics are the future.

Now we're to the point where it's expected everyone has a college degree, most jobs in cities that college grads go for are office jobs, and a liberal arts undergrad degree means you're the same as everyone else, not that you're "educated."

I kind of wanted to get a pretty sweet degree in something that would certify me as a man of books and letters, but I ended up with computer science and the slight guilty feeling that I'm employable.

See, I wish I'd followed through on comp sci or psychology instead of a squashy English degree. At least I'd have a chance at an IT tech job.

My friend's girlfriend was telling a story about how she got her BA and then got a shitty apartment and started temping and immediately wanted out and decided grad school was probably a decent idea. Several years later, she's a "senior research associate" (went from BA in biology -> grad school in biogenetics I think?) and doing ok.

So yeah, maybe the key is just explaining to kids that the point of college isn't to train you for a specific career and that a degree in and of itself isn't a guarantee for a job. I don't know if I ever really understood that, but I lucked out. I still think education is an inherent good, but at some point you have to eat, right?

I think that a lot of education (especially liberal arts, which I love) is unfortunately a little too high-minded and detached from the working world. And while the cognitive conditioning and work habits it inculcates are for the good, and the acculturating it offers productive (even if only, like 30% of the US is able to get it), it's often useless and inapplicable in the real world. It's valuable in a larger life sense, and sometimes it helps make young people more globally aware, but I don't know that I believe it's better than four years of apprenticeship if we're looking at it as job training.

To be honest, even computer science is that way to an extent, which is why colleges are offering programs that sound like a more academic version of job-training courses (software engineering, for one). Most CS programs are still incredibly theory-based, with only the entry classes (intro to programming) and a handful of the junior/senior year classes involving actual programming. The rest is pretty much mathematical proofs, how processors work, and low-level theory.

I thought it was a good program at the time as it creates a more analytical mind, but I also ran into grad students who could barely operate a computer at the time even if they had a 4.0 in all the theory shit. So, it makes me sad that there's pressure to make college programs more like job training, but I see where the urge comes from.

the thing is, the large majority of office jobs don't need tailored training and w/ our economy people can expect to work in more than one field over their lifetimes. while *more* job training is good, it can't solve every problem.

big picture problems:
a. college is ridiculously expensive
b. there are no jobs

Yup, basically we've backed things into a corner by:
- Requiring a college degree for every entry level office job
- Increasing the cost of those degrees when they're no longer a scarce good

The problem is that most of the remedies I see proposed to this boil down to "Keep lower-class kids out of college."

they already are!