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Rude awakening?? Re: college


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It depends on which law school. We live next door to a top 5 law school and none of the students I know have had any trouble getting an amazing job in whatever city they wish to live in.

 

Emily

Not sure I'd classify Biglaw as an amazing job. In fact, I know I wouldn't.

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It is terrifying.

 

To balance this, I'll share a really nice anecdote from a lovely young woman working at the Honey Dew Donut shop while waiting for my kid's robotics competition to finish.  I said that's why I was killing a bit of time, and she mentioned that there was a great summer robotics program for high school students  that she'd attended at that university.  So I asked if she'd gone into robotics, and she said no, she'd been a psychology major.  I said 'oh no, and you're working at the donut shop'?  She laughed and said she'd had $15,000 in debt from school, and she was taking a year (or two?) off to work (and was also volunteering in her field), and she'd paid all but $1,000 back already, and she'd been accepted into a graduate program in the fall for social work, which was paid for (nice to hear of a graduate program outside of hard sciences that isn't $$$ - like the vet one).

 

Anyway, it was really nice to hear from a young person who managed to get through the process without a mountain of debt!

 

I'm going to continue with another positive anecdote. :)

 

Our waiter the other night (this time it was my dining companion who was chatting with him - I'm not terminally nosy ;) ) went to undergrad for criminal justice, and took some time off to pay down his debt (he also worked as a crew coach).  He's now paid off his undergrad debt and is starting grad school to become a Nurse Practitioner in the fall.

 

Maybe this will become a more common pattern - taking time off to pay off the first pile of debt before taking on a new pile.  Although it still does most likely delay things like marriage, house, and kids.

 

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In general I believestudents really need to think more clearly about what it is they are looking for from a university education.  The fact is that the university system has become so degraded that it is essentially a way to get job training, and so it should be looked at for most students as no different than any other kind of job training.

 

I think there is a real problem in just looking at very general statistics.  Any given student may be in a different situation.  Someone who wants to be a vet working in a rural area with farm animals, for example, might have very different prosepects in terms not only of employment, but also housing costs and such.  The same goes for doctors - people who are looking at being rural GPs may have all kinds of good options for grants and future employment - just so long at they have their eyes open about what it means to live as a rural doctor.

 

One really useful way to think about job training is to think first about where you want to live.  Lots of people get training and find the job market for their skill is poor in the place they would like to live, and finding a community that is a good one to live in can make a huge difference to quality of life.

 

It's also a good idea to think in different ways than a lot of people are used to about employment.  There is really something to be said for skills that someone can use without working for someone else, or that can be used from ones own home, or in many different places.  There is also something to be said for a job which pays less but early on allows someone to pay off their basic expenses and be fairly independant after that, and skills which allow greater self-reliance and independance. 

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