Had A Painful Conversation With This Girl Today

Even worse is the economy and job market itself. I have a friend who graduated with a shiny law degree, was living the six figure lifestyle in Chicago working at a nice firm. He's been living back at home ever since his firm went under a couple years ago and working at some fast food place.

And he's not the only one like that either. I have quite a few friends with degrees in a wide area who are back at home after their companies went under and they couldn't find anything outside of the food service industry.

So now many are in debt to their loans and making only slightly more than min wage.

But yes, overall, it was pounded into us all through middle and highschool that in order to succeed, we NEEDED a college degree. No one ever said anything more than that. It was just "GO TO COLLEGE AND SUCCEED!" Luckily I never bought into the bullshit.

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I'm not sure why young people seek to earn degrees in art, theater, soft sciences, or other niche fields of study, and then expect to be showered with money after they graduate. I suppose they're too naive to grasp worldly reality, and our society is too permissive to burst their bubbles.

Reminds me of one of those "occupy Wall Street" pictures I saw. One of them portrayed a young woman holding up a piece of paper that read: "I'm majoring in minority women's studies, I want to work in activism and I am the 99%."

Who do they think is going to pay them top dollar to "work in activism"? There's nothing at all wrong with activism, but it's a self-sacrificing career choice. Six-figure salaries are paid to those with expertise in engineering, architecture, the hard sciences, medicine, and power professions (business, expert consulting, etc.).

This can apply to either men or women, but I agree that women seem to choose these "soft" professions far more often than men. My sister was one of them. She studied theater, but is now in law school because she realized (when internship time rolled around) that actual jobs in the theater are very competitive, and pay rather poorly even if you manage to secure a good one.

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[–]ExistentialEnso 11 points12 points13 points 14 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

Pretty much, though more their high school than college ones. I think another factor is the recent trend in the US to tell kids that they can accomplish anything with enough hard work and perseverance, which, even if it wasn't only a half-truth, says nothing about how much money you'll make in the process.

You could see how, over a college experience, the attitude would diminish too, I just certainly witnessed a lot of people wanting to make a liberal arts education something it wasn't.

I, on the other hand, am completely with you -- I already had a pretty deep understanding of computer science (I've avidly coded since age 9), but philosophy is a great tool for teaching critical thinking, which has helped me inordinately. Speaking now from within the field, I think one of our biggest problems is an abundance of people with CS knowledge, but without the skills needed to best apply it.

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I think worse than the idea that anyone can achieve is the idea that everyone is "special" or entitled to something. Many of my "bright" students are quite entitled, and believe that if they perform poorly, it's my fault.

As a teacher, I reward hard work and dedication much more than natural intellect, because (as someone who previously worked at a Fortune 20 company) that's what's necessary in much of the work force. Yes, intellect and dedication are preferred, but a lazy "smart" individual won't get you too awfully far.

Regardless, I agree that we need to focus on skills, not on "knowledge" or rote memorization. Testing, the way it's currently done, is horrendous and students have quickly begun displaying "learned helplessness" (i.e.: looking for what the "right" answer is, per the teacher). I struggle with this, in my area (where students are routinely behind) and try to impart upon them the value of critical thinking and defending with evidence. The thing is, it's hard to give a skill without the prior knowledge evident; granted, they don't need to know everything, but...

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Depends on what you specifically want to do. These days, I'd suggest really looking at web and mobile development in greater depth, though degrees often stick to more general subjects. However, a lot of academic programming is done in Java these days, which is the language of choice for Android development.

Be sure to be able to be able to wrangle with a database. Knowing SQL is obviously helpful, though a lot of the industry has begun using "NoSQL" (just a term for any non-SQL database) types like Cassandra and MongoDB.

If you want to go into games, you'll want to look into both lower-level graphic libraries. Something like OpenGL might be a bit daunting for a beginner, but most 2D libraries are a good place to learn concepts.

Don't be afraid to enrich yourself in related areas too. Competency with stuff like HTML, CSS, the Creative Suite apps, a *nix shell, version control systems, etc. will all help immensely in the long haul, even if they aren't, in the strictest sense, computer engineering.

And don't be afraid to get creative with your own projects! It's a good learning experience and can help teach you how to tackle more complex problems in a way more concrete assignments you might get in class can't as well. Plus, it can be surprisingly fun once you get into it.

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I got my B.A. in History. I never expected to be rich, but I thought I could at least carve a lower middle class existence as either a teacher or archival worker. Have you seen what's going on in the teaching field recently? I tried it; it's a horrible profession to be in. The latter field is also very unstable with all the library layoffs and lack of openings. Both require a grad degree; so more money to jump into a sinking ship. I've never had an aptitude for math (but that doesn't mean I didn't try! I tried very hard!), but I've always liked science. At 18 I could not foresee how worthless my degree would be, I just knew that I always liked history. I wish I or my parents would've had the foresight not to send me to college, to have me learn a skilled technical trade. But really, I was told all my life to just go to college and study (anything, maybe not Art History, but they made it seem like most things were legit) and that if I did this I would do alright. My class was the first to graduate into the recession. I didn't expect to be rich, but I thought having a degree would get me a low but reasonable entry-level salary. Now I get no respect, and I feel like a chump.

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Maybe your medical science degree did, but not every degree does. Every stupid program likes to lay claim to "critical thinking," but they teach absolutely nothing of the sort. It's just a catchphrase that shitty universities like to employ.

For example, the amount of critical thinking that appears on a daily basis in a biology program is much less than the amount of critical thinking that may occur in a rigorous philosophy program. But, look, there's nothing inherently wrong with that; that's not the meaning or scope of biology. It's just what they study, and students of biology can pick up their critical thinking skills separately, or by reflecting on the material themselves. What we mean by the liberal arts stimulating critical thinking is more precisely that the material itself is closely tied to the products of critical thinking (e.g., thought experiments, branches of philosophy like epistemology, formal logic, etc.).

I'm still frequently baffled at how narrowly I've thought about some things, even though I consider myself a reasonably critical person. Think about these introduction level questions, for instance: What's the nature of the law? What constitutes knowledge? What comprises "liberty"? Is there a "right" and a "wrong"? Should we be principled or effective, or do consequences bring about good principles, or do good principles bring about good consequences? Why should we even tolerate other views? What about the more difficult questions, like whether or not faultless disagreement is possible with our intuitive understanding of binary logic? What is the nature of mathematics, and what do mathematical objects represent?

Now, try to think about them without any of the assumptions you might have never realized were merely assumptions or axioms in your worldview-logic. Using the law question, we might say "laws are there to protect people from harming each other" (a kind of Millian no-harm interpretation) or are "an expression of coercion." But, there are laws out there that do not subscribe to this rule and are completely arbitrary, like which side we stipulate driving on the road. You could make an argument for organization and safety, but the nature of having chosen right or left remains arbitrary, and worse, that's only if you firstly assume that organization and preserving life are good things. And, "to protect people"? Which people? You mean, individuals? Who are individuals? How do we define "the individual"? Our sense of individuality and the boundaries of our person can be completely lost when the left side of our brain is turned off or hemorrhaging. And, more importantly, why do we put the "individual" on a pedestal anyway? Individualism, as an idea, is a fairly new concept, and possibly as artificial as anything else. So, how do we escape the classical liberal paradigm, and can we logically justify our laws more universally? Conversely, if we entertain collectivist notions, can we divorce collectivist morality from utilitarianism? What implications does this have on the way we view the law? Heck, is judicial review anti-democratic? Wait, is democracy even a good thing?!

Since you did medical science, let me ask you a fun question, one I like to pose to people who claim that philosophy is useless because it'll never cure cancer (not that you think that, since you seem to hold philosophy in a higher regard).

Why should we even cure cancer?

[–]Wolf_Protagonist 3 points4 points5 points 14 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Awesome post! I wish that more quality content like this would get upvoted, instead of the one liners, but this is reddit.

Why should we even cure cancer?

As someone who lost his grandmother to uterine cancer, A father who died of lung cancer, and a mother who successfully beat breast cancer twice so far, I have thought a lot about cancer.

Of course there are a lot of different ways we could look at this topic.

For me, personally, it is about suffering. It's not so much the "Human life is precious" argument, as it is about the quality of life for those that get cancer.

People with cancer are going to seek treatment. This will prolong their life, but how good of a life is it? Is it extremely painful? For most people the answer is yes. [Cap Obvious: And if they don't seek treatment, they will die painfully.]

I think the only compassionate thing to do is find a cure. The only other real alternative is to allow people diagnosed with cancer to end their lives, something that most doctors and patients are hesitant to do.

Obviously, overpopulation rears its ugly head when we talk about curing any fatal disease. I am not sure what the answer to overpopulation is, but I feel that any reasonable response would not involve failing/refusing to treat fatal and (most importantly) painful diseases.

I guess you could ask me why I feel that compassion is a virtue. From a 'game theory' perspective, the more you help ease the pain and suffering of people, the more they will like you. Liked people are often treated better in our society and often fare far better than un-liked people. AKA, the golden rule.

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[–]LeeHyori 5 points6 points7 points 14 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

True. Luckily or me, I only have to pay $1,750 per year for a top 15 education. But yeah, Philosophy majors actually earn quite high and have the highest % increase in salary over the course of their careers. Check out this data: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html

Organize it by column to see how remarkably high rated Philosophy is at the 75th and 90th percentile marks, and see how they top the chart at % increase

It's actually a big misconception that philosophy will lead you to nothingness. I know these are just individual stories, but George Soros studied philosophy under the famous Karl Popper. A lot of philosophy majors find themselves in finance, for some reason. My future brother in law worked as an investment banker at CitiGroup, and some of his colleagues had B.A.s in Psychology :|. In any event, I'm just pursuing the truth here!

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As for pay: http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/pn9na/had_a_painful_conversation_with_this_girl_today/c3qwcs9

As for the philosophy having an effect on people's lives, I guess that truly depends on the person and how seriously they took their education. You could most likely say that about any major; a lot of people end up doing things completely unrelated to their field of study or simply do not recognize the gravity of their field of study altogether. Remember, a Bachelor's doesn't dig very deep. Regardless, a lot of testimonies from very rich or famous philosophy majors reveal how much they value their philosophy education and how they'd never turn back on it.

Here's a really nice list of famous philosophy majors who would likely speak highly of their concentration in college (and who have): http://healthcareethicscanada.blogspot.com/2008/12/philosophy-degrees-and-famous-people.html. Perhaps you will change your opinion?

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It also depends on the quality of the college or university that you attended, and the level of humanities courses you have taken. From my experience, people do not understand the rigor of some liberal arts disciplines unless they are actually enrolled in a liberal arts program or an honors program. Everyone else kind of picks up the joke humanities courses that are designed to fill people's schedules or are taught to students of other disciplines as general education or solely elective courses. For example, the difference between a humanities course in a liberal arts program and an open-register humanities is absolutely night and day. And for the students who get special permission to register into the L.A.-exclusive courses because of scheduling requirements, it is usually a nightmare.

But, I'm glad you said "if they were all as rigorous as the philosophers tend to be ..." Because that's actually 100% true when it comes to the liberal arts. Philosophy is actually serious and studies formal logic itself.

I also wrote this before about the difference among sciences, arts and professions, which may be of interest to you: http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/pn9na/had_a_painful_conversation_with_this_girl_today/c3qs1um

P.S., I think the worst are social science students. Have you met the sociology or psych students?!

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Hands-on get-shit-done skills are best taught by getting your hands on and shit done. They are valuable, but not ideal for teaching in a university environment.

That said, the ability to think critically, take in a broader perspective, and to articulate your thoughts is a useful and worthwhile skill set for anyone both on and off the job, no matter what that job might be.

The mess that is the american higher education system has not been able to do as good a job as it should in teaching these skills though. I actually did a persuasive speech on the subject for the class I had with this teacher (public speaking).

At the core of the issue is a feedback loop. Students are bombarded with universal promises of a better life through higher education, so they are willing to take on large debt burdens to achieve their higher education. Banks are eager to sign them up, because currently there is no way to get rid of student loan debt, not even through bankruptcy, and the secondary market for student loan asset backed securities is always hungry for these literally risk-free investments. With more available students, schools want to increase enrollment, so they expand their administrations to handle admissions, marketing, campus planning etc. With large administrations come large administration costs. To cover them, schools increase tuition. Students are willing to take on the increased debt. Rinse and repeat for a few decades and you have tuition rates that have grown 900% over the past 33 years, 650 percentage points higher than inflation, and almost all of that tuition going to fund administrations obsessed with measurable success and marketable products. Where you once had three full time professors for every part-time teachers assistant, now the ratio is reversed. And where you once had liberal arts programs that turned out strong critical thinkers and active citizens, now you have underfunded, understaffed departments that excrete students with barely more knowledge than they had when they arrived.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 14 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Hands-on get-shit-done skills are best taught by getting your hands on and shit done. They are valuable, but not ideal for teaching in a university environment.

OK let's just stick to what I know, business and programming. I want business admin graduates who can within 5 minutes copy-paste two tables from a database to Excel, link them with VLOOKUP and throw up a Pivot Table to achieve a custom report. I want programming graduates who might not know all the theories of CS but can whip up a PHP webshop in a day. Or I want marketing students who can take a cam, make good enough photos of products and whip up a beautiful website with a product list in a day or two, leaving the shop part to the above student.

Critical thinkers we need on a higher level. On entry level, grunt level we need to get stuff literally done, with few questions asked, efficienty, quickly. Otherwise no hire. Whever we decide to spend our money on paying a salary, we need to have real tangible stuff-got-done value delivered, and we generally need it quickly because the management will delay hires until really necessary and then everything must be done in a hurry.

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I major in math and physics, and if it's one thing I have learned during my study, it's the things you are mentioning. Being an intellectual has nothing to do with someone wanting you to be that, or taking a few subjects. It's about things like:

Logic, to correctly understand the implications of ideas.
Critical thinking, to analyse ideas and to be able to pose good and relevant questions.
Showing interest outside of your comfort-zone and to be open to new ideas and concepts.

All of this has little (except for logic, which is a must) to do with choosing your major, it has to do with who you want to be as a person. Your major is about your main field of interest and should be vocational. The abovementioned majors are not much more than subjects to expand your horizon. These are not academia.

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This is largely correct, except for one thing: It's not "hard sciences"; it's professions. The natural sciences are, for the most part, just as "useless" as the liberal arts, given that natural science is just the new name we've placed on natural philosophy (hence the name "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" for Newton's most famous work). The pursuit of the natural sciences—though the hard sciences do often have applications—is not extrinsic; its goal is simply the pursuit of knowledge and truth through rigorous empirical methods. For instance, studying the origin and nature of the universe has very little application in real life, but astronomy and the astrophysics are definitely part of the natural sciences. Physics has many applications in engineering, but physics is not engineering. If it were, it would just be engineering.

Likewise, unless you intend on pursuing a profession in medicine or pharmaceuticals, fields like biology are equally useless. And, as it turns out, data shows (PayScale) that biology majors are perhaps some of the lowest paid, even though biology is definitely a natural science. What people need to understand is that there is a huge difference between a profession and the hard sciences, because if we delineate it along hard science/soft science lines, you will find that economics majors (which is a social science) basically fuck everyone up in terms of how much they earn. You could argue that it has many applications in business (which it definitely does), but a lot of economics does not care about business or business practices. And, again, if it were business, why not study, um, business? Likewise, the natural science/arts dichotomy finds difficulty with professions like Law, which you could handily classify as an applied humanities (in my opinion, the practice of law can be largely deemed "applied philosophy," to the same effect that you could see engineering as applied physics).

Edit: I'm primarily talking about the difference between the liberal arts and the natural sciences. For things like theater, etc., I think those fall under the category of professions as well; they are just professions with bad pay, provided their aim does not concern truth like natural science or philosophy.

[–]sunnydaize 0 points1 point2 points 14 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points11 points 14 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

I'm not sure why young people seek to earn degrees in art, theater, soft sciences, or other niche fields of study, and then expect to be showered with money after they graduate.

In my experience, most of the people in these fields don't expect to be showered with money. They understand that they are exchanging the higher possibility of a well paying job to be taught about and possibly have an entryway into a career that they'll enjoy.

I, for one, am not sure why it's so hard for people to understand that some people are far less concerned with how much money they'll make than how much they'll enjoy their life. And these people act like the ones who follow what they enjoy are idiots, or something.

I have a friend who graduated with a degree in accounting... he hated it. He's now going back to school to learn to be a brewer.

He originally took the path to monetary gains instead of what he actually wanted to do. Turns out, he fucking hated it. He now, according to your attitude, naive because he must expect to be incredibly wealthy as a brewer instead of doing it to enjoy his work.

Stop assuming everyone in these programs is naive and is expecting to be wealthy. Some of them actually want to enjoy their work and life, even if it means they won't be incredibly wealthy.

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Do you have an actual counter-argument or are you just going to keep posting petty attacks and cheap ploys? How is it "sexist bullshit" to state observable and pertinent facts? This is a social reality. I'm not saying that all women are like this or that this is the rule for every woman but that there is definitely a common pattern here that cannot be denied and shouldn't be ignored. Women are, on average, choosing these majors because they can afford to in the long run(not just because they are generally more likely to have their education paid for but because women can still succeed in life, both financially and romantically, without any pertinent, practical or applicable skill/knowledge). It is also a fact that women are a minority in virtually all fields that are socially looked down upon(whether it's because they consider it dirty, meek or boring) or, at the very least, looked down upon by the female majority(something which comes as a result of male association, male objectification, male disdain and misandry), despite being given a significant amount of incentives over men. How many men do you think have the option to just "drop out" and then find a girl that would not only love them regardless of income but actually fully support them for the rest of her life as well? Also... are you really going to argue that majoring in soft-studies(plenty of which are actually available solely to cater to, and capitalize on, the female majorities who employ them and generally recognized as "party majors") is actually harder than any comparable hard-science?

[–]NiceGuysSTFU -5 points-4 points-3 points 14 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

Women are stupid, unserious, golddigging bitches is not an observable or pertinent fact.

How many men do you think have the option to just "drop out" and then find a girl that would not only love them regardless of income but actually fully support them for the rest of her life as well?

Off the top of my head, I have two good friends and one brother that are dropouts. All make more money than their wives, who have undergraduate degrees, too. I don't think I know any women who are dropouts.

Also... are you really going to argue that majoring in soft-studies...is actually harder than any comparable hard-science?

What hard-science is "comparable" to American Literature or History or a foreign language? Apples and oranges. I didn't major in the hard sciences, but somehow ended up beating up on a lot of those majoring in it in my CS classes. I found my background in language arts as well as affinity for logic/math to be helpful, though I can't say that those skills would translate well into other fields such as teaching, social work, arts management, nonprofit leadership, etc. You know...all those fluffy, meaningless professions that don't require an M.En.

[–]ExpendableOne 3 points4 points5 points 14 years ago* (2 children) | Copy Link

Women are stupid, unserious, golddigging bitches is not an observable or pertinent fact.

Not what I said at all. People, of either gender, have the capability to be "stupid", "unserious" and "gold-digging" but the reality of it is that women do have the social privileges to not only get away with exerting all of these qualities then but get away with it later on in life as well. Women having those privileges, and abusing those privileges because they are in a position to, is most certainly an observable and pertinent fact. Women also feeling a lot less pressure to pick careers that are financially rewarding, rather than careers that are personally rewarding, compared to men is also an observable social fact.

Off the top of my head, I have two good friends and one brother that are dropouts. All make more money than their wives, who have undergraduate degrees, too. I don't think I know any women who are dropouts.

A few exceptions don't make the rule - I have certainly know countless women(and men) who have dropped out of school and especially from hard-sciences - but being successful without having an education is also completely besides the point. Those people who succeed without that education did so by selling themselves, being very lucky or working very hard but they still have to succeed professionally to succeed personally. Women do not have that same problem. Alternatively, I have also known plenty of women seek higher education(from a diplomas to masters) in fields that may or may not even offer any real career opportunities(on their fathers/husbands dime to boot), only to then simply drop out or never do anything with those degrees, just because it was easier/nicer to fall back on men to support them. Not all women are like that but the fact that there is more than a significant majority of women who either do this, or are in a position to do this, is also an observable, and undeniable, fact.

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I'm pretty sure weeglos means that students who'd be entering lower-paying jobs would receive more financial aid to compensate. That makes a lot of sense to me, actually.

I don't see how that would create "castes". For one thing, children of the wealthy can study whatever they damned well please anyway, so we're mostly dealing with middle- and lower-class students here (the typical recipients of financial aid). For another, most students choose their majors based on what they think they want to do, not on financial considerations (if not, we wouldn't be discussing this).

If anything, a financial aid system similar to what weeglos proposes would promote more equality — because poorer students wouldn't be punished (in terms of simply paying for their education) for studying something that won't shower them with money after they graduate.

I'm one who wishes that everyone who desires a higher education (and can make the grades) would receive one for free, without having to shell out tens of thousands of dollars.

[–]weeglos 6 points7 points8 points 14 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

I'm pretty sure weeglos means that students who'd be entering lower-paying jobs would receive more financial aid to compensate.

That's pretty much the opposite of what I mean, unless you're talking about grants. If schools want to offer private grants to prop up certain departments that don't graduate students that are able to pay off their loans with reasonable ease, then it's their prerogative.

The whole concept revolves around making sure that students who are sold a bill of goods by some sociology/art history/basket weaving professor aren't forced into a life of indentured servitude to the bank or the department of education.

Let the wealthier kids go into careers that won't pay squat - they can afford it. Let the kids who can't afford careers that won't pay get steered into better paying fields.

[–]iongantas 3 points4 points5 points 14 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

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[–]weeglos -1 points0 points1 point 14 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

No, you're missing the point. The fact is, college is nothing more than a job training program for the vast majority of students, no matter what your professor tells you. Colleges educate people for the workforce and charge people for it, which people take loans out to pay for. If they can't pay those loans back with the degrees they get, they're held accountable by the Department of Education or the bank. This causes poverty for people in their 20's as they struggle to obtain jobs in fields that they realistically had no chance to obtain gainful employment in.

According to this article from 2008, the number of philosophy majors at Rutgers doubled in the previous few years. Outside of university faculty positions, how are philosophy majors going to be able to provide for themselves after college? We just don't need that many philosophy majors to fill the limited number of jobs for philosophy majors - but nobody tells college freshmen that. They tell them if you believe in yourself and work hard, you can do whatever you want in life. Then they graduate, and take up residence in their parents' basements for the next 5-10 years while they sling lattes at Starbuck's or some other low paying job in the service industry, completely unable to provide for themselves.

This might be a fine situation for someone with family money who can afford to not obtain useful employment, but for someone who doesn't have money, this is disastrous. It perpetuates poverty by encouraging people to make poor choices.

Yes, you're right - someone could revolutionize their field with some grand philosophical navel gazing. They could also win the lottery, and likely have the same chance of doing so.

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Of course there's "this whole thing called the creative industry" — but there's also this thing called "in-demand professions." Professions that are in high demand pay much better salaries than do professions based on obscure special interests. That's reality, and it will never change.

A further reality is that writing, art, film-making, and other creative professions are fickle. They're extremely competitive fields in which it's difficult to succeed financially, and if students expect to pay off $100,000 or more in college debt soon after graduating with such a major, there's an excellent chance reality will body-check them.

I've said two different things in this entire conversation: I would like people to be able to study whatever they want, but they can't then expect to be showered with money no matter what they choose to study.

Again, that will never change.

[–]nanomagnetic 0 points1 point2 points 14 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]millertime73 -5 points-4 points-3 points 14 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

I'm not sure why young people seek to earn degrees in art, theater, soft sciences, or other niche fields of study, and then expect to be showered with money after they graduate.

In America at least, liberal arts education is essentially a legal pyramid scheme. You have a group at the top, say the college advisers, counselors, professors and the like who make a comfortable living off the mass amount of wide eyed students racking up massive student loan debt annually.

They sell them in their comparative literature classes on romantic notions about how they are going to change the world. They inflate their egos and sense of self-importance, they tell them anything is possible. The kids are usually too busy partying and just being 20 to stop and think, is this really a possibility?

They then get their degree in Women's Studies, Greek Classics, Art History, Sociology or English and then realize, the only people making a living off of this, are people that are part of the machine that teaches these fields to other kids. By the time these kids realize they are in massive debt with almost zero hope of a real job, there is a brand new crop of wide eyed freshmen coming in to replace them and spend another 100K that will take them 20 years to pay off.

Many of these kids will have eventually mental breakdowns, after which two things happen. Some will blame the system and Republicans as they sit in their favorite indie coffee shop, stagnating in their bitterness as they live at home for years. Others will realize that sitting around a table in class after reading "Into the Wild", yammering about how "feeling strong" was somehow more important than "being strong", was stupid. The latter people will handle their shit and go back to school for a real degree and learn from their real world life experience. The former, become lifelong Democrats and if they're really lucky, college admissions counselors or advisers themselves.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points5 points 14 years ago* (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]millertime73 3 points4 points5 points 14 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

You think it is accidental they purposely saddle your soft-major degree'd ass with student loan debt then giggle as you sit on wall street chanting you are the 99% until you get kicked out?

It's the irony of all ironies, isn't it? I personally knew a guy who had a mental breakdown while making sandwiches at Subway. He had two liberal arts degrees (including a masters) from two different prestigious top tier private colleges along with massive six figure debt. He tried teaching high school, it wasn't for him. He thought he was going to write a movie, then a book of poetry, he believed all these ridiculous romantic notions that he'd been spoon fed for six years straight. When reality hit him and the fantasy crashed down, he flipped his shit and ended up in a mental ward then back at home with his parents.

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Educational paths is a choice, race is not. The problem is not those who chose less economically profitable degrees, but those who complain about income gap while not realising the choice they've personally made to contribute to it.

I'm very for art history. But when so many want to study it compared to how many jobs there are in it, they push wages downwards.

But what I don't get, is why so few get to study e.g. medicine when there is a lack of doctors, and so many get to study folkloristics when there are so few relevant jobs. I mean, I could understand why in a pure for-profit educational environment they would offer the courses students wanted (though even there it's a mystery they don't educate more doctors), but especially in my country, universities are very far from for-profit.

Yet they still offer tons of "useless" courses. Why?

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It isn't about piggybacking, it's that an environment becomes more hostile and/or less accessible if there isn't anybody in it like you. It doesn't have to be intentional on anybody's part; it just happens, from the sheer novelty of it. A black person surrounded by white people will feel less at ease by default; similarly, a woman surrounded by only guys. This creates a de-facto segregation effect due only to how most people subconsciously operate, even with no intentional hostility at all.

I would say yes, men should be upset about that. I don't think men face the same unease in a predominantly female environment necessarily (certainly it varies by industry) but there is a huge stigma against men taking up traditionally "feminine" professions, just as there is a stigma against men doing anything feminine (by contrast, women doing masculine things is often approved of -- this is because traditional gender roles dictate that masculine behavior is superior/ more valuable than feminine behavior). I know I'd like to see this archaic ideas dry up and lose their power, and every other feminist I know agrees. I'd imagine MRA would see it similarly.

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[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 14 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

it's that an environment becomes more hostile and/or less accessible if there isn't anybody in it like you.

Classic bigotry from an SRS poster, not surprising at all. People aren't always going to be hostile towards you just because they are different, you know. Being uncomfortable with a work environment because there are too many men is sexist, just like it would be sexist of me to get mad that there too many women in certain fields. Men shouldn't have a problem with most teachers being women, but what is often complained about here is how at times men who spend time around children are portrayed as pedophiles. I also like how you avoided bringing up the example of a white person being uncomfortable surrounded by black people, because pretty much everyone would agree that's racist. BUT NO, IT'S DIFFERENT, huh?

traditional gender roles dictate that masculine behavior is superior/ more valuable than feminine behavior

That's a pretty simplistic and overly subjective way of looking at it. To say that masculinity is universally defined as good while femininity is universally seen as bad is obviously the result of confirmation bias on your part. There are many examples of situations where the opposite could be seen as true. One could just as easily argue that men aren't as valued in feminine roles because women don't like it when men do things that women are more comfortable doing themselves, like how men are the ones that are more likely to do things like throw out the garbage or mow the lawn or do any of the handy work around the house.

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[–]surfnsound 3 points4 points5 points 14 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

I didn't downvote you, but let me try to explain. You're right in that prima facie this would not be a men's right issue. However, the fact is that someone will look at a complaint that there are so few women in C-Level exec positions, and decide that the only possible explanation is discrimination. To that person, it isn't conceivable that the choices people make might be significantly different along gender lines and that those choices could contribute at least somewhat to said statistic they do not like. To them, the only solution then is to appeal to some higher authority to correct the great injustice they perceive. Many people view these corrective actions to actually hurt men.

Secondly, there is the old chestnut that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. If this woman was so concerned about the number of female execs, she would have majored in business to try and make a stride toward a more favorable ratio, instead she chose an unrelated degree and sits on the sidelines cheering on the aforementioned appeals instead of examining her choices and those of women like her.

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Had A Painful Conversation With This Girl Today

Comments

IT'S NOT OUR JOB TO HOLD YOUR HAND AND EXPLAIN EVERYTHING TO YOU!!!

Title	Had A Painful Conversation With This Girl Today
Author	sorryimachampion
Upvotes	708
Comments	312
Date	February 13, 2012 8:42 AM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/pn9na/had_a_painful_conversation_with_this_girl_today/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/had-a-painful-conversation-with-this-girl-today.1027767 https://theredarchive.com/post/1027767