What's on your mind?

[Kain Nobel]

Education is great. When going to college, make sure you're going for something that people are actually hiring for. Also, you might want to avoid big for-profit universities and opt for a community college instead, it's much more affordable. Take your high school years seriously, if you do really good you'll qualify for grants and won't be spending as much out-of-pocket cash as you would otherwise.

I'm kind of biased towards college though, to be quite frank. I think it's excellent to learn something useful, especially through a structured education, but I think the "jobs" aspect is a big smoke and mirrors game. Take nursing for instance; my sister-in-law graduated as an RN (registered nurse), but she has hardly worked in nursing since she graduated three years ago. No, she does look for jobs, but she's been bouncing between Taco Bell, Carls Jr, caretaker, Arby's, Lowes, caretaker (again), Taco Bell (again), etc and it's fucking heart breaking to watch.

She's worked for two hospitals as a temp, but it's always winds up being 3 months and back to unemployment because they don't have any permanent positions to fill. Everybody and their sister is a nurse in this town according to the job applications I get from people on a daily basis. Matter of fact, my employee roster consists of 3 graduated nurses, a nursing student, 2 beauty school graduates, a teacher's aide... it makes my stomach upset thinking about it, the fact that they're not doing what they paid good money to learn to do.

Also, be wary of any political groups you become affiliated with in college, especially ones who are into education reform. Reform sounds like a great word, doesn't it? The more and more I look into it, I realize it's actually a "buzz word" for bad policies, especially when said reform leads to budget cuts to college education.

College is expensive for two reasons. The first reason is because you're learning new technology (at least I hope you would be), and that technology costs big money to bring to campus. The second reason is because Republican'ts seem to get a raging hard on for horrible policies and screwing over the people they're supposed to be representing, such as tricking students into de-funding the very college they're enrolled in.

...I'm sorry, I did a complete 180 in what I was saying. I'm glad I'm doing fine, the uneducated fool that I am, but I hate to see people who completed their education getting screwed by the system that is supposed to build them up so they can have a better life. I know way too many people who should be doing better than me, but they have no car, no house, taking public transportation and living in ghetto apartments. That is not how the world was meant to work, we need to fix our country.