Warning, rant ahead along with some college questions at the end.
<b>rant</b>
Ok, so working at Wal-Mart did the trick - my ass is going to a college so I can get a good paying job that doesn’t involve me saying “How are you today? Did you find everything alright? Do you want blah bagged? Your total is blahblahblah. Wic? You didn’t tell me this was a @(%&!z* wic until AFTER I scanned your #&!@??? Yeah, I can cash a check. Do you want these hangers? Have a good day/night/evening/fuck your mother.”
I wake up a few hours before work and there’s nothing to do. No one to talk to. Everyone’s at school or work. I eat, shower, get dressed, and do the above from around 4-11 PM. I go home, nothing to do. No one to talk to. Everyone’s in bed and has to go to work/school in the morning. Fuck. I can’t play guitar/bass, my cousins that are living next door with my grandmother (fucking duplex, cousin’s house burned down in January) are in bed. Fuck. So I get on here for a few hours after work, read manga, listen to some music and chat on MSN or dick around on myspace. Eventful life, isn’t it?
<b>end rant</b>
There’s a college in the next town that offers some interesting courses that I’d enjoy taking, so I do believe I’ll be attending Centre College once I’ve got my car paid off. Language classes, psychology classes, computer science, music, religion… these are things I could sink my ass into.
Anyone know of any reliable sources to acquire student loans? How would I go about finding what grants are available to me?
FAFSA, but check with a financial aid adviser to see what you qualify for first…also ask them about any local scholarships that might be floating around that may not be posted elsewhere. My mum works in financial aid and informed me about a scholarship that only a few people had bothered writing a two-page paper for. The subject matter was corny, but I got $500 out of it.
[Also check that your college courses lead to better job prospects and they are not just something you enjoy.
I strongly disagree. Unless you’re majoring in a natural science, math, or foreign language, all other college programs hold about the same job prospects. And its pointless to force yourself to major in something you don’t like; if you don’t like it, you probably won’t be good at it and it’ll be a constant struggle. Science and math at the college level is something you can’t force your way through. In any college there are scores of people each year who flunk their science courses because they wanted to force themselves to become doctors.
I think Curtis misunderstood Rig. Rig’s point is that Cro shouldn’t just take bullshit classes. He needs to get an idea of what he wants to do and what he likes and aim in that direction so he isn’t in school for another 6 years with more and more debt. The thing about getting loans and all that is that you really need to not jack off.
Rig’s point isn’t about how Cro should aim to be something he doesn’t want.
If you’re taking out loans for classes, you’ll want to take Rigmarole’s advice. More specifically, make sure your major either
a: Leads to a professional school or <i>is</i> a professional school, or
b: Has immediate and obvious job prospects after college.
a includes engineering, business, pre-med (usually a science), pre-dent (usually a science), pre-law (anything works), psychology, and architecture. Education too, but there are too many teachers and not enough pay.
b includes non-geological natural sciences, computer science, economics, statistics, and maybe math. Foreign languages too, since you’re lucky enough to know English and every foreign country wants English teachers.
You may be thinking, “As long as I love what I’m doing, I don’t mind making < 30k and having loans till I’m 45!” Don’t bank on thinking that four years from now. Even the best jobs are mostly tedious work that nobody loves. You may as well get a job with good money and security.
As long as I love what I’m doing, I don’t mind making < 30k and having loans till I’m 45!" Don’t bank on thinking that four years from now.
The only courses which have immediate job prospects after college are natural science, math/engineering, and foreign language. Everything else you listed is about as good for jobs as any typical liberal arts degree… Some of them are even worse, since for instance business and education are both notoriously easy majors and looked down upon. A business will hire an A+ humanities student before they hire a business major who got mostly Cs. Same with who Education Grad Schools choose to admit.
Same with law school. For instance, do you know what the biggest major admitted to Harvard Law Schools is? Math, followed by Classics I believe(you need to learn Greek or Latin to get a Classics degree). Pre-law is far done the list… In fact, I remeber one of my teachers in high school telling someone to not even bother with pre-law if they wanted to go to law school.
As for psychology, a psychology degree guarantees squat since you don’t actually have to go to med school to get one. How well you do for yourself as a psychologist has everything to do with how well you market yourself. In other words, how well you are as a businessman, rather than a psychologist. And they don’t teach you how to start lucrative business in psychology courses…
I agree with Sin insofar that you should focus intently on getting your requirements out of the way and getting a degree. But as for job prospects, unless you’re natural science/math/foreign languages, what kind of job you get has much more to do with how well you did in school, what school you went to, and your own aggresiveness and ability to form connections with people, rather than getting a “professional” degree…
Pre-Law is very rarely an actual majour, at least in the schools I’m looking at, Curtis; instead, many colleges have a Pre-Law advisor who tells one what classes to take to get into law school within their majour. Between general liberal arts requirements and electives, it’s incredibly easy to fill most Law Schools’ requirements with nearly any majour (some high-requirement engineering majours would be more difficult, but still possible), and how well one performs in one’s majour and school is more important than the majour or school itself. From what I understand, Pre-Med is much the same way. In general, one most certainly should bother with Pre-Law, as it’s just an advisory on the bar, LSATs, required courses, and the like.
Foreign Language/______ Studies (which usually contain the blank’s language) and Computer Science can actually have good job placement before you even graduate; I know a computer science majour who was pulling in 50k a year from his work before he even got his undergraduate degree, simply from the skills he already had. While Malick is certainly the exception, rather than the rule, it goes to show just what that aggressiveness Curtis was talking about can do.
Pretty much what Xwing said. A good thread for you to read just for inspirational purposes would be GAP’s thread where he said “it wasn’t supposed to be like this” or something or other in his title.
Aggressiveness and marketing oneself are important in any field; many successful people didn’t have a college education at all. If you want to go to college to escape from Wal Mart-like jobs you should study something that raises the probability of achieving your goal. It’s better to have as many cards as you can stacked in your favor.
HOPE is the single greatest plan Zell Miller ever helped insitute in Georgia. Back in the 90s, there was a clamor for the lottery to be legalized here. Gov. Miller backed a plan which stated that the profits from said lottery be funneled directly into a state scholarship called HOPE. Under the HOPE scholarship, any Georgia high school graduate and resident (must be both) is given, if possessing and maintaining a 3.0 once in college, free tuition to any of the Georgia public universities. It also gives ~$4000 a year if attending a private university in the Peach State.
As a result, our public universities have gone up in prestige, becoming more difficult to get into (seriously, UGA used to be a fucking JOKE). The Georgia Brain Drain has been stopped as well as it can. Also, since every single fucking student takes them now, our SAT scores have plummeted to 50th in the nation. Efforts to further tie the HOPE scholarship to an SAT score (or an equivalent ACT score) of like… 1000, have been met with charges of racism.
That’s a really cool thing to do. Colorado spends our lottery profits on the salaries of people who threaten to arrest kids (no, not call the cops on, actually arrest) for being in public parks with no legal authority or even grounds to do so. I mean, they go to protecting nature. The kind of nature people plant and water in cities, and trap any non-approved wildlife on. I wish they’d put ours to state school tuition.
How, exactly, is the SAT/Racism thing explained, by the way? I mean, I understand it’s a pretty blatant load of bullshit, but how does anyone even try and back that up?
Minority students score lower on the SAT. The SAT is inherently racist, favoring white culture and experiences over minority (namely black) culture and experiences. As such, it would be racist to tie the HOPE Scholarship to SAT scores due to their racist natures. I think the main question pointed out is some old analogy which says runners are to marathons as blank are to blank. The correct answer was something like oarsmen to regattas.
Seriously. That’s a rather summarized version of the argument. Charts and figures will be brought out showing the disparity in scores. Studies will be mentioned which show the SAT is racist. That sort of stuff gets bandied about. No one, however, mentions that the minimum SAT score usually mentioned (I believe it’s 1000 on the 1600 scale (1500 on 2400?)) is rather fucking low.
The current average in Georgia is 1472. The nationwide average is 1511. Of course, these numbers are all meaningless since some regions’ students (Midwest?) pretty much only take the ACT.
Coincidentally, the Georgia average has been 984 in the past. I think that was for 2002-2003.
Eh. A lot of the problems I have are because for some reason I want to stay in this area. The Syracuse area is not exactly bustling with jobs. Of course, I’m trying a lot more aggressively than I was before, but I’m thinking that if I really want a job I’m going to have to reach outside my area. That would be easier, if I didn’t let my ex talk me into getting me up to my ears in debt. Nobody to blame but myself for listening, though. Anyway, it wouldn’t be nearly as hard for me if I had:
A. Not messed up my first semesters in school, or retook courses. My 2.79 would be a 3.8, easily.
B. Looked for jobs outside my area.
C. Got an internship. Apparently people want to know that you know how to work before you go to work with them. If I didn’t need income, this would have been a good option.
But now that I’ve changed the wording in my resume (mostly doing with my job, actually- including that I can “multitask” and “other bullshit”) I’ve got a few interviews next week, so it isn’t so bad. I didn’t realize how much of a difference a few words on a piece of paper could make.
EDIT: Also, seriously go to the career counselor when you get to college. If I had done that, I would have saved a ton of anguish. My advisor told me that it would be in my best interest to go in my junior year, but I didn’t listen because I figured (for some reason) that companies would want to snatch up college students by the bagful, or something. I was told my freshman year that it would be much more difficult if I didn’t get advice from a career counselor or somebody, but I figured that I could do it all by myself. Seriously, talk to the damned career counselor, no matter how busy you are. This is assuming your college has one, of course.
