The World According to J.

This has been an insane semester so far.  I’m teaching Western World Lit from 1700-1900 and auditing French in the afternoons MWF.  TR I have Poetry, 19th Century Lit, and Literature & Sociology. W afternoons I have a class on teaching methods. And in the evenings I run. This doesn’t leave me a lot of time to do things like grocery shop or remember to get my glasses fixed.  Also I kinda need to take the cat to the vet but I can never seem to find the time. Poor D doesn’t get to see a lot of me and I’m glad I live with my friends otherwise I’d never see them.

The world according to J is this: I can’t wait until I can just have a normal job, live in one place for more than 10 months at a time, grow some tomatoes, have time to go to the grocery store, and remember what it’s like to have a life.  I yearn for the day when I can do something crazy like take a vacation, read a book for fun, or sit through an entire movie without remembering 1,000 things I should be doing instead.  I never thought I’d say it but the real world is kinda looking good. Being an adult is easier than being an adult and a student.

Currently reading:

• Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
• Selected Poems, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• From Mandeville to Marx, by Louis Dumont
• Platero y yo, by Juan Ramon Jimenez
• The Complete Book of Running for Women, by Claire Kowalchick
• Mise en Scene, by Cheryl Krueger
• Pause-Cafe, by Nora Megharbi
• What to Eat, by Marion Nestle
• Ahead of All Parting, by Ranier Maria Rilke
• The Red and the Black, by Stendhal
• Lyrical Ballads, by William Wordsworth

I think you can guess which ones of those are for my classes.

The End.

It’s done!

Every single thing that is due this calendar year is in!

All that’s standing between me and sleep is a day at work tomorrow!

And then I finally get to sleep in! And clean my house! And take out the recycling!

Yeah, it’s sad that I’m excited about those last two things.

…And Now I Feel Guilty

I just called (well, emailed actually) in sick because I’m not done with these damn papers.  In my defense, the reason I’m not done is because I actually was filthy sick for three days.  Also, I decided getting an A in this class is worth the measly $30 I’m going to lose by not working all day.

So why do I feel so stinking guilty?  (Note to self: get boundaries.)

Answer: Not Much.

In between carting boxes up and down stairs today, I’ve taken time to poke around one of my favorite web sites: collegecandy.com. What follows are some of my favorite articles of the day.

How Much is Your College Degree Worth? Not as Much as You Think

July 21, 2008 By J – NYU

When I was in high school, my parents always told me that the only way I was ever going to do anything in life is if I went to college. NOT going wasn’t even discussed. You had to go to college if you wanted a job. If you wanted to work at McDonald’s or WalMart forever, then fine, you could skip out on college – but everyone knows (at least according to my parents back then) that working at WalMart wasn’t really a job as much as it was a sentence to the worst life ever.

Well, I went to college, and I even did my parents one better and went to graduate school. Armed with both a BA and MFA, I was certain I could pretty much get any job I applied for, and would get paid 35K at the minimum.

Ha. Ha. Ha. And I’m not alone. Not only have most of my friends with MFAs scrambled to find anything to pay the bills post graduation (working at Borders, in a file room…with freaking MFAs!!), but it seems like degrees in general are losing the battle to inflation.

According to this really long and slightly boring article from the Wall Street Journal, college degrees no longer carry a promise that you’ll immediately grab a job and get paid in awesome wages.

“What employers want from workers nowadays is more narrow, more abstract and less easily learned in college.

To be sure, the average American with a college diploma still earns about 75% more than a worker with a high-school diploma and is less likely to be unemployed. Yet while that so-called college premium is up from 40% in 1979, it is little changed from 2001, according to data compiled by Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank.”

So yes, going to college is better than not going to college, but your diploma just ain’t worth what it used to be worth — especially in today’s economy. What it comes down to in 2008 is a small group of skills that sets you apart from other applicants, not just the fact that you have 4 years of psychology classes under your belt.

The moral of the story? If you know what you want to do once you graduate, get real world experience now. Internships and extracurriculars have never been more important, and fostering relationships with people who might hire you in the future is a great way to be sure you won’t be working minimum wage with four years of a good, quality school under your belt.