The Higher Education Thread: Justify Poor Life Choices

kegkilla said:

I would think the fact that there is tons of money in all the superficial shit that derms can do that wouldn't touch insurance is a much bigger factor there.

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for sure. They make as much as rads, ortho, and anthesiology , but without the dog shit hours.

Mist said:

Basically all degrees are useless, because college is useless. Almost nothing you could learn in 4 years of sitting through classes taught by mediocre professors couldn't be learned in 2 years (or less if you're smart) of actually working in the field, and you could be getting paid for it, too.

The whole way we do education is bad.

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This is very much a 21st century mindset. It's true, sure, but only recently. The internet has dramatically changed our lives, and there's no going back.

Our educational system employs a lot of people. They're going to resist change as long as they're alive, so institutions always resist change for as long as they can. Yes, college is obsolete, technically, but it's only been 10 years since the internet really became mainstream. Try to remember that for 100,000 years we used word of mouth to transmit information, and that for the last 500 years we've used print. Now in the last ten, we've gone digital.

There will also always be professions in which you'll want an apprentices, and can't really only be learned effectively through reading. Surgery is a great example. All the books in the world can't prepare a person to perform heart surgery. So just give it time, we'll adapt.

Stepdad's a brain surgeon and says dermatology is the best balance of money and free time, especially if they do botox and fillers. The downside is that other doctor's sneer at you, and you don't really do much except make wet skin dry, and dry skin wet.. Radiology, anesthesiology, and endocrinology are other big ones-- though anesthesiology has been described as 99% boredom and 1% panic.

The worst overall is Ob-Gyn. Bad hours, lots of crazy hysterical women to deal with, and one of the highest malpractice insurance rates amongst all fields.

ZyyzYzzy said:

Brain surgeon takes balls and the wi to play god.

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He's 75 and still operating, now only going into semi-retirement by focusing on brain tumors only (no more back surgery). The man is literally a machine and is in better health at 75 than most people at 16, and can stand for 10 hours straight with no need to go to the bathroom. Never smoked a cigarette in his life and "treats" himself to three martinis a year, as well as some fancy Scotch on special occasions. When he isn't working, he's planting trees in the yard or building shit in his woodshed. "Relaxation" is either reading the WSJ or a medical journal. I feel like a lethargic tool just standing next to him.

Frenzied Wombat said:

He's 75 and still operating, now only going into semi-retirement by focusing on brain tumors only (no more back surgery). The man is literally a machine and is in better health at 75 than most people at 16, and can stand for 10 hours straight with no need to go to the bathroom. Never smoked a cigarette in his life and "treats" himself to three martinis a year, as well as some fancy Scotch on special occasions. When he isn't working, he's planting trees in the yard or building shit in his woodshed. "Relaxation" is either reading the WSJ or a medical journal. I feel like a lethargic tool just standing next to him.

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I honestly think my generation is going to cause the life expectancy to drop if there isn't some breakthrough regarding aging. When everyone spends 12 hours a day on a computer, when we hit the 60+ age range I think people are going to have massive health problems. We just weren't built for lifestyle in the 21st century and it takes a lot more than one generation to adapt.

My mom is nearly 80 and she has more energy than any of her children. She looks like she's 50 too.

consensus said:

Aren't you married with kids. How does that work

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Married a few years ago with a 1 year old. Started school when we started dating. Been out for a few years.

I have a bachelor's degree, two Masters, and two doctorate degrees. There is no chance whatsoever that I would have the career I have now without the connections and opportunities afforded me during my education. All my degrees are in the arts, in music. Getting the degrees I did has ensured the living I make, which is comfortable. If I had to choose again, I'd follow the same path in education that I did all those years ago.

Now, to be fair, I paid for my undergrad, but it was in Canada, so total cost each year was about 8 grand. For all other degrees I was on complete scholarship with living stipend. I would not go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for the education I had, even though I now know that in the long run it would easily pay itself off in a short amount of time.

Why does it have to be so expensive? I don't get it.

lurkingdirk said:

I have a bachelor's degree, two Masters, and two doctorate degrees. There is no chance whatsoever that I would have the career I have now without the connections and opportunities afforded me during my education. All my degrees are in the arts, in music. Getting the degrees I did has ensured the living I make, which is comfortable. If I had to choose again, I'd follow the same path in education that I did all those years ago.

Now, to be fair, I paid for my undergrad, but it was in Canada, so total cost each year was about 8 grand. For all other degrees I was on complete scholarship with living stipend. I would not go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for the education I had, even though I now know that in the long run it would easily pay itself off in a short amount of time.

Why does it have to be so expensive? I don't get it.

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You must teach. That's a hell of a lot school. And time. When did you finally get a job? You didn't unless a school hired you.

Pops said:

You must teach. That's a hell of a lot school. And time. When did you finally get a job? You didn't unless a school hired you.

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I taught for a few years, and I continue to teach at a few different institutions as I want to. I mostly work for myself as I took all the knowledge and contacts I had made and dove deep into the music recording and live production business. But I worked with income constantly from the end of my Bachelor degree. I never let school be my only job, and that helped me set up for a career. I was never a career academic even though I spent all those years doing it.

OU Ariakas said:

A legit alternative to going to a 2 or 4 year college with actual vocational training? MUST BE A SCAM.

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Yeah, kinda interested in more details on why the government has such a hard on for putting ITT out of business. No articles really go in depth.

I work with a lot of people from Full Sail (the entertainment / gaming industry version of ITT) and no complaints. They can do their jobs for the most part.

If "student loan debt" is an issue, then accredited US private colleges are far, far worse offenders.

I kind of like the business model of the new tech schools. One of them reportedly charges almost no tuition at sign-up, but they turn around and take a % of your paycheck for X amount of years, or charge the company a fee for hiring you.

Gives them incentive to give you a good education.

Would have definitely preferred to have some kind of internship program for teaching, instead of dropping thousands and thousands of dollars on gen-eds that were just some grad student reading a book aloud to the class. The entire point of teaching is to help students engage with and understand a subject, not to force them to sit in a chair for X hours a week.

As a teacher, I don't make anywhere near as much as a Doctor, but I can't even imagine what I'll do with the amount of money I'll have each month once my student loans are paid off (or forgiven by the government for technically being a Government Employee for 10 years; Un-ironic Thanks, Obama), much less what Doctors make. I mostly feel content with what I've got now, even with the student loan payments.

I think one of my favorite teachers throughout school was probably my HS history teacher, who was our basketball coach. We almost never touched the book unless he was being lazy, otherwise we were always engaged.

Learning can be entertaining and when students are entertained they pay more attention and they are more willing to remember the information presented to them.

I'll find sources later, but from what I recall reading ITT was charging huge tuition and basically abusing federal loans and grants pushing every student into the largest loans they could get. Their job placement and graduation rates also sucked and then there's the fact that none of the credits transfer. Community colleges all have better tech programs these days at cheaper tuition and transferable credits.

alavaz said:

I'll find sources later, but from what I recall reading ITT was charging huge tuition and basically abusing federal loans and grants pushing every student into the largest loans they could get. Their job placement and graduation rates also sucked and then there's the fact that none of the credits transfer. Community colleges all have better tech programs these days at cheaper tuition and transferable credits.

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This is every school. Certain for-profits are being far too aggressive recruiting but then again so is basically every school that survives off the teet of Direct Loans.

Basically, if you milk students for football stadiums and skim off the top it's OK. If you are just for-profit, it's a no-no.

Turns out if you increase Stafford loan caps by $500, guess how much tuition at pretty much every school goes up by.

Anybody watch the recent John Oliver segment about charter schools?

I honestly can't believe some of that shit still goes on in our country.

One thing besides long hours that hasn't been mentioned with medicine is malpractice. Ultimately it doesn't actually happen much and almost never actually results in lost assets or, unless u truly deserve it, loss of licensure, but the 'scares' can wear on the psyche, especially when you consider the large number of type A's that tend to go into medicine.

The emotional impact of medical responsibility is a real thing. A neurosurgeon I personally know was sued because of the following scenario -

-Surgeon in a relatively small town and he is the only neurosurgeon in the vicinity
- two traumas happen simultaneously. One is an 85 yr old ground level fall, large hematoma in the brain in need of emergency evacuation.
The other is 35 y/o male with ruptured intracranial aneurysm.
He decides to emergently operate on the younger male, who lived. The 85 y/o died. His wife tried to litigate. I forget the exact rationale they used but it was irrelevant ,the suit never went anywhere. But he was haunted not by the suit but by wondering if he could have saved them both had he started with the other dude.

Thank fucking god I'm not a neurosurgeon but other areas of medicine are still stressful. That overnight procedure from training where you can't reach your attending, and you have a 3 month old with a complex medical history you don't fully grasp, and you have to make a decision on whether you need to do something or not or their bowel may perforate? Yea, hard to forget stuff like that.
More than the hours (and honestly there are lots of jobs 70-80+ hours), it's the stress that makes medicine a shitty job. It's why when my finance/business friends talk about their long hours and having to fly (business class) to so many different places in just a few days (so exhausting!) my eyes just glaze over