The Only Official Thread of the Weekend! WDT 4/8/11

Exactly. I'm not trying to be a downer here, and I think that you should do things that fulfill you, but you need to be practical. How much of an improved income do you think that extra degree will allow you to attain? In how many years? You're better off getting a regular job to pay the bills and have your website as a side gig until it takes flight and you can afford to work on it full time.[/quote]
I don't want to use the phrase "reading impaired" on a drunk thread, for... you know... obvious reasons. But what I'm looking at it a program that would not just be free, but would pay me to attend as a graduate teaching assistant. And it's not like what I'm doing pays great.

The whole point of this would be to have a good shot at an adjunct teaching position, which would likely pay better than anything else I can now.

 

You haven't looked round these here parts much for the past month or two, have you?

If the post about writing is true, then I say do it.

 

Couldn't decide if I should go to the gym now and then drink, or just drink.

But it's raining sideways outside, so I'm pouring a drink.

 

I don't know what this man does for a living...but I want to do it...whatever it may be.

NSFW

 

HIV-positive gigolo?

 

The fact that I have spent the past couple minutes coming up with justifications for this scenario saddens me.

 

You're welcome.

 

So tonight there are supposed to be some storms moving through the area. The worst of it is hitting eastern Illinois and Wisconsin. We're expected to get a few storms, with some high winds. My wife is freaking the fuck out, and is now insisting on sleeping in the basement on the couch down there. Seriously? There isn't even a tornado watch in my area. Not even a thunderstorm watch.

 

Because I am late to the drinking.

She could have been a royal.




And could have counts.

Right?

 

I hop on a thread devoted drinking and bad decisions, only to find career advice?

Y'all are slipping, hard.

 

I can't find my damn lighter. Dammit.

 

The bad thing is that there is a significant opportunity cost here. Well, at least there should be.

I have a terminal degree, and statistically if I were motivated by money, this was a bad decision for me. If I had just gotten a Master's, dropped out, and then spent time working, between raises, promotions, and so on I would have come out ahead. I believe this is probably true. The terminal degree does a couple of other things for me. In no particular order:

• If I ever fall on hard times, then it's more likely I will be underemployed than unemployed.
• It lets me get certain kinds of jobs that are otherwise unavailable or far harder to get. I have one of these, so that worked out OK.
• Within those jobs, it makes it easier to select what you work on, and to get access to the more interesting (and less banal) work.
• In certain communities, it is a force-multiplier. That is, if somebody without the degree does something, and I do the exact same thing, I am likely to get more credit. Yes, I understand this isn't fair, but it's true. In the circles I travel in, senior people are far more likely to listen when I'm talking in a meeting simply because of the degree.

An MFA is probably a little different in what it does for you, but the idea is the same: you invest now for (not necessarily monetary) benefits later.

There's a difference between "unemployed for real" (i.e., you can't get a job anywhere) and "unemployed because you don't want to be underemployed." I suspect BL1Y is the latter.

Living for several (more) years like a grad student, never upgrading from a futon to a couch and eating ramen all the time, is all well and good, but you're sacrificing several years where you could be making a lot more just being underemployed - paying down those loans and saving up for a real couch. At the end, will you be happier? Or will you end up several years older, still in debt, and still only underemployed (but now with two degrees?)

If what you want out of the degree is an opportunity to study writing in-depth and build a social network of critics, I guess that's OK. It seems to me that writing has an abundance of supply and a dearth of demand as a profession. I find it much better as a hobby (writing here, mostly) and as a secondary profession. The royalties I've gotten from my book are a nice (if small) plus-up to my yearly income, but if I actually had to live off those royalties I'd jump off a building and slit my throat on the way down. I have probably made more in salary increases through promotions (partially due to having written a book) than I ever will from the book itself.

Also fix your goddamn logo, it looks like a 4-year old got ahold of the GIMP. Here, the first one's always free:

 

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