free money; Liz rambles about college degrees, depression, and other vaguely related stuff

[edenfalling]

I received my economic stimulus payment today. The IRS sent me a letter last week telling me to start expecting the check last Friday. This is two postal days later, which is astonishingly timely for government work!

I'm going to dump half of it into my IRA (yay retirement planning), and the other half is sort of retroactively covering some of the purchases I made over the past few months (DVDs are expensive...), so I suppose I've already done my part to keep consumer spending up and the economy ticking over as smoothly as can be hoped for. :-)

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In other real life news, my sister got her Masters degree on Saturday. Three cheers for Vicky!

...

I swear, I have got to pull my act together and go back to college next year. I think I'm the only person in my family for three generations who doesn't have at least a BA. And considering that my mom has two MAs, my dad has a Ph.D, and now my little sister has an MA, I look really inept by comparison. *headdesk*

It's not that college was ever hard -- actually, I might have done better if it had been harder, because I would have been forced to concentrate more, which might have helped counter some of my depression-induced tendency to drift loose from my life. It's partly that I went to college without having any real purpose -- I went to college because in my family, that's just what you do -- and it's partly that, when cut loose from my established support systems, I fell all the way down the rabbit hole into a very bad headplace that I'd tenuously been avoiding during my last couple years of highschool.

I find that it's much easier to keep my head straight if I'm doing something that feels... meaningful isn't quite the right word. Solid, maybe. Pragmatic. Work grounds me. When I tried going back to college after only one year off, it felt like I was stepping off the earth into a bubble world, and I went right back to drowning in guilt, avoidance, melancholy, and all the bad habits and thought patterns I'd just spent a year trying to unlearn. So I dropped out for real and spent the next two years properly rearranging the inside of my head.

I think I could cope with part-time classes now.

The trouble is, I'm not sure I can pay for them. And I still have no driving need to major in anything, or to go into any particular technical field... but I would very much like to have a piece of paper certifying that I am a reasonably intelligent person who can jump through hoops like a good trained monkey. It makes it so much easier to find a decent job.

It would also make me feel better about myself -- in a very real sense, I would be getting a degree just to prove that I can so do that sort of thing if I want to.

Also -- and people will probably squirm if you confront them with this flat out -- a lot of Unitarian Universalists are intellectual snobs. There's a tendency in my church to assume that if you're young-looking, you must either be a college student or work at a local computer company or something. When I tell people I'm a shop clerk, there's a strong tendency for people to say something along the lines of, "Oh. Well. That's interesting," and then rapidly change the subject.

Getting a degree wouldn't change that particular conversation -- at least not until and unless I get a different job as well -- but it would at least make me feel more secure in my utter lack of ambition. :-)

Comments

[snaegl.livejournal.com]

Y'know, the only difference between the two of us is that you discovered these tendencies during college and I'm going through it now. I had the realization that just about every major action that I've taken in my life was to please someone else. It's a rather depressing discovery.

Then there's the even more fun question of, "so what do I really want to do?"

When you figure that one out, please tell me.

And congratulations to your sister!

[edenfalling]

Well, half of my problem was that I did know what I 'really wanted to do' since I was very young -- I wanted to write stories. The thing is, I never expected to make a living off that, and so I floundered around trying to find something else that I was equally bone-deep set on doing, but that paid more reliable money.

I still haven't found that hypothetical 'something else.' I've just slowly come to terms with the fact that as long as I have something to get me out of the house several days a week, a moderate level of contact with other people, enough money to maintain a moderately comfortable standard of living, and free time to read and write, I'm happy. I actually wouldn't mind working at a shop for the next few decades -- I'd never be thrilled about it, but I have a track record of burning out on 'thrilled' pretty fast, so it may be for the best that my current job doesn't demand huge emotional investment. :-)

[drich.livejournal.com]

*but I would very much like to have a piece of paper certifying that I am a reasonably intelligent person who can jump through hoops like a good trained monkey. It makes it so much easier to find a decent job.*

This is depressingly dead on these days. Can you still just get a General Arts & Sciences or Liberal Arts degree with no specialization or narrowing down?

However, just because others in your family have degrees and focussed educational goals, don't let it dissuade you from working in the real world and trying things out. That in itself is a goal and can be rewarding if you happen to find a niche that satisfies.

I spent 4 years at a university and came out knowing a little about a lot of things (eclectic courses) but no degree or career goals. I decided it was time to give the real world a try to see if it would force me to figure anything out about my life. And it actually did. I determined I like learning at my own pace and for my own reasons. I didn't want a career (the parents had those), just a job that would support a reasonable standard of living and my hobbies and that I could 'leave at the office' at the end of the work day. I've lucked into jobs that I have liked and have actually put bits of my eclectic learning to use. On job apps and resumes I've only listed the attended X university and never had to say whether I had a degree.

So yeah, the paper is nice and can be a great help in getting jobs, but sometimes you can gloss over that and let your real world learning and experience stand for you. It seems like with all the nonfiction reading you do, you've got eclectic learning to apply as well.

The bigger problem is location. Small college towns are great for the social and community aspects, but generally not so good for the non-degreed jobs. The bigger cities and metropolitan areas have more to offer jobs-wise but of course have other downside issues.

There's also the mental and emotional issues to deal with, either with going back to school or taking the step to change jobs in the town or moving to a larger area.

If you have already made the decision to seriously take classes and stay in the area, have you checked into getting some kind of job with the university at all? Any kind? Usually if you can get employed by the school, there are some flavor of educational benefits offered.

Sorry to have splooged in your journal. I'll mop up now.

[edenfalling]

I'm not sure if you can get a general degree. I was majoring in German (language and literature) before I dropped out, but that was mostly because I wanted to keep my hand in. Since I kept taking German classes, it was easier to declare that as my major rather than try to concentrate on anything else.

I haven't checked Cornell's job site lately. My plan was more to try one of the state schools, and go for mostly online classes, since I think that will be both cheaper and easier to work into my irregular work schedule. But I will keep that idea in mind -- thanks for the suggestion!