Boy, I sure love college

This semester, I’m finally, finally, finishing up the last class in my bachelor’s. I started this degree in the Spring of 2016, after I’d finished my associate’s. So, I’ve been after this stupid thing since Fall 2014, and I’m sick of it. Thanks to a scholarship, my tuition has “only” totalled somewhere around fifteen, maybe twenty thousand dollars. Might be good to know the exact figure at some point, but since I could technically still drop out, it’s best that I don’t think about it too much.

To think I’m still luckier than so many people. I have seven or eight thousand something in loans left to pay off, but that doesn’t touch the tens of thousands that people can have racked up against them. And that’s if they can manage to get into a useful school. And that’s if they can even afford to spend time on an education, instead of working to survive.

Even if higher education were free – great idea though it is – some people still couldn’t afford to go. It would help a lot of people, but it doesn’t change the system we’re in.

Speaking of school

I don’t know if you knew this, but people are really rolling the dice on the lives of teachers right now. Especially in my state. There’s an idiot-and-evil-fueled pandemic going around, and they’re dealing with children by the dozen. The people making these decisions don’t have to deal with the consequences, so why not?

There are teachers who have a master’s in education, who are being exposed to god-knows-what at work every day, and are making less money than any schmuck who knows what C is. It’s madness. I like programming and I’ve done some tough work, but it is not as important or as difficult as teaching, obviously. My partner is a teacher herself, and right now the employment opportunities are essentially:

• Online tutoring with no hours
• Die

I’m even in the office while training at my new job, but there’s never more than 10 people here, and none of their hands are ever inexplicably sticky. I know that a lot of individuals respect teachers, but the system clearly doesn’t.

My life is not more important than theirs.