If you are lucky to have the opportunity, my unsolicited advice, aim for whatever line of work encourages or allows you to be the best version of yourself (including parts of you that love and heal and care).
I can't help but notice that you talk about higher education like it's 1996. Who is going to school in person these days? Is that some weird thing they have in the US? Here in Australia you sign up to study online, you skip the lectures, work full time, do a little Khan Academy at 3 a.m. in the morning after a massive bender and 3 years later you're just well enough qualified to leave your job at the piss factory. Who is going in person in 2025? Jeez, that's just cringy.
No one I know is doing uni to get into academia, they're doing it so they don't have to work at the piss factory. It's not a golden ticket, it's a stool in the shit heap, a way for the working classes to drag themselves up from the bottom. It's by no means perfect but it's something and with a bit of fandagling it can be parlayed into bigger things. Of course, here in Australia we have a very generous student loans system that only takes a little froth off the top of your pay once you're already earning quite well. So I guess the algorithm is a very different in that regard and on a purely monetary level I get why people go other routes in the US.
ha! fair enough. i have been called a woman out of time before.
unfortunately for me, i take most things i do (including working at the piss factory) very seriously. i think i would really struggle to use university as solely a means to an end. but who can say what my future will hold.
my alternative plan at this juncture is just build my body of work and see where it takes me! not the world's most "pragmatic", but it's going well enough so far.
That’s fair enough, as I say, the cost here makes the decision a lot easier. I don’t think many people these days see university as anything other than a means to an end, especially when it comes to a basic bachelor’s degree. For me, it’s a pathway into medicine. I’ve got a stable job, so it’s just a matter of plugging away until I get there. You’re quite prolific with writing maybe that will pay off. As for me, I realised I had a natural tendency to study, and that if I simply formalised the time I was already spending, then in the natural passage of time I’d find myself qualified and... in quite a bit of debt but to the commonwealth of Australia who are awfully nice about such matters.
I think too it was getting into my field of interest first and then realising that qualifications would help me greatly to progress.
I think in the past though I used to wait for the perfect oppertunity but as I've gotten older I've learnt to move more laterally. Get my foot in the door of the right building and head in the general direction. Currently I'm doing peer support work at a hospital And, once you're in a place like that, you can see the pathways from the inside.
If you are lucky to have the opportunity, my unsolicited advice, aim for whatever line of work encourages or allows you to be the best version of yourself (including parts of you that love and heal and care).
I accept this advice :)
I can't help but notice that you talk about higher education like it's 1996. Who is going to school in person these days? Is that some weird thing they have in the US? Here in Australia you sign up to study online, you skip the lectures, work full time, do a little Khan Academy at 3 a.m. in the morning after a massive bender and 3 years later you're just well enough qualified to leave your job at the piss factory. Who is going in person in 2025? Jeez, that's just cringy.
No one I know is doing uni to get into academia, they're doing it so they don't have to work at the piss factory. It's not a golden ticket, it's a stool in the shit heap, a way for the working classes to drag themselves up from the bottom. It's by no means perfect but it's something and with a bit of fandagling it can be parlayed into bigger things. Of course, here in Australia we have a very generous student loans system that only takes a little froth off the top of your pay once you're already earning quite well. So I guess the algorithm is a very different in that regard and on a purely monetary level I get why people go other routes in the US.
Have you got an alternative plan?
ha! fair enough. i have been called a woman out of time before.
unfortunately for me, i take most things i do (including working at the piss factory) very seriously. i think i would really struggle to use university as solely a means to an end. but who can say what my future will hold.
my alternative plan at this juncture is just build my body of work and see where it takes me! not the world's most "pragmatic", but it's going well enough so far.
That’s fair enough, as I say, the cost here makes the decision a lot easier. I don’t think many people these days see university as anything other than a means to an end, especially when it comes to a basic bachelor’s degree. For me, it’s a pathway into medicine. I’ve got a stable job, so it’s just a matter of plugging away until I get there. You’re quite prolific with writing maybe that will pay off. As for me, I realised I had a natural tendency to study, and that if I simply formalised the time I was already spending, then in the natural passage of time I’d find myself qualified and... in quite a bit of debt but to the commonwealth of Australia who are awfully nice about such matters.
I think too it was getting into my field of interest first and then realising that qualifications would help me greatly to progress.
I think in the past though I used to wait for the perfect oppertunity but as I've gotten older I've learnt to move more laterally. Get my foot in the door of the right building and head in the general direction. Currently I'm doing peer support work at a hospital And, once you're in a place like that, you can see the pathways from the inside.