Kant stand it, myself.

I retract my stars for the video and give them to you, sir.

Aw, come on! You've got nothing Deleuze!

Guys, we don't need to Sartre pun threads over here, also.

Will you all just foucault?

We should all just Comte down, this is getting out of hand.

This is starting to Spinoza out of control. I'm going to Leibniz now, before I get too Monad.

This thread really needs to be Locked before someone makes another pun.

Yeah guys. Know it off while we're still Jung.


D'oh!

I lament the forum posters, such as myself, much more.

PhD in Rhetoric or Philosophy will get you into business as a consultant.

You have a PhD, and no excuse to not have a job. The excuse you make up for yourself is your fear or hesitation of moving possibly far away. For the sake of argument, we'll guess you are American.

Get off your ass and come to Canada. It's better here and we welcome educated people with open arms. Health care, lower crime, tons of opportunity.

Don't like Canada? You can live comfortably in Costa Rica for between 500-1000 U.S. dollars a month, and they are the most environmentally friendly country on the planet.

Don't like Costa Rica? Chile is a westernised country with massive expansion going on and making heavy pushes to attract educated foreigners.

Linguistic barriers, not to mention the points system on Canadian immigration.

Not to mention, Cat, that you probably don't have a PhD or even graduate school to your credit and have no idea of the job market for doctorate students.

It's true, I am running out of excuses; but fear to move far away isn't one of them. I live in Vancouver, WA; I can't fucking WAIT to get outta this dump.

My apologies, Cat, you hit my spontaneous reaction bone.

Cat,I'm a history doctoral student. Some of us aren't so wrapped up in the life-of-the-mind that we don't have families or significant others. Just picking up and moving to another country isn't always an option.

I once considered pursuing a PhD in the humanities. This is basically the conversation I had with myself.

I loved it, but I'm simultaneously spiritually one-starring this for 'frack.'

Not meant as a reply.

Fuck.

STARS FOR YOU!

I agree it's sad, but we live in a world where you *must* make a certain amount of money to avoid being homeless. Add to that the fact that pursuing a degree costs tens of thousands of dollars which no one has-- they have to put themselves into life-long debt to get it.

I have a BS in Computer Science, and have been thinking for the past year about going for a PhD (because I enjoy learning about it). But the sad fact is that even in a business-oriented field like Computer Science, there's just no point to having a PhD. All you can do with it is become a professor.

The talking cartoon is right. :(

Problem is that when education was considered something you got mainly to broaden your knowledge and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, it was at a time when only extremely rich people could do so...it was what rich people did between safari's and cruises, so they could impress people on those safari's and cruises.

Humanities and Arts PhDs have always been something either stupid or stupidly rich people did, while smart people get a science degree and for knowledge AND an income they can survive on.

You all forget that America isn't the whole world.

Example: My wife just earned her Ph.D.. In Astrophysics.

Being european, the total costs for her from the start of her university schooling, to the Ph.D., were between 3000-5000 Euros.

There are other countries that are doing it better than we are in North America, and you should be enraged that the education system here has shown a massive failure of capitalism, rather than consign yourself to being miserable about 'the way it has to be'.

jlaunch, that "certain amount of money" is way less than what most people think. Unless you have a serious medical condition (and live in a country with inflated health care costs like the US), or have a kid, the only reason you NEED to make more than, say k a year is to support a completely unnecessary (though deeply culturally embedded) desire to consume useless goods.

I lived in decent, family neighborhoods in Boston for 8 years, and my cost of living was rarely over 0 a month for rent, food, commuting expenses etc., and that's one of the top 3 most expensive cities in the US (it was number one for a few of the years I lived there). Most of my friends were doing the same.

Basically, if you live in any halfway reasonably priced city ?(much less a suburban or rural area) and don't have children or a major medical condition, you should be able to get by fine on about 0 a month, and thrive on 00. Fix your value system, live in modest comfort, save the rest of your income and retire at 40 (or work less and do more of what you really care about win your free time, whichever works).

I have no sympathy for singe, healthy people who think they NEED to earn more than k a year. Sure it doesn't hurt, but you do not need it, no matter how much popular culture claims otherwise.

Solro, it was also at a time when a high school education was comparable to what a sophomore or junior level undergraduate education is now. There were plenty of problems with the public education system before the 1960s, but it was far more academically rigorous than it has been since.

When I was in college, in the honors program at a top 100 university I won't name, I met a disappointing number of other honors students I would consider borderline functionally illiterate.

Also, what Cat Mech said.

Cat Mech speaks wisdom. I spent a semester abroad at a German university during college, so I thought I'd call them up now that I'm freshly graduated and ask about higher degree opportunities for filthy yankee scumbags like myself. The guy I spoke to had a pretty strong accent, so when he told me how much it would cost, I figured he had forgotten that in English we can put increments like "ten" and "one hundred" in front of the word "thousand."

Then the PDF with the actual price estimates showed up and I literally jizzed myself. Not literally.

Anyway, goodbye forever, moving to Europe where education still makes fucking sense. They like brown people there, right?

jaunch: there are tons of PhD's in CS in R&D labs. Not only do they contribute to the field, but they get to work on ideas that have a fighting chance of making it into shipped code.

Also, maybe I am wrong but I thought you get sponsored for PhDs... that is, if you declare your intent to get a doctorate from somewhere, they pay or help pay for even your MS, and then you do TA or RA to make rent. Was I misled?

i got heh numbah

how do ya like them apples

SlolRo,
Science degree, are you serious? Most of my friends are in year 4 of their postdocs, fields that are generally some mix of chemistry or biology or physics. Even Comp Sci. is starting to get the postdoc disease. Those that are assistant professors are in their mid 30s, living in a new town somewhere pretty far away from any place they have ever lived; the salary doesn't tend to be that great either.

Granted, you could have it worse (be in debt for grad school, instead of getting paid a living wage), but many of these people have the ability to earn a non-crappy standard of living. Many of them spend a lot of time envying their colleagues who went to medical school.

Stars for Old_Zircon.

What the hell? So the moral of the story is that everything is fine because you can easily pay for an education as long as you don't plan on ever having kids or getting sick?

and where the FUCK do you live in Boston for total expenses of 0/month? In a flophouse eating boiled rice? Wearing your old high school clothes that never wear out? While never getting sick and waving goodbye to any social life?

Rent and utilities alone runs you a bare minimum of 0, more likely 0-800 and that's with roommates. Are you going to live with roommates all the way to retirement? Are you not going to travel EVER? Is every meal going to be grocery store (not corner store) boiled rice? That's over an hour out of your free time bringing it home two bags at a time on the bus. You're certainly not going to be cooking that rice at the library, where you'll have to go for free internet because good luck keeping up on the job market without it.

Thank you for getting indignant at us sheeple who aspire to more than the life of a malnurished hobo who never gets sick, doesn't go out with friends, and writes off dating.

@Old_Zircon, I know this is an old post, but I was just re-reading:

To echo FABIO's comment, how the hell do you live on 0 a month? Does that include health insurance? Where I live, extremely basic and horrible health insurance is around 0/month and covers virtually nothing. You're one cancer diagnosis away from complete financial ruin at all times.

Also, my family lives all over, so to visit them costs money. Plane tickets are at least 0 a pop for round trip, usually more. And of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as reasonable costs. Without getting on welfare, how can anyone have kids or a spouse on that salary?

I think, realistically, it's pretty tough for someone to live comfortably, healthfully, and safely, on less than k a year, even in a cheap neighborhood.

Oh Jesus, I wish I could give this a billion more stars. :D

Double Major.

Theatre and Literature.

I'm sure a lot of them are already familiar with keyboard cat, cool story bro, and i can has cheezburger.

What does a minor in "humanities" even mean? That's like saying you minored in science.

I think it's akin to taking a certain number of courses in humanities departments. Basically to show you're well rounded to grad schools. My college had it. I'm afraid I don't know any more; I majored in something useful.

I had numerous talks where I was extremely worried about what kind of job I would have after graduating. Good thing my professors assured me everything would be fine. I might have ended up in retail if it wasn't for going to get my BA in English! oh wait

I like collaborative learning.

also full disclosure: i was in the same grad program with the guy who wrote this

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=84687


No, the above link is why I posted this vid.