The College Degree Myth

Growing up, there are few universal truths agreed upon and echoed by nearly everyone. The sun will rise, the grass is green, and you need to go to college.

Whether you are a spawn of the 1% or a child living below the poverty line, getting into college is a shared goal that spans every socioeconomic level in the U.S. Why? Because if you go to college, you'll graduate and land a good job and have a house with a white picket fence and be able to provide for your spouse and 2.5 kids. That notion has been ingrained in all of us since we were first able to comprehend language. While that may have been true for our parents and maybe even our older siblings, for Gen Y-ers and Millenials- brace yourself- it's bogus.

When our parents were graduating high school, getting into college was less competitive, attending it was more affordable, and there were a plethora of jobs waiting for them once they graduated. My, how things have changed. The self-perpetuated myth that everyone needs to go to college to have even a chance of success in this world has made for plummeting acceptance rates, rising tuition costs (classic supply and demand) and a nearly impenetrable job market.

In 1964, just a few years before my parents began college, 15% of California high school graduates alone were invited to attend UC Berkeley- and they admitted everyone who met the academic requirements. In 2012, two years after I graduated, the combined national and international acceptance rate was 18%. In the 1960s, Berkeley's yearly tuition cost less than $600. For a California resident in 2012, yearly tuition (just tuition) was $13,000. Non-residents paid close to $22,000/year. I'm no mathematician or economist, but I'd say that more than accounts for inflation.

Those who are not lucky enough to have parents able to pay for their tuition or earn scholarships need to take out student loans- and that's nearly 60% of us, according to American Student Assistance. With interest rates just below 10%, by the time my peers graduated college a good number of them were close to $100K in debt. The current total student loan debt in the U.S. is close to $1,000,000,000,000 (never seen a number that high? It's trillion).

But that's OK- now that you've graduated and have a college degree, you'll be able to get a job and make lots of money to pay it off lickity-split, right? WRONG.

Unless you landed a sweet gig in engineering, computer science or consulting, you'll either a) still be working toward some specialized field like law or medicine where you'll need to spend five more years and another $100K+ or b) have some humanities degree that will get you three unpaid internships and a job at Hot Dog on a Stick, with your debt building and building thanks to that 8% interest rate. Debt increases, credit worsens. Grab a shovel, it's going to be a long dig.

I'm not going to bore you with any more stats, but that's where the majority of Gen Y-ers and Millenials stand. The numbers don't lie and we all have plenty of qualitative data that's unfortunately very close to home.

So why encourage your kids to go to college? Unless they are extremely bright in a field that will pay very well in the long run, or you as a parent can afford to send them, or they have a talent that will be awarded a scholarship- why would you set your child up for lifelong financial failure and woe?

Maybe these alternatives make more sense:

• Learn a trade. Apprentice with an electrician, plumber or contractor right out of high school and soon you'll be making a decent $40K-$60K salary. Without college debt, you can save a good portion of that and who knows... maybe go to college someday when you can pay for it.

• Join the military. It's always a gamble, but right now we are in a time of relative peace and enlisting in the military for a few years will give you great life skills, look dynamite on your resume, and give you money to pay for college via your GI Bill.

I'm not saying that no one should go to college, I'm just saying college isn't for everyone. This myth that having a college degree will automatically make you successful is alive and well in our society and it's directly contributing to the financial ailment of America.

Guess What I Did Today!

We all have those "friends" on Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. who update us on all the minutia of their everyday lives. "Havin pork chops for dinner. Yummm lol" and "Just did laundry and one of my socks is missing!" aren't uncommon snippets I come across when I scroll through my newsfeed. Do I get annoyed sometimes when I have to sift through the "Going to the gym"s and "It's only Tuesday :("s? Sure. Do I sometimes do the same thing? Probably. At first, being the Luddite I am, I blamed it on computers and the Internet and this new-fangled-technology-centric society, but then it dawned on me...

This is not a new phenomenon. People have been recording the inane details of their lives since the beginning of recorded history, starting with cave paintings of how the earliest Homo Sapiens killed their dinner- ancient versions of "Havin pork chops for dinner. Yummm lol."

These early cave paintings are spread across the continents and span oceans, before people traveled very far from home. They have been found in the dusty Australian deserts and the highest mountains in Mongolia. The need to record life events is almost as instinctual as breathing. Throughout the years, the mediums through which people etched their goings-on have evolved with technology; paintings and storytelling before writing, journal and letter writing for the affluent before widespread literacy, then journal and letter writing on a wider level. All were similar in one important aspect: they were personal and not widespread.

Then the Internet came along and changed everything. (I wonder how many subjects you can say THAT about).

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites that allow one person to display anything to the masses are really just instantaneous, widespread cave paintings and journals. Technology has evolved and so has the character of the "recording" instinct. Instead of writing down every single detail of your day in a journal, you write them down and publish them to a mass audience.

The repercussions of this "new" phenomenon come with negative and positive effects- sometimes to the extreme. On one hand, knowing what people in your networks are doing all the time makes you feel part of a closer community (this sense of community is not only the subject of another post, but serious study in the field of media effects academia). On the other hand, statuses and Tweets based on what you did last Saturday night have been known to be the cause of firings and divorces.

There are two factors we have not really figured out as they relate to this personal diarrhea-of-the-Internet: the instantaneousness and false sense of privacy. It might be in our best interest to take some time before we post anything to really think about 1. If we should post it and 2. Who might see it. Everyone, with the right resources, can see everything you have ever done on the Internet. Technology is evolving faster than our social commonsense.

So, the next time you're scanning through your newsfeeds and see a bunch crap you don't really care to read about regarding your "friends'" lives, just remember- our earliest cavemen ancestors did the same thing. We can't help it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pick up Grant from the airport, make fish tacos, and watch some Golden Girls before going to sleep.

White. Middle Class. Boy.

If an alien landed on earth and spent one day soaking up all of the information, statistics, knowledge and pop culture it possibly could, its view of the world probably wouldn't be much different than our own.  Our economy is failing. Asians are good at math. Fire is hot. Only minorities go around killing each other.

Wait. What was that last one? Yeah, only minorities go around killing each other. Just take a look at the racial makeup in our state and federal penitentiaries. Duh. And haven't you ever heard Tupac rap? All the killing goes on in the ghetto. Everyone knows that.

That poor, misguided alien. Oh, and us.

Let's review the five most notable mass killings on American soil since Columbine in 1999 and a profile of the perpetrators. One caveat- I will neither publish any names nor photos. The reason? I think the Morgan Freeman hoax writer said it best:

You want to know why people [commit heinous mass killings]? This may sound cynical, but here's why. It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine?

Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basement see the news and want to top it by doing something worse and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster instead of a sad nobody. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you’ve just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or maternity ward next.

Couldn't agree more, Fake Morgan. The media has indeed created a sick culture of one-upmanship that needs a serious overhaul. Now back to the profiles:

1999: Columbine shooting. 39 total injured and killed

· Perp(s): White middle class boy, 18, and white middle class boy, 17

2007: Virginia Tech shooting. 57 total injured and killed

· Perp(s): Asian middle class college student, 23

2011: Tuscon shooting. 19 total injured and killed

· Perp(s): White middle class boy, 22

2012: Aurora movie theater shooting. 70 total injured and killed

· Perp(s): White middle class PhD student, 25

2012: Newtown shooting. 2 injured, 27 killed

· Perp(s): White middle class boy, 20

Aside from the Asian outlier, do we see a pattern here? White. Middle class. Boy (25 and under). OK, we've got that part down, but the question remains... WHY?

My theory is an oversimplified answer to a much more complex question, but I think it has valid roots. White, middle class folks perhaps lead the blandest lives of anyone else in the U.S. Add a little testosterone and youthful lack of judgment and, voila.

White, middle class boys are in a unique situation. They fall into the socioeconomic category wherein their parents have just enough money to give them their own rooms, providing an isolation factor; to be able to afford weapons and other ammo (thanks for the allowance, mom and dad); computers and internet through which to buy said weapons on their middle class parents' credit cards (or their own if they’re old enough); and video game systems and other informational resources (again, internet) to cultivate sick ideas and desires related to killing.

And, unless they have an outstanding skill or personality, they lack identity in this colorful nation of ours. Let’s face it- from colonization until 1975-ish, being a white male with money was the best case scenario for anyone in the U.S. Now, it’s arguably the worst (at the very least in terms of identity).

The easiest way to gain notoriety? Make international news! The easiest way to do that? Kill a bunch of people!

These kids have just enough means to afford everything with the capacity to mold them into mass killers, feel just ordinary enough to want to stand out, and have just enough isolation to carry out the task without any suspicion.

The truth is that there is no magic formula we can conjure to solve the profile puzzle of these perps and future ones. Violent video games don’t make everyone who plays them feel the need to off everyone in their neighborhood. Not everyone who was ever bullied at school buys a machete and plays butcher with their schoolmates. Wearing a big trench coat and combat boots is not required garb to acquire homemade explosives materials.

But there are a few similarities in traits that should not be ignored:

White. Middle Class. Boy.

Ohio Odyssey

It all started after a perfect autumn day in the Midwest with my best friend- a hike through fiery foliage, indulgence in Cincinnati signature chili and, of course, pumpkin spice lattes.

My flights to and from Ohio were: San Diego--> Denver--> Dayton, and vice versa.

The week leading up to my trip, I had been vigilant in monitoring the weather in both Denver and Dayton, late season thunderstorms and early snowstorms being threats in mid-October. This weekend, flying in and out of Dayton and Denver both ways offered clear blue skies and ideal flying conditions. No one could have guessed that San Diego, where the weather never strays outside of a twenty-degree spectrum, would be my travel kryptonite.

I should have known everything was running too smoothly to be true. In terms of air travel, I wouldn't even call my luck "decent." The first three legs of my journey had gone off without a hitch- no delays, and we even arrived early in Denver. When the plane's wheels left the ground on the fourth and final leg of my trip, Denver--> San Diego, I let my ever-present cynical shield down, exhaled a sigh of contentment, and nestled in to enjoy the cinematic magnificence of Lord of the Rings.

Big mistake.

Two hours into the flight, just prior to our initial descent, a message from the cockpit: the fog in San Diego is too thick to land and we're making a U-turn back to Denver.

Close to four hours on an airplane and I'm back to where I started, at 11:30 PM, with no flights until morning and work at 8 AM a thousand miles away. Is Southwest going to pay for my hotel? Is Southwest going to tip my hotel shuttle driver? Is Southwest going to pay me for tomorrow's lost wages? Is Southwest going to explain to my boss that I never miss work without giving notice like this? Is Southwest going to find me and pay for food at 2 AM when nothing in the airport is open? Negative.

Luckily, I'm sitting in the fifth row, so there's only 20-ish people that will be ahead of me for rebooking once we deplane. I figure I'll be on a flight first thing in the morning and get to work less than an hour late. Not too terrible.

Wrong.

Southwest sends two measly customer service reps to help 150 people figure out every aspect of their lives for the next 12 hours in a strange city. Twentieth in line, it takes me over an hour to reach the front. I ask for the first flight available to San Diego in the morning. They tell me 12:55 PM.

Wait a second. You have a Southwest plane here in Denver that is supposed to be in San Diego tomorrow, which means it will be empty in the morning. Why don't you just pile everyone back on that plane and fly us out to San Diego at 6 AM? I know there are a lot of logistics involved in running an airport, but stuff like this happens all the time- you're telling me there's not even a little flexibility? My customer service rep had no rebuttal to my logic. He actually agreed.

OK, fine. Work's scrubbed tomorrow... nothing I can do there. It looks really bad for someone whose only been there for a few months to not show up for work, but there was nothing I could geographically do.

Sleeping arrangements. If I had an early flight I would just sleep on the airport floor, but it's an afternoon flight- may as well find a hotel and get some shut-eye.

Grant the Great works on the hotel situation and finds me a decent deal at the airport La Quinta, one of the few hotels with a 24-hour free shuttle (remember, by the time I got my new flight it was 1 AM). Cabbing anywhere in Denver would land me in the poor house, everything's so spread out. So I call the La Quinta, make a reservation and ask for the shuttle to pick me up. This is an "airport La Quinta," but if you've ever been to the Denver Airport, you know how massive it is. The La Quinta was about 10 miles away from my terminal.

Ray, the desk attendant at the La Quinta, tells me the shuttle got in an accident earlier and they need to get a new one from their base. I ask how long that's going to take and he says the shuttle will pick me up in 15 minutes. Doable.

Twenty minutes later I call Ray back. He tells me 10 minutes, it'll be there.

Fifteen minutes later, Grant calls Ray. Ray tells Grant 10 more minutes.

And on.... and on.... for an hour and fifteen minutes. And the best part? The midnight airport construction. Nonstop jackhammering right next to where I'm supposed to be picked up.

2:30 AM rolls around and a janky, unmarked rapist van pulls up to the curb. A little foreign man rolls the window down and attempts to yell over the jackhammering to me.

"LA KWEENTAH?!" he shouts.

I sigh, survey the van, and give him my best "Why the hell not." I'm too tired/agitated for good sense.

Riding shotgun in the supposed "La Kweentah" shuttle, I throw a little prayer upstairs in hopes that I'm not about to be raped and murdered in Denver.

We actually pull up to a La Quinta. Phew. I check in, get my room on the smoking floor and on the way see a cockroach scuttle next to the wall. Yum.

I finally get to my room at 2:45 AM, take a shower, and watch Married with Children in vain hopes to fall asleep. I hadn't eaten since the chili in Cincinnati (which wasn't exactly agreeing with my stomach) because I was planning on coming home to a cereal feast in San Diego that night. Literally too pissed off and hungry to sleep, I toss and turn all night. Not a wink was had.

I won't go into too much detail about this next part but... of course, right on schedule... Aunt Flo decides to come visit first thing in the morning. It's not that I didn't know about its imminence- I just planned to be in San Diego when it happened. 31:1 odds the red river would runneth on this of all days... I have to scour five neighboring hotels before I finally return victorious from my tampon hunt. Do people not menstruate in Denver?

Finally, with some continental breakfast in my system, a fresh tampon and a brand new day to tackle, I head to the airport for what would turn out to be a (thankfully) much less eventful last leg.

Dayton--> Denver--> San Diego in 23 hours.

Modern-day foot binding

The added inches. The multi-million dollar American industry. The sensuous curve of a woman's calf, flexed ever-so-"naturally" by the boost of a high heel.

It's no secret that the high heel was invented by a man. But not for any of the reasons above-stated.

Any American woman who has any real grounding on the planet Earth knows that high heels are impractical, nonsensical- and just plain uncomfortable. They serve no obvious purpose other than to sexualize women, which they indeed do, but as a mere side-effect. They define the little-known muscles in most women's legs, wherein it was discovered that adding a few inches of artificial boost to a woman's heel could strenuously carve out some otherwise forgotten musculature. That's what they want you to think.

I am here to contend that modern men invented the high heel as a contemporary form of ancient Chinese foot binding.

Foot binding, for those who are unfamiliar, was a Chinese practice that emerged during the Song dynasty, but spread to as late as the early 20th century in aristocratic China. It was achieved by breaking the feet of the eldest daughter in an aristocratic family and wrapping them tightly in order to take off inches of the foot's length and reform the healed bones into tiny stumps. A barbaric procedure, foot binding would be considered a violation of human rights in today's society.

But how different, at its barest bones, is wearing stilettos from foot binding?

High heels were invented by men to immobilize women, both literally and figuratively. Foot binding, in its ancient form, was a practice meant to keep aristocratic young women "dainty" and enslave them to be  future keepers of the home- it was what rich men wanted. Those women who did not have their feet bound were lower class and worked in the fields next to their husbands- a position of equality, albeit in destitution.

Let's examine the practicality of high heels. How fast can you walk in high heels? Is it even possible to run in them? How seamlessly can you move with six-inch, skinny, artificial inches between your achilles tendon and the earth beneath? Even the most experienced high heel-wearers among us will tell you: "Not very." The logic is simple: high heels were designed by men to immobilize the modern woman from straying too far from the home and and climbing the career/social ladder autonomously.

Think back to the early 20th century. High heels were not commonplace. Sure, there were some June Cleavers out there who wore heels (and pearls) when they did the laundry and cooked their husband's dinner. But June Cleaver's heels were about 1.5 inches high- not nearly the stiletto standard we all must adhere to in recent decades.

The advent of the feminist revolution in the mid-twentieth strangely coincided with a new invention: the ridiculously high, high heel.

That's right, folks- men feared the emerging power of women in American society and, being leaders in the fashion industry, sexualized ridiculous footwear from the top down- high heels became the standard of femininity and sexiness.

High heels have since enveloped the fashion industry, trickled down to the masses, and have become widely regarded as the standard of "sexiness" to all men, and foot-bound women, in the U.S. of A.

Are You There, Superman? It's Me, Lisa

It is an indisputable fact that society uses entertainment as a means of escape from life's realities. In relatively recent history, technology has provided a universally affordable, high-involvement form of entertainment: feature films.

Escapism suggests that we as an audience are most entertained by what the world is lacking at the time of engagement. In terms of movies, this means when times are good, we tend to like dark, destructive, apocalyptic flicks. When times are bad, we tend to enjoy hopeful movies with happy endings.

Think back to the 1990s. Bill "It's the Economy, Stupid" Clinton was president. The Dotcom bubble was expanding without end. The economy's growth was an average 4.0% per year. And, not coincidentally, the top 10-grossing films in the U.S. included:

Jurassic Park (1993): A power outage at a dinosaur theme park causes a slew of bloodthirsty carnivores to wreak havoc and kill almost everyone on the island.
Independence Day (1996): Hoards of aliens come to Earth and obliterate all major cities and their landmarks, including the White House.
Titanic (1997): A tragic love story based on one of the most historically devastating events in U.S. history.
Armageddon (1998): Asteroids hit a space shuttle and wipe out New York before a team of oil drillers barely blows up the Big One right before it decimates the planet.

Fast-forward to 2008-present day. The worst U.S. economic recession hits since 1930s. The economy spirals like a turd in the toilet while big business continues to be cloaked in greed-fueled scandal and bipartisan bickering in Congress solves nothing. It should not be surprising that since 2008, each year's top-grossing film has been about superheroes conquering evil:

The Dark Knight (2008): The ever-vulnerable citizens of Gotham City need Batman to save them from the Joker and his thugs.
Avatar (2009): A world in peril is saved from an evil big-business owner ready to ruin a world for economic gain.
Iron Man 2 (2010): Well, Toy Story 3 was actually the top-grossing movie in 2010, but Iron Man 2 was a close third. You just can't beat Disney/Pixar. Anyway, Iron Man 2: The protagonist must save the world from the U.S. military, which has stolen his armor design and plans on using it for devious purposes.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 (2011): Ol' Harry finally defeats Voldemort and saves both the magical and muggle worlds.
The Avengers (2012 so far): A band of superheroes combine forces to save the world from hostile alien threat.

This is not coincidence. With the economy crashing, unemployment stuck at 8%, deficits looming, the Middle East imploding, Europe going bankrupt, white kids going on killing sprees, banks and financial offices getting bailout after bailout yet resuming their corrupt ways, widespread terrorism sowing fear into the soil on every continent... the box office doesn't lie.

THE WORLD NEEDS SAVING.

Ocupado

I've always found the rigid sexual dimorphism of public bathrooms extremely frustrating. The reason for this is, quite simply, because I am a woman.

Not only a woman, but a no-nonsense-in-the-bathroom type woman. A woman entirely jealous that men never have to wait in bathroom lines.

There are few better feelings than triumphantly hunting down a bathroom in a public place. There are few worse feelings than being jarred upon entry by a long line comprised of complexly-clothed ladies with huge purses awaiting a full house.

So there you stand, internally conducting the cost-benefit analysis of leaving or waiting it out. Then you come to the conclusion that the line has already grown behind you, and the chances of your finding another, line-less bathroom in the vicinity are slim at best, given your lifelong history of small bladderedness. So you wait.

And wait.

The standoff begins. That blood-boiling standoff between the awkward, silent line that can hear all but a pin drop in the stalls, and the occupants of the thrones. Neither budge. The toe-tapping ensues.

And the eternal question which has plagued me for a lifetime remains: Just what takes women so long in the bathroom?

My original assumption (at age six) was that everyone was like Superman, but slow. And instead of phone booths, people summoned their alter-persona superheroes in bathroom stalls. A few years later I figured everyone else just pooped in public all the time, until I realized that there were never any poop sounds coming from the stalls. Another hypothesis was that they were called "restrooms"- not toilet rooms, which I've always thought would be a more fitting name- because maybe women actually did just go sit on the toilet to rest (or even fall asleep!). Then, right before puberty, I feared that dealing with "Aunt Flo" would mean literal hours lost from each day to be spent in the bathroom. In time, all of the aforementioned postulations were debunked and it was back to the drawing board.

And now, as a seasoned almost-24-year-old, I still have no idea what my XX chromosome counterparts do behind that latched door.

I'm usually in and out of the stall in 30-45 seconds, tops. I realize this may be faster than the norm, seeing as how my still-squatable quads render seat covers useless and I try to plan for optimum efficiency (i.e. getting your toilet paper ready while you're going- not rocket science, people). But in reality, unless you are ill, the bathroom stall should be a place of rapid, efficient business.

Ladies, I implore you: Let's take a cue from the fellas, because how many times have you seen a line spilling out from the men's room? We should be getting in, getting out and getting on with our lives.