One of the things that completely blows my mind among my fellow co-workers, many of whom are fresh college graduates who have racked up student debt, is the unwillingness to take a total look at their financial situation.
Yes, it's great to try to get a job that will pay you lots and lots of money. But there are other ways to take care of your debt, including just watching where you spend your money. You'd be amazed what you can save when you spend some time in the kitchen with a cookbook. And you probably don't need the latest PDA or digital camera, either.
I got a good job, as did my co-workers. And yes, they're slowly paying down their student debt. But by the time they've reached the halfway point, I will have cleared mine. All that interest they'll still be accruing will be history for me.
Take a job you enjoy, that won't lock you down, and that hopefully pays good, but don't forget to keep basic financial management in mind. Rice and beans never hurt anyone, and there are a million different ways to prepare them. It's not the most appealing way to save money, but it's not like this is forever.
Yes, imagine. Imagine if web designers weren't obsessed with style over content, with special effects over usability, with animated intros over usefulness, with exactly positioned layout over standards that are easily accesible by the visually impaired or degrade well for old browsers."
I think you will find most good web designers do care about these things...It's the marketing droids that want the shiny spinning stuff and the locked layouts
As one of the lead web developers for a large and successful e-commerce site (who will remain unnamed because I'd like to keep my job) I can attest to this fact. The typical concept-to-implementation for a project starts out with our designers having created low-bandwidth, user-friendly, but still good looking designs, our developers having coded it browser-inspecific, and the database people having given us good structure on the back-end.
Then the marketers and upper-management get their hands on it. "Can you change this feature?" "Can we add flash to that page?" "Can we get that in cornflower blue?"
Not to mention if we ever present multiple design concepts, they never want all of one, they want bits and pieces from all of them, resulting in a frankenstein monster that is not only hell to write, but hell to maintain and hell to use.
It doesn't help that our designers are constantly looking for ways to stretch themselves (you'd get bored doing GIF and JPG banners all day, too) and jump at any opportunity for huge flash projects.
The end result is a meeting room with three or four developers voices about feasability, usability, and scalability lost amid a sea of excited voices about what a fancy, exciting site it's going to be once we implement all the new features.
Most developers really do have good intentions, but we're not given the freedom to implement any of them.
And, because we have a team of top-notch developers, we actually are capable of building the frankenstein monsters they want, and when we succeed in building it, they only want more just like it. Our earlier protests are forgotten, many marketers grumbling quietly that we must just be lazy and not want to do more complicated web design. In the end, to the their minds, we're just their trained monkeys.
Arbitrary school rules are valid because they are private schools that students have elected to attend, and this very election constitutes tacit support of their policies.
Not true. Most students attending a private school are attending because that is the school their parents have chosen to send them to. Children in this country have very few rights.
I sympathize with the students' situation completely. But I also understand the school's point of view, and their legal right to do as they did. But let's not argue that the school's rules are valid because the students "elected to attend", because that's not true at all. The rules are valid because those are the rules the parents have agreed their children shall abide by.
The story of Scientology being formed on a bet between Heinlein and Hubbard makes for a great story, but it's not so clear-cut. Several people of the science fiction community witnessed comments by Hubbard to the effect of "the way to make real money is to form a religion", so I have no doubt of Hubbard's aims. Still yet, it's unlikely that the bet occurred between the two. You may want to read the full write-up at:
Whenever placed in sticky situations where I am forced to sign a piece of paper or face termination (luckily not often), I always legiblky write one thing next to my name: "Under Protest".
This advice from a friend in the legal field. She claims that if it ever comes to court, I can argue that I only signed under protest because I would otherwise have lost my job. Essentially that I was coerced into signing it.
I'm not sure if this would work (luckily I've never had to test it out) but if I have to sign it anyway, I don't see how it can hurt.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the things that completely blows my mind among my fellow co-workers, many of whom are fresh college graduates who have racked up student debt, is the unwillingness to take a total look at their financial situation.
Yes, it's great to try to get a job that will pay you lots and lots of money. But there are other ways to take care of your debt, including just watching where you spend your money. You'd be amazed what you can save when you spend some time in the kitchen with a cookbook. And you probably don't need the latest PDA or digital camera, either.
I got a good job, as did my co-workers. And yes, they're slowly paying down their student debt. But by the time they've reached the halfway point, I will have cleared mine. All that interest they'll still be accruing will be history for me.
Take a job you enjoy, that won't lock you down, and that hopefully pays good, but don't forget to keep basic financial management in mind. Rice and beans never hurt anyone, and there are a million different ways to prepare them. It's not the most appealing way to save money, but it's not like this is forever.
As one of the lead web developers for a large and successful e-commerce site (who will remain unnamed because I'd like to keep my job) I can attest to this fact. The typical concept-to-implementation for a project starts out with our designers having created low-bandwidth, user-friendly, but still good looking designs, our developers having coded it browser-inspecific, and the database people having given us good structure on the back-end.
Then the marketers and upper-management get their hands on it. "Can you change this feature?" "Can we add flash to that page?" "Can we get that in cornflower blue?"
Not to mention if we ever present multiple design concepts, they never want all of one, they want bits and pieces from all of them, resulting in a frankenstein monster that is not only hell to write, but hell to maintain and hell to use.
It doesn't help that our designers are constantly looking for ways to stretch themselves (you'd get bored doing GIF and JPG banners all day, too) and jump at any opportunity for huge flash projects.
The end result is a meeting room with three or four developers voices about feasability, usability, and scalability lost amid a sea of excited voices about what a fancy, exciting site it's going to be once we implement all the new features.
Most developers really do have good intentions, but we're not given the freedom to implement any of them.
And, because we have a team of top-notch developers, we actually are capable of building the frankenstein monsters they want, and when we succeed in building it, they only want more just like it. Our earlier protests are forgotten, many marketers grumbling quietly that we must just be lazy and not want to do more complicated web design. In the end, to the their minds, we're just their trained monkeys.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I sympathize with the students' situation completely. But I also understand the school's point of view, and their legal right to do as they did. But let's not argue that the school's rules are valid because the students "elected to attend", because that's not true at all. The rules are valid because those are the rules the parents have agreed their children shall abide by.
The story of Scientology being formed on a bet between Heinlein and Hubbard makes for a great story, but it's not so clear-cut. Several people of the science fiction community witnessed comments by Hubbard to the effect of "the way to make real money is to form a religion", so I have no doubt of Hubbard's aims. Still yet, it's unlikely that the bet occurred between the two. You may want to read the full write-up at:
l ein_bet.html
http://www.urbanlegends.com/religion/hubbard_hein
Whenever placed in sticky situations where I am forced to sign a piece of paper or face termination (luckily not often), I always legiblky write one thing next to my name: "Under Protest".
This advice from a friend in the legal field. She claims that if it ever comes to court, I can argue that I only signed under protest because I would otherwise have lost my job. Essentially that I was coerced into signing it.
I'm not sure if this would work (luckily I've never had to test it out) but if I have to sign it anyway, I don't see how it can hurt.