A "Good" Job

What does it mean to have a "good" job in America today? Is it the amount of money you make? How happy it makes you? How prestigious the field is? Especially in the shaky economy of today, more and more parents are worrying about sending their kids to pricey colleges without the promise of decent work afterwords.
It is difficult to justify spending thousands of dollars a year to send your child to a place of higher learning, and the earlier justification had been so that they can get a "good" job. Yet, more and more students are moving back in with their parents or are unemployed and crippled by debt from student loans. This makes me wonder? Why is the American education system like this?
The idea is that anyone who wants to pay can go to school, which is great, in theory. But the cost of college is almost un-payable at this point for a lot of Americans. There was a swedish exchange student in one of my class(he later dropped out but that's beside the point) who was made if he was planning on going to college in the states, to which he replied, "Well, in Sweden, they lay for your college so...". Sweden isn't the only country who's government is funding higher education. In Germany, the only way to get into a Univeristy is to take and pass an extremely rigorous test. If you fail, fine, you can go to technical school or just straight up work. But, if you pass, the state will pay for all of your education. My question now is, if you don't pass the test, are you ashamed? Will the jobs you get with that education be "better" than those without it? And if you do lass, is it guaranteed that your sought-out college experience will mean higher income?
I don't know, I just thought that was kind of an interesting way to look at education and its purpose.

Is Higher Education Necessary?

       Living on the North Shore of Chicago, a wealthy area, it is expected that every student will go to college. I tried to talk to my mother on the subject of whether or not college is worth it in this economy but I hardly got a word in. She wouldn't even hear me talk about the possibility of not going. But is it just this area that puts so much pressure on students to go to college?
     The whole point of college is so that you can be educated in a field in which you will find a "good" job. But, numerically speaking, there are only so many doctors in the world. While it's true that a society cannot function without doctors and nurses and business people and government officials, we also could not have a society without the supposedly "low class" jobs like postal workers, garbage men, food service employees, and cleaning people. That's what makes me wonder: Is it just the North Shore that's so obsessed with college? Are other areas like this too? If not, is it a class thing? And if so, are finances the only thing stopping people from higher education?

It's Gonna Be May

     This school year is almost over and I have to say, there's a lot to cram into these next two weeks. Nearly every junior in my high school is going to be frantically studying for finals and and desperately trying to push their grades over the line.

     I feel like there's a lot of pressure in the North Shore to get a near-perfect ACT score, a glowing teacher recommendation, load up on APs, and apply to as many "good" colleges as humanly possible. But I was thinking last night and I guess one way to not get overwhelmed by everything is to just remember that high school and college aren't the be-all end -all in your life. everything always seems like it's such a big deal. I used to freak out whenever I lost a library book when honestly, I never think about that  book now.

    I don't know, I didn't really feel like writing an information heavy post after the junior theme, so that's just my spiel for this week.

      I hope your lives are going okay!

Junior Theme Part 6: The Final Countdown

    This is it. This is hopefully the last post I'll ever make on junior theme. I am now in the home stretch of the paper, and I am still tweaking my conclusion a little bit.
     I have read through that 8-page monstrosity several times at this point and I can't think of anyway to make it better than it is right now. I think that my paper is perfectly adequate and at this point, i can live with that.

     I am now in the process of coming up with titles for my aper. My original two option were "Of Money and Men" or "Catch 77", but I'm now thinking of other options. Should I make it "The Devil Wears Pay Gap"? Or what about "A Tale of Two Genders"? I can go on for hours.

     Anyway, I just wanted to say how happy I am that this thing is finally over. Unless I totally screw it up and have to revise. In that case…. f*************

Junior Theme Part 5: The Writemare

As you can probably tell from the super creative title, I have now begun the process of compiling all of this info into comprehensible paragraphs. This has proven to be difficult, to say the least.

    My first section, on discrimination, is probably my best so far. This is mainly excuse I was young and full of hope. That hope has dwindled the further I have gotten into this paper. Now, I'm at the stage where I've gone "Screw it, I'll just type up whatever comes to mind and edit it later."

       And that is why I now have 10 pages of a train wreck to edit this week. I have to search for all my sources(which I haven't properly cited yet), write a conclusion, and also make my paper not look like crap. It's a tall order, but hopefully desperation will be my motivation.