The Whine thread.

[Distracted]

Passive houses sound nice in theory, but I wouldn't want to live in one where it freezes or where it gets above 90 degrees in the shade. Somehow I doubt it's possible to insulate an above ground dwelling enough to make it comfortable in those conditions without at least some firewood or AC. An underground passive house I might believe. Caves stay at pretty constant temperatures no matter what the weather, although keeping the humidity down would be a challenge.

Aikiweezie, do you do sinus irrigation?

[aadarshinah]

State Sovereignty, National Union is Illinois state motto.

And do try the nasal irrigation thing, Aikiweezie. Stuff has a terrible aftertaste, but at least you can breathe.

Afterthought, I had to go to the DMV today. The examiner I spoke with used to be one of my customers when I worked at AT&T. Saw him like 2x a month for 2 years. Not seen him in that long though... anyway, while I was doing all the paperwork and stuff, we got to talking about my lack of job and all that... fast forward to about an hour ago, when he called me at home with the website to some state jobs that I, sadly, turn out not to have the qualifications for... It was very odd. A nice thought, but odd....

[Silverbullet]

Why odd? guy may have been impressed by you as someone who was qualified. It was a nice gestureon his part. Do you believe he had other motives?

You sound like one heck of a smart woman and seem to have done many types of work. I believe you would be qualified for some state jobs. Can't hurt trying. Take the Civil Service Exam and see what Jobs are available. What can you lose except a bit of your time.

SB

[aadarshinah]

It was just odd that the guy remembered me and was interested enough in what happened to me to look up my number in their database and call me about it.... that, and it's been a week of odds...

And stress. Been doing this 7-6 thing in a town 1hr away for like a week, and it's very different than anything I've done before and stressing me out to no end. Hopefully, though, it'll land me a job...

[Alelou]

My stepdaughter works at AT&T -- Wireless, though. ATT then Cingular then ATT again. She's been lucky to have avoided all the lay-offs that went with all those changes, which mostly seemed to have been designed to subtract value from the company and its workers and put it into the pockets of the deal-makers. (And what else is new?)

SB is right about taking those civil service tests when they come up. Are you certain you're not qualified? Sometimes they'll hire conditionally for when the next test is given, particularly if you have special skills.

[aadarshinah]

I was with the wireless too, til I got laid off. Unfortunately it seems the only state positions hiring are either for professors at the community colleges or gaurds at correctional facilities.... both of which require college degrees, which I don't have. Should, with all the credits I have, but not enough in any one area to get me a degree.

And now I'm all depressed just thinking about it. Oh well. I'll know by the end of the month if I have this job or not. If it doesn't work out, well, I know where the classifieds are.

[Silverbullet]

With your intelligence and work background you should take the civil Service Exams. Even an entry level job can lead to something better.

One thing about civil Service, once you get by the probabationary period it would take an act of congress to fire you. The old saying about Civil Service types. "Can't make them work and can't fire them."

Some of the stupidist people I have ever seen have been in government work seems to draw them in. Usually proves the 20-80 rule: 20 percent of the workers do 80 percnet of the work and 80 percent of the workers do 20 percent of the work. It is that 20 percent that keeps the government limping lang. without them we would be changing governments like shirts.

SB

[Alelou]

Yeah, that college degree is worth getting. My stepdaughter would also be in big trouble if she ever got laid off, since she never got hers either.

Good luck with the internship. If you can work on your degree, though, you really should. As an unemployed person there might even be some funding available to you for that. I have a friend who got her teaching degree that way (online from the U of Iowa), and is now happily employed. Online can be the way to go if you want to move quickly or aren't sure what your schedule is going to be. They had a thing on the news today about one of our local online colleges (Excelsior) -- one third of the graduates were military people who worked on their degrees while serving, sometimes even while deploying from one place to another every few days. I think that's quite an accomplishment.

[Alelou]

Trek Core's galleries are down. They got hacked.

I had to make do with whatever I had on my hard drive for my promo, and I have very little from season three.

(And why is there no Trip Tucker theme gallery yet? Travis before Trip? Elizabeth Cutler before Trip? I love them, but what's their problem????)

[panyasan]

(I am responding to your banner, Alelou!)

[aadarshinah]

Also loving the banner....

Idk about the college thing. I've spent the majority of the last four years in school, majoring in one thing or another, and only within the last few weeks left. I just can't take school anymore, or, at least, the schools I've been going to. And can no longer afford to, not really. It's just... I dunno what it is, only that I was either bored to tears, or else so infuriated by the make-work, or just the general quality of the classes...

Like take the end of last semester. In this Windows Movie Maker class, which is stupid because I've already had the Adobe Premeire Pro class that comes after it in sequence, but they were making me take it anyway. So I make this wonderful 90 min movie using Premeire Pro for my final... and it takes me three weeks to burn it onto a disk because the computers keep crashing or freezing during the trascription. I couldn't put up with that anymore. I know that's probably a problem of the school I was going to, not anything else, but better schools are more expensive... So the goal is, more or less, get a job now, earn some money and maybe go back to school in a couple of years - a good school, finally.

[Alelou]

I'm a big fan of in-state public colleges and universities, myself. There's no better bargain, although some of the private colleges do offer enough financial aid to make up the difference...at least for the first year. My guidance counselor friend tells me that's the dirty little secret of college admissions.

Meanwhile there's usually no bigger rip-off in the world than privately-owned trade schools. Most of them exist largely to take advantage of gov't. loan programs and couldn't care less if you ever graduate or get a job.

But no place is perfect. Just as with the typical job, college usually requires a certain amount of dealing with inanity, politics, and crap, all requiring persistance and patience. I think I got a great bargain of an education at UMass, for example, but there was a reason why we all called the administration building Witless instead of Whitmore, and there was also a reason the whole campus was nicknamed Zoo Mass.

[honeybee]

Meanwhile there's usually no bigger rip-off in the world than privately-owned trade schools. Most of them exist largely to take advantage of gov't. loan programs and couldn't care less if you ever graduate or get a job.

Absolutely. I teach at an in-state, public university that has in its charter that we take students of "all abilities" and has the lowest tuition in the state. We've got fantastic students who can't afford private schools or for whatever reason can't or don't want to be far from home and we get not-so-fantastic students, some who do well and some who don't make it. But they all must go through a rigorous general education program that includes math & science, social sciences and humanities - as well as languages. We're not a degree factory - although we deal with the common issues like grade inflation and students who are so self-esteemed that they can't take criticism. The students bitch and moan all the time about "what we make them do" - but it's fun to say - would you rather go to Strayer University -where they don't make you do anything? Even the students know better than that.

I know professors who adjunct at places like Strayer University and the University of Phoenix (it's tough out there and it's a job) - where the "customer is always right" and instructors are told that if the work is completed, the student gets an A. If the work is not completed, the student fails - all the better to make the retake the class. There is no general education "we're not going to make you take anything you don't want to take". Their recruiters work on commission - and have been busted for outright lying about what kinds of classes and degrees students can get.

A common practice is to tell the student that they can work on a crime lab "just like on CSI" with their criminal justice degrees. Well, to work at a crime lab you need a degree in forensic science and often a graduate degree as well. But these for-profit trade schools would never offer that degree, because it requires expensive lab classes that would cut into their profits. A criminal justice degree might get you a job at a police department or as a prison guard - but not likely - since most employers look at degrees from those places as worthless.

But - and this is the fun part kids - these schools are funded mostly by federal financial aid - targeting poor students, immigrant students and others who just don't understand the pitch. But they are instructed carefully on how to get grants and loans. And, since the degrees are often worthless, the students don't end up with jobs that can pay the loans back. All these "trade schools" have significantly higher default rates than community college and lower tier state schools. These students would be much better off at community colleges or other public schools that offer vocational classes and general education. There are legitimate trade school out there, but they are being squeezed by the flashy for-profits.

So, yes, Alelou. You are correct. It's hard enough out there for anyone - let alone recent grads to get a job - it's very helpful to have a degree with some actual substance to it.

[justTripn]

One of my sons has a full schoolarship at a second tier state school. He is taking acccounting and getting mostly A's and staying out of trouble, and shaking his head in disbelief at those who party and drop out around him. (Like, Why would you waste this opportunity?) Since it's nearby he comes home every weekend. So every monday morning during the school year I get up early and drive him an hour back to school. This gives me an opportunity to actually TALK to him and discover that he's getting a GREAT education. He was taking economics at the same time as I was brushing up on intro economics (for that teaching job that didn't pan out.) And he was taking philosophy at the same time as I was listening to a philosophy course on DVD. He knew what I knew!!! We were coverng the same material and were engaged with it! He was all excited about what he was learning and admired his teachers.

I don't buy the argument that you have to go to the fanciest, most expensive private school, just to to have the name recognition and be able to network. Information is cheap and accessible--it's in the textbooks, or the online materials that substitute for textbooks these days. Inexpensive school and expensive schools are probably presenting similiar material to the students. It's up to the students to learn it. Some people say that the most important thing is being with other intellectual students. No, I doubt it. It's up to the individual to stay focused on their goal. NOTHING can be worth that $40,000 per year that the private school charge. The arguement that you need an degree from an expensive university to get noticed is like the argument that every family needs an SUV so they don't get run over by other SUVs. It's like an arms race. I won't get sucked into it.

Oh someone close to me is up to his neck (more like over his head) in debt for a degree that qualifies him to teach history, and now he doesn't want to teach history. His current job is a blue collar job. DON'T pay $40,000 a year for college!!!!

[aadarshinah]

You know, I really want to blame television - you know what I mean, the shows where it makes it seem possible to have like a perfect job and a perfect family and balanace them perfectly, so that there's never any problem with one or the other, and you're gaurenteed to find a spouse who loves you and have the two point five kids with perfect grades and no health problems, and you'll always do well at work and be recongized for the work you do there. Never seriously believed that it was possible myself, but it leaves this lingering thing in the back of your mind... so that, no matter what you do, how well you do, if you don't manage to acheive the TV ideal you're still a failure...

Most the time I don't think that way, but, God, there are moments when it just all piles on. My mother's fond of saying it's all her fault, as she says she shouldn't have let my dad force me into applying to a school I'd no interest in going to and then force me to go to because the other ones I got accepted into were suddenly deemed "unacceptable" for some reason. I don't think it's completely true, but it's probably part of it.

The students bitch and moan all the time about "what we make them do" - but it's fun to say - would you rather go to Strayer University -where they don't make you do anything? Even the students know better than that.

Don't mean to bitch about my old professors, but, honestly, half the stuff they made us do was make-work for those of us who grasped the concecpts more quickly than the rest... For instance, the community college I went to wouldn't accept any of my credits from the state university I'd just come from, so I had to take their versions of Freshman English, again. The class met three times a week, and the professor would give us an assigment on Monday morning and we'd have the rest of the week to write an essay, usually 2 pages long. After a couple of weeks of me turning in my essays at the start of the next class period, the teacher gave up on creating new topics for me to write about while we waited for the rest of the class to finish and just let me read for the rest of the semester...