"God I was lucky"

[Padawanbater2]

One Physiology teachers take on his students stress levels...

I'm 49 and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have grown up in the era when college was easily affordable and jobs were abundant. I remember stressing so much in 1984 when I had to take out a loan for a grand total of $1600 (the equivalent of $3600 today). That's all I needed to get through 4 yrs at a top rated liberal arts college! (the rest I could pay from summer jobs plus help from my awesome parents). The same college today costs 48,000 per YEAR. I don't understand how anybody can pay these rates! I look at my students and my research assistant now and what they're facing, and I just want to cry for them.

Not that I didn't work like hell too; I did. I was never rolling in cash, never could afford to buy a house till last year, so I guess I'm not the stereotypical boomer that way. Throughout my life I have worked very, very hard. But back then you could work hard and it would pay off for you; now you work just as hard and it doesn't. Also I had the freedom to choose a lower-paying career deliberately, a career that I found fascinating. I could only do that because I had no debt.

I don't understand boomers who don't realize how lucky they were and how much it has changed. I had to school my dad on this the other day (81 yrs old; he just doesn't understand why his grandkids aren't headed for college and aren't easily getting jobs). Maybe because I'm still teaching I have greater exposure to the reality of it. When you have a student crying in your office who is working 3 jobs and taking 21 credits and still is going into crushing debt anyway and is going out of her mind from the stress, it really hits home. God I was lucky.

One of the things that really blew my mind was when I was teaching a class on human physiology and asked all the students to keep 4 logs during the whole semester: a sleep log, a diet log, and exercise log and a stress log. (the first 3 just covered 1 week each; the 4th, the stress log, covered 10 weeks). Blew. My. Mind. Students who on the surface looked totally fine were turning in these reports with these ghastly lists of all the physical symptoms of stress they had, all the jobs they were working, how much homework they had, the appalling number of exams and papers they're prepping for constantly, how little sleep they were getting, crappy diets, no time for exercise, etc., serious financial worries, serious career worries, moving a lot, changing jobs, lots of instability - every damn thing that increases stress in humans, they had it. When the entire class had been about what a debilitating effect all those things have on your life-long health and well-being. The thing that made it so powerful is that that they weren't trying to complain; they were just completing the required assignment, ticking off things on the stress-scale that I'd given them. (There's standard "stress scales" you can use to tally up #stressful events per week, including details like, did you get to set this schedule yourself, are you the one in control on not, was this predictable or not) Some of these students were right up there with published studies on prisoners and cancer patients in terms of overall life stress.

After I got those back I went on a tiny campaign to do what I could, which was just, lessen the burden from my own class. For example I devised a gentler shorter type of final exam (btw it included the optional essay question "Are final exams bad for your health?" - every single student in the class chose that question and wrote pages and pages about it!) The year after that I eliminated finals entirely from my classes and simplified some of the other assignments. Took a little flak from admin (we're actually required to give a final so I devised this weird little mock "final quiz" thing instead). But I just didn't see the goddam point in driving my students into the ground.

This is not what life is for. Life is not supposed to be like this.

http://np.reddit.com/r/news/comment...ave_hit_a_record_high_of_12/cl37t4z?context=3

 

[earnest_voice]

Stress levels don't drop off as they should as we go through life. Learning to deal with the stress and relax and unwind is key IMO to managing stress and ensuring you don't burn yourself out

Once you finish college, get a job, a partner, a house, a car, a couple of kids you're gonna have to expect a good 20yrs of stress until your kids are old enough to do their own thing, you pay off your house and even then retirement is still a decade or so away...

So there is no getting around the stresses of the lives we choose or don't. Effecting coping strategies is what enables a healthy balance between work, study and play.

 

[Padawanbater2]

Stress levels don't drop off as they should as we go through life. Learning to deal with the stress and relax and unwind is key IMO to managing stress and ensuring you don't burn yourself out

Once you finish college, get a job, a partner, a house, a car, a couple of kids you're gonna have to expect a good 20yrs of stress until your kids are old enough to do their own thing, you pay off your house and even then retirement is still a decade or so away...

So there is no getting around the stresses of the lives we choose or don't. Effecting coping strategies is what enables a healthy balance between work, study and play.

All points I'm sure the author would agree with

However, the reason I posted it here was to illustrate the difference between what boomers went through compared to what millennials and after are faced with, it's apples to oranges and many in this section specifically, consistently fail to acknowledge that difference

 

[Rob Roy]

Usually when the supply of a thing increases the value decreases. A college degree is a good example.

Another note concerning why the costs have risen can be answered in the same way. Inflation has devalued the dollar. Dollar creation and the Federal Reserve in concert with the Congress creatures have ensured that.

 

[UncleBuck]

Usually when the supply of a thing increases the value decreases. A college degree is a good example.

Another note concerning why the costs have risen can be answered in the same way. Inflation has devalued the dollar. Dollar creation and the Federal Reserve in concert with the Congress creatures have ensured that.

thanks, roberta.

 

[Pinworm]

 

[NoDrama]

Everyone knows that if you get a college degree you will be rich. That's what the politicians, high school counselors, college recruiters and parents always say. It must be true.

 

[UncleBuck]

Everyone knows that if you get a college degree you will be rich. That's what the politicians, high school counselors, college recruiters and parents always say. It must be true.

those in my generation with college degrees are making about $17500 a year more than those without.

 

[NoDrama]

Usually when the supply of a thing increases the value decreases. A college degree is a good example.

Another note concerning why the costs have risen can be answered in the same way. Inflation has devalued the dollar. Dollar creation and the Federal Reserve in concert with the Congress creatures have ensured that.

Actually the biggest reason the cost of a college degree has gone up, is because even a fella with an IQ of 70 can get a loan from the US government to attend college. Subsidies raise prices, followed by raising the subsidies to pay for the price increase, followed by more price increase...............

 

[NoDrama]

those in my generation with college degrees are making about $17500 a year more than those without.

That's an awesome anecdote, I assume they are still paying for their school too, seeing as you are barely 30 years of age.

What better way to prepare someone for success than to send them out into the world with $60,000 of debt to worry about, debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, debt that if it is defaulted on can cause that person a whole heap of trouble.

 

[UncleBuck]

That's an awesome anecdote, I assume they are still paying for their school too, seeing as you are barely 30 years of age.

What better way to prepare someone for success than to send them out into the world with $60,000 of debt to worry about, debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, debt that if it is defaulted on can cause that person a whole heap of trouble.

not an anecdote actually, it came from a study you illustrious dullard.

and the average college debt is $29.400, not $60,000 as your awesome anecdote misleadingly states.

before year two, the college grad is already well head of the non college grad.

dumbass.

 

[NoDrama]

not an anecdote actually, it came from a study you illustrious dullard.

and the average college debt is $29.400, not $60,000 as your awesome anecdote misleadingly states.

before year two, the college grad is already well head of the non college grad.

dumbass.

Well first of all, there is no citation or any reference to a statistic, therefore an anecdote. Also, I never said the average college debt was $60,000. I never said anything about an average debt, I was making an example.

BTW your statistics about the median earnings of your generation are only sampled from people with full time jobs, not everyone in your generation. So again, you either intentionally lie about it, or you are not bright enough to see the deception.

 

[UncleBuck]

Well first of all, there is no citation or any reference to a statistic, therefore an anecdote. Also, I never said the average college debt was $60,000. I never said anything about an average debt, I was making an example.

BTW your statistics about the median earnings of your generation are only sampled from people with full time jobs, not everyone in your generation. So again, you either intentionally lie about it, or you are not bright enough to see the deception.

there you go, baby. run away from your own words when you realize how dumb they make you look since they are false.

 

[NoDrama]

there you go, baby. run away from your own words when you realize how dumb they make you look since they are false.

 

[UncleBuck]

ever figure out you reading compensation issues in the min wage thread, princess?

 

[NoDrama]

ever figure out you reading compensation issues in the min wage thread, princess?

The article makes sense, unfortunately your post was shit and my post stands as stated.

 

[UncleBuck]

The article makes sense, unfortunately your post was shit and my post stands as stated.

your retarded post does stand as idiotically misunderstood.

 

[NoDrama]

your retarded post does stand as idiotically misunderstood.

Better than the abortion you wrote.

 

[UncleBuck]

Better than the abortion you wrote.

what i wrote was clear, you were the idiot who misunderstood what was there and ran away in embarrassment, only to return clinging to sheskunk's fat hairy nuts.

that's pretty damn low, even for a plagiarizing racist welfare farmer.

 

[NoDrama]

what i wrote was clear, you were the idiot who misunderstood what was there and ran away in embarrassment, only to return clinging to sheskunk's fat hairy nuts.

that's pretty damn low, even for a plagiarizing racist welfare farmer.

Your post says that the stats are taken only from people who support raising the min wage. If you still don't understand the problem with that, well stupid people sometimes don't understand that they are stupid, its because they are stupid.

Taking about racists, how come you have been a member on the racists headquarters called stromfront for 11 years now? Only a true hardcore racist such as yourself would do that.