We were warned about this when we were children, it’s in Aesop’s Fables. Fortunately due to our crippling debt we’ll never have families.  There is always the chance of a contraception mishap but now that I’m on the other side of 30 I don’t really see that happening. But I digress.  The Tortoise and the Hare.  The way I read this story now is that we are Hares, the Tortoises are our idiot peers who coasted through high school and their state University of choice, only to end up managing us after we went into debt earning useless degrees that don’t land us jobs in this economy. I mean when you think about it, these ignoramuses who can drink a keg and not fall over are the epitome of “slow and steady.”

But seriously, let’s look at the Economics of this. In addition to reading children’s picture books I also have read the Wall Street Journal as of late. The article pointed out that the number 1 indicator of future success is the state of the economy your first 2-3 years of working. Kids who enter the job market in a recession NEVER recover to the point of other classes no matter how good they are or how fast they run.

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It takes a lot to get one of us to write these days.  Alpha Man promised me a simple explanation of the crux of the Occupy Movement’s issues and he has yet to deliver.  Me, I am content for the time being just to be part of something.  Looking for an answer beats looking for a job. Probably because unlike a job, I know the truth exists.

However I had to tell you guys about this: M.I.T. is providing free, online education that now comes with a certified credential that exhibits mastery of the material. I am including the link below

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/12/21/m-i-t-game-changer-free-online-education-for-all/

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Hi folks! We here at Debtor’s Prison are pleased to introduce Rebecca Smith who has been kind enough to write a guest column.  We are impressed with Rebecca’s work and hope she will write for us again.

REBECCA SMITH

The latest chapter of a painful story that began years ago was the debt fight that continued in the capital of the nation and the ensuing credit downgrade by the Standard & Poor’s.  In the last decade, the banks, consumers and the homeowners became bloated with too much leverage or borrowed a huge amount of money and this resulted in a drastic shrinkage of credit throughout the entire economy, a particular phenomenon that is financially known as ‘deleveraging’. Apart from the big picture, the consumers too were worried about the ways in which they can seek debt relief so as to stay out of the debt cycle.

The present situation of the US is nothing new and the government has been grappling with such issues and has also been throwing billions to dollars to provide a quick cure from such problems. Even after continuous meetings and steps taken to assess and improve the current state of the US economy, there has been no positive result that is noticeable. Though the labor market reports were slightly positive in the month of July and August, 2011, yet there has been no such noticeable increase in the growth of jobs within the market that could alleviate the spurring unemployment level. Gut-wrenching market plunges, accompanied by multiple negative aspects of the economy show that the economy is losing steam. Despite all such nerve-wracking events within the US economy, very few expect the policymakers to reveal some new stimulus plans to rejuvenate the lost shine of the nation.

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In my last post I wrote that a lot was going on that might make it seem like on surface progress of some kind was being made.  Unfortunately this optimism doesn’t hold up to any kind of rigorous analysis.  It’s like if you’re trying to get somewhere and you don’t know where it is all the while you’re running out of gas.  So you stop.  After all, what’s the point of continuing driving when you have no gas and don’t know where you’re going?  So you send your passenger out to explore while you guard the car and after awhile they come back and say there is a gas station two miles up the road.  Great.  But you’ve still got pay for that gas, and you still don’t know where you are going.  That’s kind of like what is going on here.

What we have here, or essentially what we are witnessing, is the solidification of the student debt “scam” as just one of those those unjust facts of life.  Think of it as Republicans only protecting the interests of the rich or wanting to cut any sort of health care safety net.  Republicans have been the same in that respect for 40 years AND WE KNOW THIS.  They still get elected and raise money the same way.  Every now and then when something becomes OUTRAGEOUS there’s a small re-adjustment but nothing FUNDAMENTALLY changes.

There are several reasons for this.  Read on for the discussion

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So, a whole lot has happened.  So much in fact that it’s hard to decide exactly what to write about.  First there is this

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/business/law-school-economics-job-market-weakens-tuition-rises.html?_r=1

And if you’re here on this site you are aware of everything in the story linked to above.  What makes it newsworthy is that it’s in the New York Times.  I suppose I should be happy that one of the most widely read newspapers in the world has taken note of my specific plight.  But instead all I did was crack a beer.  Then I cracked another, and another and then I got REAL mad.  Is this how people who see parents murder their children all the time felt when the media found Casey Anthony? And now thanks to the NYT article…well, my life’s still over.  I’ve got this blog, I do my part to help the next generation.  All I am left with his emptiness.

But there’s more.  How about this

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/07/suing-law-schools-potpourri-tidings-from-law-schools-named-after-a-thomas/thomas-cooley-lawsuit-cl/

That’s right.  Kids like me are rising up and suing their law schools.  Read on to hear what I think about that.

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So I have been pretty busy over in the politics section but I thought I would pop back to the main page to point out an obvious truth: you don’t have any friends. No, it’s true. If you were to marry your non-existent significant other the only people standing next to you would be siblings of the same gender at least one of which you hate or resent. But whatever.

Most of your former friends were of the same background education wise. Some of them succeeded where you failed and some failed right beside you. But every failed man is an island. There is no joke about two unemployed people entering a bar because there is nobody to pick up the tab.

Yeah despite what sitcoms and wedding toasts would have you believe this happens. This is life. People walk in and walk out of our lives. Imagine if you had to bury everyone you ever cared about who died before you?

Next, don’t try to make friends. It is a futile exercise until you are in a better place lifewise. However if you insist on trying to make friends remember how you made every other friend you ever had: through shared experiences that usually involve acquiring a skill or a right of passage.

Sit tight champ. I won’t say things will get better but you’re not done meeting people and there is still a chance to be about something.

So I’ve been at my new job for just under a year and am at that crucial point where the mere fact that my job is not something I remember hating is no longer enough to sustain me through each day.  This development has coincided with a mental paradigm shift: I no longer compare myself to the broken, debt-ridden, one foot in the grave at 30 law school classmates of yesteryear. I now compare myself to the young professionals who are getting married, starting families and doing this peculiar activity called “living.” This is significant because whereas I am doing much better than my colleagues left to rot in the dead legal profession I am doing much worse than my colleagues who went the “business analyst” route (think liberal arts majors with soft computer skills).

I don’t think my experience is unique. When you get out of s really bad situation, below average seems fantastic. In relationships it’s called being on the rebound. Then one day you wake up next to a married assistant manager of your local deli and realize just because he doesn’t hit you or sell your stuff online doesn’t mean he’s Mr. Right. Well, I just realized my job is that assistant manager.
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So I landed an interview.  One cover letter out of the literally tens (yes) tens of thousands I have sent out over the past couple of years hit a bulls eye.  And I mean it hit a bulls eye.  I am talking about the exact department of my exact specialty. I received a call right away.  The HR woman was in contact with me everyday.  I had an itinerary and directions to the office.  I had a list of real people I could research on the company website.  I booked a hotel for the interview at their branch office.  I was all set to go.

It fell through.  Big surprise.  But its not so much that it fell through but how it fell through.  I’ve had a ton of interviews not work out and I had a laundry list of reasons in the back of my head – not enough experience, hasn’t worked in over two years, he’s too old, he’s too young, he has too many degrees, etc.  I had prepared myself for that disappointment.  But none of those reasons are the reason my interview fell through.

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Thanks to a surprisingly competent group of interns I also have time to write on this second topic.  Medical kids enjoy and don’t expect back to back articles to ever happen again! Cheers!

The best thing about the MCAT is complaining about it.  It’s the first universally recognized rite of passage that the rest of the world gets subjected to.  Marines have their crucible, PhDs defend dissertations but pre-meds have a slightly more difficult SAT and you better believe you’re going to hear about it.

So when I read that they were revamping the MCAT I had mixed feelings.  I was relieved that there was no talk of diversity, because I knew that if there was it would only be to say that minorities under-perform and that’s kind of a downer.  When I read that the MCAT was originally designed to combat the then abysmal attrition rate I thought ok, they are going to say the MCAT was needed so kids wouldn’t take on debt and then drop out with no MD to show for it.  Turns out the article really was just about the MCAT.  I guess I am programmed to see certain things everywhere even if they don’t exist.  But hey, while we’re talking about diversity and debt let’s go ahead and address those issues.
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Well here we go.  No I haven’t written in awhile BUT due to a mercifully slow night you in the medical community are about to get an article that is relevant to you.  Yay.

There are two types of doctors: doctors who want to be doctors and doctors who want to be successful.  Doctors who want to be doctors work at hospitals and volunteer/have lives outside of the hospital.  Doctors who want to be successful build private practices and spend all their time, whether at the dinner table or in the operating room, trying to figure out how to make that private practice more successful.  In a non-bimodal world I like to call reality, most doctors go back and forth.  Unexpectedly, debt is the reason for this, whether you have it or not.
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