[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

The same boiling water that softens a potato also hardens an egg. It's not about the circumstances, but rather what you are made of!

Many who have degrees find ways to make their degrees work for them, while others spend all their time trying to pay off their degrees.

Here in the States, we are dreadfully low on nurses and respiratory therapist. When my father-in-law was battling West Nile, the respiratory therapist were working all the overtime they could handle. According to them, it didn't take much to pull down $150k and $200k plus was doable if you wanted it.

Lots of hospitals are offering sizable signing bonuses to nurses just out of college or tech school.

Sales, depending on the field, can be extremely profitable. Down here along the Gulf Coast, oil field and medical are big business. Like everything, this line of work has it's ups and downs......but a good salesman will rarely do anything else.

Most important of all:

1) be able to pass a piss test

2) don't have a criminal background

3) be personable and reliable

at first i was like "hell yeah!" but what if i'm made of egg & potato salad? what if i'm a carrot and at first i turn crisp but then i turn overboiled and soggy?

i am wary of essentialisms, because that means everyone is predestined and has no agency. i'm not a calvinist.

i think some potatos may be happy becoming soup and some eggs might want to stay raw.

what i mean is there's you, and there's your circumstance, but then there's also options. if the water is boiling and you don't like it, you can also move elsewhere. i mean, humans are nomadic creatures for a reason. you can change your space or you can change how you process things.

i'll also add-- #1 (piss test) does not necessarily apply everywhere. some of my friends in the medical fields ingest weed like crazy. i actually think it makes them better at what they do-- sensitive & mellow. like i said, they're sweet people.

#2 -- people with criminal backgrounds have turned their lives around. if you have one, don't let that make you think you're doomed forever (but please stop criming now).

#3 being personable definitely is a must for SERVICE jobs. for products not so much. if you're making a product you don't have to be as personable. there are many unpersonable people who make great things from crafts to research. of course being good at politics never hurts but it's not the only way.

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anyway, i don't think it's black/white as severian presents it-- it's not like the friends who didn't finished the doctorates are truly "fucked"-- they're alive and well and only hurting at their perceived loss of status. it's not like there were sold into sexual slavery or cut up for their organs-- they just can't afford the luxuries they thought they would. and attachment equals suffering.

so, the faster they embrace their new proletarian reality the faster they'll be able to adapt and make the necessary changes to find new forms of fulfillment.

i kinda like the idea of that eco-thing, except for the tv part-- what a fucking horrorshow.