#classist business major boomer

[goldensunset]

dad whines for an entire month about how i don’t have a summer job yet and that i need to just suck it up and keep applying anywhere i can whether i like it or not and it doesn’t matter how prestigious it is because i absolutely need to enter the workforce and it’s such a disgrace that i’m 19 and have never had a job before etc

then i land a job but it’s something he doesn’t like or think is good enough so he keeps on whining and acting as if i’ve accomplished nothing after all

#sir where’s my congratulations i’m proud of you #sigh. #so WHAT if it’s a manual labor cleaning job. so WHAT if i’m not making 15 an hour. so WHAT. i entered the workforce #and i LIKE menial labor you fool. that beats dealing with the mental abuse of customer service from people like you any day #classist business major boomer #what happened to ‘all that matters is that you get SOMETHING to do this summer and get it RIGHT AWAY’ #ok i did that but now you’re going on about the number of hours i should be working and the amount of money i should be making #amazing job supporting me. using your huffy impatient angry annoyed tone of voice while offering a half hearted congrats #genuine garbage parenting #whereas my mom was ecstatic for me because she knows it means a lot that i got this #peach rambles #but what else is new

[wallacewellsbian]

So today I heard someone voice their shitty opinion about US higher education...

To preface, about 90% of the folks I work with each day are from somewhere else in the world.  Usually, I love being part of a global community of scientific exploration.  But this person...really ground my gears.

She stated that US educational degrees aren’t worth anything because we “pay” for them rather than, in her opinion, “earn them.”  What you need to understand is that I typically deal with people with double the degrees that she has and three times the experience, so her opinion means next to nothing to begin with.  However I still need to say this.  What she said was possibly the most insulting, and elitist piece of word vomit I’ve heard since the last speech from Trump or Betsy DeVos.  (Both of whom did, in point of fact, buy their degrees.)  BUT it shows such a fundamental lack of knowledge and understanding in the shitshow that is US education that it basically tells me that this person is a complete fucking idiot, bereft of any knowledge or sense of any kind.

Higher education in the US is a disgustingly classist and elitist mess that requires those who don’t come from money to work about five times as hard as someone born into wealth to get half as far.  It’s even worse when you consider the racial and gender/gender alternative gaps in our educational opportunities, but that’s a whole different late night rant.  (And I’m not even talking about the recent admissions scandals because who gives a shit about rich people going to jail.  They deserve it.)  Using money as the gatekeeper for academia is nothing short of setting a society up for utter and complete failure, which the US is doing in spades.  I genuinely believe this will be a nail in our country’s coffin, give or take about 60 years.  And that’s coming from someone with an advanced scientific degree in sustainability...because there’s absolute no chance of the US helping to abate climate catastrophe on a governmental level until about 2036.  Trust me on that. 

However, being a bitchy cog in that machine from what you “believe to be a world view” is actually playing into the Reagan-era nonsense that’s led to the average millennial’s horrific amount of average school debt and the complete disenfranchisement of gen z.  When your education is free, you can’t even BEGIN to comprehend what it’s like to work 40hrs/wk and simultaneously go to school full time  just to keep your bills in check and loan amounts down.  You have NO concept of the mental and physical tolls that sort of pressure takes on you, every.  single.  second.  of the day.  THAT is earning your degree.

This person was so dripping with EU white privilege that she couldn’t even see that was she was saying was egregiously incorrect and it’s just so deeply reminiscent of every boomer article crying wolf about how I’m killing the ketchup industry or a toxic dry cleaning business that I’m just hear to beg you about ONE THING.  Think before you open your mouth.  Don’t bother to speak if you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, unless it’s to ask a question or to better inform yourself.  I don’t know why this is so hard.   People are dying over here because they can’t afford insulin.  Maybe don’t insult one of the ways that people feel like they can better themselves, their lives, and their families, if they choose to pursue it.  And the majority DO fucking earn it.

#I work at NASA and I fucking hate my job. #I've seen what your EU country does to PoC so maybe get the fuck of your high horse. It's dead and you should stop beating it.