Am I dumb for having gone to college? (Caro: how much, attorneys)

[lovindfw]

Good decision to get the h*ll out of Michigan! Texas will definitely give you a better chance.

[yukiko11]

There are probably a lot of cheaper places with more opportunities that you could live, but you have to do what makes you comfortable and secure, so make a start and see how it goes.
Believe me, one day that degree will count, and when you find a field that makes you happy, an advanced degree will count even more. There are many companies now that won't hire anyone unless they have an advanced degree. The company I worked for Brunswick is one of them. I got in before they got so snooty, but when they set that bar, I was always treated as a second class citizen.

[Bluefly]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

New york law firms are laying off hundreds of lawyers. That is not theplace to look for a paralegal position. I am not sure of anywhere that is doing well in the legal profession. California is very slow. Maybe Texas.

That's precisely why I think Washington DC is her best chance. Government money is what's flowing, and the city is overrun with law firms and non-profits that do legal work.

The combination is probably the best shot - and you can get a room in a group house for pretty cheap (a LOT of young professionals live in group houses to offset their small salaries in an expensive city).

DC's also a really great city.

[Jwo85]

Regardless, every other state including California will recover except Michigan. When the rest of the U.S. economy picks up, California's tourist, movie, music, technology, science and fashion industry will help lift most of the state out of its problems.

Michigan only has the grand automobile industry that has not done well since the 1950''s and 60's will continue to slip away and regain the coined term from 2005 "One State Recession."

Regards to the OP, I don't think it was dumb for you to get educated. You will just have to pull a move like our ancestors did and leave the old country for the new country to get a better living.

In Modern times the reference would be Michigan as the old country and the new country would be many of the other U.S. states.

[zakian]

Originally Posted by ThroatGuzzler

If you try to walk in a minimum wage institution and they see you with a degree, they'd be inclined to disregard the application right away. They figure since you have an education, you'd only work there temporarily until you find a suitable job. I suggest to leave the state.. Michigan is about the worst place to be in right now. Consider moving to Canada possibly.. i dont know.

It's a baaaad state of affairs now. Has been. How many times I applied for a job only to be told I was "over qualified." That was in the 70's/80's.And I just have a high school education. Thank GOD I'm disabled now and collect SS. I remember sleeping on the ground, parks or not sleeping,living off of Beefcubes and that was in the "good times." The easyest thing to do is get on welfare. Sorry I have to say that.

[Bhaalspawn]

Originally Posted by MarissaInMichigan

I have a bachelor's in psychology and certification as a paralegal (just finished school). I haven't found any good job offers. The one offer that was made was for $8.50 an hour for a debt collection firm. Mind you I spent about $80K on school. Needless to say, I am mad as he*&. My education took 5 1/2 years to obtain. I need your help and advice people. I'm 28 years old with no kids or husband, living in my mom's basement right now searching for work. It gets more depressing day by day, to levels of despair I did not think I was capable of experiencing. How do I lift myself up? What should I do? I can't find work ANYWHERE. Even at McDonald's (I applied to a dozen of them!). I really just feel like doing a Nicholas Cage in Leaving Los Vegas and locking myself in a motel with all the cheap scotch I can charge on my Visa. Is there any reason to hope at all?

Marissa, you are not the only person in this situation. In fact, perhaps hundreds of thousands if not millions of people are in similar situations. A Bachelors degree today is not what it used to be 40-50 years ago when many people's perceptions of the value of a college education were formed and fixed. In fact, a great many people never make any direct use of their college education. You are NOT a moron for being perhaps young and naive, especially when society, the media, intellectuals, educators, and pundits trumpet the value of a college education. You really do almost need to have a bad experience in order to be moved to question that dogma. Discovering the actual reality of the situation can be disconcerting, especially if you were raised and indoctrinated by society to believe that a college education was an almost automatic guarantor of a middle class lifestyle and job security.

Today, just about everyone who has the ability (intellectual and financial) to do so goes to college. The end result is that our society has significantly overproduced people with college educations, resulting in too many qualified people for too few knowledge-based jobs. It's not your fault. We have an oversupply of people in just about every field today and a great many people are either unemployed or underemployed-involuntarily-out-of-field. We have too many Ph.D. scientists, we have too many computer programmers, we have too many people in IT, we have too many MBAs, we have two or three times as many attorneys as our economy can support and we even have an oversupply of patent lawyers (science or engineering degree + law degree--imagine that). (Many of those Ph.D. scientists fled the career graveyard of science for law school in the hopes of striking it rich as patent lawyers and now we have an oversupply of them. I fled science for law with a Masters degree.)

Note that there is also such a thing as an Education Arms Race where people will end up trying to outdo one another, fighting for the smaller number of jobs available (relative to the number of qualified people with degrees) by going on to get expensive and time-consuming advanced degrees. Hence, we have too many lawyers, too many MBAs, too many humanities PhD's, too many Ph.D. scientists, too many people with Masters degrees, etc. The result of this destructive arms race is a gigantic amount of unused education which constitutes economic waste in our society. Sadly, this tremendous squandering of societal wealth has gone completely unnoticed. The problem is that the parties that benefit from people obtaining education (universities, professors, lenders, and even politicians who sell it to the masses as a solution to our economic problems since people gobble it up) do not suffer negative consequences from unused education, so there isn't much of a feedback loop to encourage them to stop expanding and selling their product. (Universities and colleges are for-profit businesses; a great many stakeholders have an interest in perpetuating the education myth and over-educating society. It may also reduce unemployment some since students aren't really in the labor pool.)

Best of luck to you. You might consider trying to get a second degree at a less expensive state school in a field that is still decent. Nursing seems like a decent field for now though it is somewhat blue collar since you are on your feet doing physical labor. I'm not sure what else is an almost sure bet other than to become a physician (where the number of people who can become doctors is artificially limited relative to the number of people who want to go to medical school and who are qualified to go).

This may sound chauvinist, but you might also try to hook up with a successful man who can help you pay off your loans or at least provide for your housing costs when married, allowing you to find a lower paying job in your field or at least a lower-paying white collar job or a pleasant job. You could also end up as a happy homemaker, essentially using your BS degree as an Mrs degree. (I'm not trying to be an ass here; I'm just trying to be helpful while accurately describing reality and the available options. As a woman you have the option of marrying up which men don't have, so take advantage of it if you can and if it make sense. This is one of the paths you could take to a happy middle class life.)

[Bhaalspawn]

Originally Posted by ImaMichigander

As for your para-legal training, I can't speak to that.... But I have to believe that it is more marketable than a bachelor's in psych.

I agree with ImaMichagander, and you might consider seeking out work as paralegal. Sadly, law firms have been laying them off along with other support staff and associate attorneys. If you want to try to work as a paralegal your best bet might be a city with a large legal market, perhaps Chicago, New York City, Boston, or Washington, D.C. Sadly, the cost of living in those places can be insane, but perhaps it would be worthwhile. After gaining marketable experience you might be able one day relocate to an area with a better salary-to-cost-of-living ratio.

Unfortunately, it sounds like you needed more direction when you were chosing a major-- God knows that I did. But education is always a good thing and something will happen.

ImaMichigander, I wouldn't be so sure of that. You can find numerous sob stories on the Internet about people who just cannot find work and who end up losing the employment value of their degrees by virtue of being unemployed for too long or going underemployed-involuntarily-out-of-field for too long. Perhaps this was the paradigm in the '60s and '70s, but I'm not convinced that it holds true any longer. Personally, I believe that our nation is undergoing a major economic transformation and that we have entered a new, much less prosperous age where old paradigms will no longer hold true.

[RottenChester]

Originally Posted by MarissaInMichigan

I have a bachelor's in psychology and certification as a paralegal (just finished school). I haven't found any good job offers. The one offer that was made was for $8.50 an hour for a debt collection firm. Mind you I spent about $80K on school. Needless to say, I am mad as he*&. My education took 5 1/2 years to obtain. I need your help and advice people. I'm 28 years old with no kids or husband, living in my mom's basement right now searching for work. It gets more depressing day by day, to levels of despair I did not think I was capable of experiencing. How do I lift myself up? What should I do? I can't find work ANYWHERE. Even at McDonald's (I applied to a dozen of them!). I really just feel like doing a Nicholas Cage in Leaving Los Vegas and locking myself in a motel with all the cheap scotch I can charge on my Visa. Is there any reason to hope at all?

Yes you are dumb. I was once in a liberal arts degree program in college not too long ago, and realized the crap they were teaching me was useless in real world situations. I was paying way too much money to sit in classes and learn stupid things. I foresaw the impending doom of this economy and got out of school. I found a job. Three months after I got hired, my company announced it would be on a hiring freeze. It is still in effect today.

People you need to realize that the only degrees that are going to pay are nursing, engineering, law, and medicine. With everything else you are just wasting your time and money. My advice to MarissaInMichigan is to take whatever job you can get for now, try and work down your school debt, and when you have enough saved up, move somewhere that is booming or poised to boom.

[Huckleberry3911948]

best advice seek out a community job where they will forgive part or all of the debt.
do not do not go back to school and do a double or nothing.
greatest depreciation goin next to a new car, an advanced degree.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by RottenChester

Yes you are dumb. I was once in a liberal arts degree program in college not too long ago, and realized the crap they were teaching me was useless in real world situations. I was paying way too much money to sit in classes and learn stupid things. I foresaw the impending doom of this economy and got out of school. I found a job. Three months after I got hired, my company announced it would be on a hiring freeze. It is still in effect today.

People you need to realize that the only degrees that are going to pay are nursing, engineering, law, and medicine. With everything else you are just wasting your time and money. My advice to MarissaInMichigan is to take whatever job you can get for now, try and work down your school debt, and when you have enough saved up, move somewhere that is booming or poised to boom.

This guy has never had a family member visit a psychologist and paid the bill.