Am I dumb for having gone to college? (Detroit, Ann Arbor: short sale, real estate)

[Awaiting2012]

I would rethink NYC.

It sounds like you romanticized it and that's the totally wrong reason for doing anything, especially monetarily. Cars, houses, and goods all picked with emotion in mind same thing.

If you are thinking you can go to NYC and get an apartment with "a" roommate for $500/mo, you are thinking 1985. Try at least 3 other roommates for that price because NYC has a housing problem, so all that is there are apartments. The economy is bad right now and when housing goes down, apartment rents go UP. I wouldn't be surprised if you were paying more for an apartment in NYC now than someone did before all this mess started, as people cannot afford to pay their mortgages. Also, trying to commute from NJ to NY everyday won't be possible either. Apartments are cheaper on the Jersey side, but the commute will KILL you; actually the apartments aren't all that much cheaper because lots of people commute to NYC because it's expensive to live there.

Someone mentioned Canada and honestly, if I could do things over again at your age (sub-30) and had a degree, I'd hightail my butt north and put in papers. Even if you get a lower paying job, you'll be able to get FREE healthcare coverage so that's like a $10,000 salary bonus. There is also less crime and housing isn't that bad. Apartments are plentiful there. And being not far from Michigan, it's not too bad to whip down and see everyone when you want too.

[JMadison]

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?

Welcome to the world those Harvard MBA's built, LOL!

Heck, I have decades in my line of work, but so many are out of work... one place I applied to said they had 800 applicants for 40 positions. Very hard to bubble to the top. And all those applicants are going to have degrees up to Doctorate... and decades of experience.

Not sure what to tell you as many I know have been going through this since about 2007, and some, like myself have seen industry ups and downs and been up and down several times since as early as the early 90's... with each bubble cycle. Some older folks have been going through it since the oil crunch of the 70's.

Probably best for you to go back to school and get the M.D. in Psychiatry and become one of society's ordained pushers of SSRIs at $150/hr. or get the J.D. and learn to joust with words (but a glutted field as it's easier for any bachelor's degree to get into Law School... not so with medicine).

Other options are perhaps start a business (good luck in today's environment) or accept that you are going to have to struggle for quite some time.

As one boss I had said when I was young... "Welcome to the real world." LOL!

Anyway, you aren't alone by any stretch. Folks who've paid *even more* dues in life are in equally sucky situations. Many, many of them.

[JMadison]

Originally Posted by zthatzmanz28

North Carolina pays Qualified Professionals between $20 and $35 an hour as case managers working in the mental health field around Raleigh...

Ah marvelous. What an endpoint for someone who blew 5.5 years and 80K in career training. Case work in Raleigh. Man that's bleak. At those salary figures you aren't going to be able to buy any isolation from the locale. Of course case work is going to put you in the thick of everything that sux about the deep south anyway, so Ta-Dah! You win the prize!

[JMadison]

Originally Posted by Bluefly

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.

Oh marvelous. Law firms isn't the only thing D.C. is overrun with. God what an awful place.

[JMadison]

Originally Posted by Bhaalspawn

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.)

"Happy Middle Class Life"

Speaking of oxymorons, LOL!

As a male with many female acquaintances and having watched the marriages of all the women in my family over at least 3 generations...

I'd say with the men of today... best to aim for you own career and money. Try your best to be independent. Trust me on this one. May not be possible, or you might get lucky and find Mr. Right (or Mr. Goodbar judging by the above posting). But not likely. If you aren't "hot"... today's young guys will eventually be looking for "hot". If you are "hot" the richy riches will play you but never commit.

Unfortunately it's a rock-and-hard-place problem. Average girls get trashed for the hotties. Hotties who have access to the successful males get serially (or collectively) trashed because they can get away with it.

Sad, but it's what the saturation of the media with airbrushed hotties and lifestyle marketing have created.

[tijlover]

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 agree. And how many of those in jails, state prisons, Federal Penitentiaries would also agree as many in there are getting a very fine, tuition-free education which will serve them well when they get out. Let's see, what kind of classes are offered?

Burglary, I, II, III
Robbery, I, II, III
Identity Theft I, II, III, IV
Scamming Senior Citizens: I, II, III
Running For Political Office: I, II
Car Theft
Murder
How to Run a Profitable Meth Lab I, II, II
Credit Card Scammming
The Art of Successful Pimping

LOL!

[gradstudent77]

Originally Posted by Awaiting2012

I would rethink NYC.



If you are thinking you can go to NYC and get an apartment with "a" roommate for $500/mo, you are thinking 1985.

Her original post might not have been clear about this but she did not state that she was going to find a roommate for that rent price, but rather that she knew someone who would let her stay there for $500.

Also, $600 would do it in nyc with one roommate if you wanted a private bedroom, as long as you didn't mind a rough neighborhood. "Rough" in nyc isn't detroit rough, anymore, either. As for the anecdotes about jersey commuting, it really depends. If one commutes by path train, the commute is nothing. If one lives in Hudson County, NJ (google maps that ish), the bus is quick. If one relies on the express bus from further out subruban towns, its not that bad.

[Bhaalspawn]

Originally Posted by gradstudent77

I could buy the idea that our economy has changed enough recently that many old paradigms about education and such do not still apply, but don't you think most of the sob stories have to do with the individual? For instance, don't you have to imagine that our original poster did not exactly attend a prestigious university, did not get a high gpa and did not gain the sort of work experience and contacts s/he should have.

Oh, I agree with you that factors such as grades and the prestige of the school you attended have an effect on the outcome. However, those people still attained college educations, which reaffirms my point that it no longer has the value it used to have as a result of degree holder overproduction.

[Bluefly]

Originally Posted by Awaiting2012

I would rethink NYC.

It sounds like you romanticized it and that's the totally wrong reason for doing anything, especially monetarily. Cars, houses, and goods all picked with emotion in mind same thing.

If you are thinking you can go to NYC and get an apartment with "a" roommate for $500/mo, you are thinking 1985. Try at least 3 other roommates for that price because NYC has a housing problem, so all that is there are apartments. The economy is bad right now and when housing goes down, apartment rents go UP. I wouldn't be surprised if you were paying more for an apartment in NYC now than someone did before all this mess started, as people cannot afford to pay their mortgages. Also, trying to commute from NJ to NY everyday won't be possible either. Apartments are cheaper on the Jersey side, but the commute will KILL you; actually the apartments aren't all that much cheaper because lots of people commute to NYC because it's expensive to live there.

Someone mentioned Canada and honestly, if I could do things over again at your age (sub-30) and had a degree, I'd hightail my butt north and put in papers. Even if you get a lower paying job, you'll be able to get FREE healthcare coverage so that's like a $10,000 salary bonus. There is also less crime and housing isn't that bad. Apartments are plentiful there. And being not far from Michigan, it's not too bad to whip down and see everyone when you want too.

Sounds like you're the one romanticizing NYC. I was very recently looking for housing there and found that you can pretty easily share a place with one person for $600-$700 a month in most decent neighborhoods.

[Bluefly]

Originally Posted by Bhaalspawn

Oh, I agree with you that factors such as grades and the prestige of the school you attended have an effect on the outcome. However, those people still attained college educations, which reaffirms my point that it no longer has the value it used to have as a result of degree holder overproduction.

Yeah, as the working and middle class began to flood the college degree market, just having a degree stopped being enough. Soon enough having a Masters rose to being the former equivalent of a Bachelors and what school one went to began to matter a whole lot more.

Just look at Sarah Palin with her 6 year journalism degree from 5 different schools and ultimately Idaho. Haven't heard one person that gives that any credence.

That said - only 15% of Americans have bachelor degrees and less than 9% have advanced degrees, which shocks me since so many people seem to have degrees now.



JMadison - you seem to be a very bitter person. You should work through that.