After the last three years of figuring out in which direction I want to take my life, I finally declared my major in English two weeks ago, which entails putting up with the fact that I am going to be poor for the rest of my life. So when I read Emily Streyer Carlisle's column I thought, "Well, if doctors are underpaid, then I am really screwed."
Being an English major allows me the advantage of being completely ignorant of the facts, so I really don't know how accurate Carlisle's column is, but I do know that the feeling is there and that I can speak for all the students of English, art history, philosophy, music and others at Duke when I say, "Dude."
In a perfect world, we would all be able to make a decent living off what makes us the happiest. Writing a poem could finish off car payments, listening to Kid A could pay the rent and taking a photograph could furnish a living room. Imagine: getting paid to drink yourself into oblivion. So what is this dumb association that money has with the things we want to do with our lives anyway?
Why are doctors, writers, social workers, nurses, teachers, everybody going to be underpaid when we're putting in so much money into our education? Why can't we earn back the same figures as our tuition? I don't know! I am ignorant of the facts! And because of this, my only recoil is to propose the most ridiculous solution I can think of: lower the damn tuition.
Hell, just give me back some money or something. A small check once a month wouldn't kill. Nothing big, even a hundred bucks. Give me my textbooks for free, or pay for my dinner, or stop putting up creepy gargoyles in the West-Edens Link that nobody likes. Those things are terrible. I'm already going to be poor; I don't want to look at those disturbing heads every time I leave my dorm. I'm not asking you to buy me a car or a house or anything, but maybe a mountain bike would be cool, or a power scooter, or a new guitar, or a bottle of Jack, or an eighth of KB, or a tank of gas, or a Kit-Kat. Come on. I'm young, I'm broke and I want to feel alive while getting a good education. It can be done.
On second thought, I changed my mind. Maybe poverty will keep us all from becoming Yuppies. Because that's really what a University really is: a self-perpetuating Yuppie-producing factory. So huzzah. to the underpaid of the world, because somehow a lack of money will make us live like humans, work like dogs and love like artists.
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