Among the things I'm interested in is what kind of educational interventions can help students in that socioeconomic bracket. In my view I think good mentoring programs with professionals who originally were in those backgrounds can help students see future employment possibilities in a variety of majors. There are hundreds of careers most people have never heard of, but you don't get exposure to them by accident.

le nubian, I have no idea about what interventions can help. I am not even sure about mentoring (we received a Gear Up grant and those kids had mentors for 7 years and the grad rate/college attendance rate/AP Pass rate was roughly the same as every other year, and dramatically lower than the Non-Gear-Up kids the year before). The one that sounds promising but not scalable is Blue Engine but that requires a buttload of money and a complete overhauling of the pedagogical approach of the classroom teacher.

Even though I'm a mostly useless English teacher, I was not an English major. I should be working in international something, as that was my degree and I passed the written portion of the foreign service exam. But blargh. I don't even have a foreign language under my belt anymore.

Amy, I didn't mean to imply that you should follow your dream and just study basketweaving (though I have done that and its pretty fun). It was more that this topic is one of larger general interest to me since it's a conversation I have with kids a lot. Also, when my former students tell me they are going to be an English major I sort of cringe. Which is wrong. There are plenty of English majors with real jobs. Anyhow, sorry, if I came across as assholey.

It's nothing I can do anything about anyway, Suzi, so I am trying to let it go. But gah.

I have long since considered my educational debt as sunk costs rather than investments. Which I learned all about getting my MBA, which is the bulk of my student loan debt. The circle of something.

I have long since considered my educational debt as sunk costs rather than investments.

Absolutely sunk costs!

Just as I was about to leave the office my boss sent the intern to find me and tell me he needed me to review some copy. I asked if I could do it from home, and he said he needed it immediately. So I turned the laptop back on and kept hitting refresh--five minutes, he said...

Ten minutes later he comes downstairs and hands me some paper. Whuhuh? I explained I had the app (and if I hadn't, I'd have asked for printscreens--paper is never the right answer in similar scenarious) and marked the paper up.

But what's interesting is that we're doing a usability fix, and I have zero qualifications, but...you gotta explain stuff to people! Give them actions to do in certain scenarios, and use simple words!

For anyone with online banking at BofA, if you went to log in and the picture or passphrase wasn't yours, what would you guess to do next? Did you instantly understand "multifactor" (not just your password, but other information, including registering your computer as allowed to access the account) authentication the first time some site sent you an authorisation code or asked you security questions when you logged in from your work computer instead of home?

I judge by my family, and I know my (pretty intelligent) sister hates it and doesn't know what the benefits are because her bank dumped this "switch now or you explode!" process on her, and it was just trauma from start to finish. She doesn't have breathing room to feel more secure.

Sunk costs you can't afford are still as much debt as an investment unreturned on, though. How much can you afford to spend on...whatever, and what are your plans for being able to pay back? I don't know if I'd recommend people not consider this.

Then again, I also crushed my mother's dreams by choosing a cheap university (I thought the idea of loans for education was barbaric...oh so fucking sheltered uni track British high school student...) instead of the fanciest, but I have never regretted a second of that.

For anyone with online banking at BofA, if you went to log in and the picture or passphrase wasn't yours, what would you guess to do next?

Back out of there, or close the window, or close the browser, depending on how paranoid I was feeling, I guess. And then panic because I wouldn't know what to do after that but clearly I can't trust the internet and that shuts an awful lot of doors.

Did you instantly understand "multifactor" (not just your password, but other information, including registering your computer as allowed to access the account) authentication the first time some site sent you an authorisation code or asked you security questions when you logged in from your work computer instead of home?

My bank that does that doesn't use the word "multifactor" to explain what's happening, it says something like it doesn't recognize the computer so here's some additional security hoops to jump through and should it remember this computer for later or not? Not in exactly those words, but along those lines.

People ask me how I got into tech support, if I have computer degrees or something. I tell them that most of my jobs came from a really good business typing course in high school, when typing was still mostly something women who were going to be secretaries needed to learn. (I dreaded shorthand, thank god that went away.) The computer bit came most from poking around the various screens I had access to, asking questions, and having a very linear brain that could appreciate a computer's desire to go from point A to Point D only by going through B and C first, no matter how much you cursed at it and thumped the buttons that made sense to you. My only formal training in computers was from a college freshman course in BASIC programming back in 1979.

Sunk costs you can't afford are still as much debt as an investment unreturned on, though. How much can you afford to spend on...whatever, and what are your plans for being able to pay back? I don't know if I'd recommend people not consider this.

Yeah, the concept of sunk costs doesn't really work for future spending, only what you've already spent. Unless you embrace determinism thoroughly, I suppose.

I don't think I was all that rational about it when I was deciding to go back to school, and I certainly wasn't as an undergrad (or the first, uh, two tries at graduate school). I was all about some idealized ivory tower pure learning experience. Well, not for the MBA, but that was kind of a move of desperate hope more than anything else.

I don't recommend anyone follow my example.

Well, the ideal gas law, I remember the hell out of that.

PV=nRT forever!!! I actually have used that...

I've had to do the multifactor shit with a potential loan app. Not amused. I know WF has its detractors, but they've been good to me. They get iffy about me logging in from work and home, I often have to supply the security answers.

And then panic because I wouldn't know what to do after that but clearly I can't trust the internet and that shuts an awful lot of doors.

Which is why I want our process to say "IF YOU DON'T SEE THEM, CALL SUPPORT". Clearly that's maybe not on the fake, but if you've read it enough times, maybe you'll remember. For every "Check this!" I think we need to tell them what to do now that they've checked.

I think I have a barber now. The place doesn't let you pick who gives you a buzz cut. You can just jump ahead in line if you call 30 minutes before, but that's all the appointment you can get. When I got there today, he picked me, and we chatted happily about migraines, trans* surprises, getting cut mostly out of movies and other less than earthshaking things and then I got a free headwash. He's my new bimonthly (or whatevs) best friend.