I went to college and started a chemistry major, thinking I would become a science teacher. Then I couldn't stand chemistry any longer, and switched to Psychology with a view to becoming a therapist. I didn't quite manage to graduate.

But I am working in my field and using both the knowledge that I gained and the passion for learning more. I could advance up the career ladder, so to speak, if I had that bachelor's degree (or even if I had an Associate's, I could get a little further). In the last few months several people (including higher-ups in my own organization and social services behavioral consultants) have asked me why I haven't tried to finish my degree, that they could see me doing brilliantly at higher levels. The thing is, I love precisely what I am doing. I see the work that people above me have to do, and I know I could do it quite well. But I would hate it. It would take me away from the people I work with and bury me under paperwork.

I love my work, and that is an incalculable blessing.

I loved getting my art degree. I'd do it again. I like the broad scope and the depth of knowledge and the truly gifted and inspired professors I worked with.

I don't love paying for my art degree. I'd have done a lot more art if I weren't spending so much time paying for the degree. I'd have certainly done more art WHILE getting the degree had I not been spending so much time paying for the degree.

It was a fairly (though not SUPER) fancy program... but that name on my resume has gotten me far more desk job work than creative work. And I knew it might -- but I also knew that (barring some breathless early stardom) I'd have bills to pay so I opted to get the BFA at a University.

Living in NYC factors into all of this too... the expense, the career, the job. There is nowhere else I'd rather live, however.

Eh. It's not all one thing or the other.

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?

Um, the REST of your sentence didn't even make sense to me, so probably what someone else said--vaguely panic, quit my browser, go back and hope it's correct?

But the way the bank does it, I put in my username or whatever, and then there's a picture, and if it's the right picture (presumably proving it's the bank and not a scammer) then I put in my password. If it was the wrong picture, I'd think it was a scammer and call the bank maybe? Make sure I wasn't bleeding money.

But generally if it's just "bank doesn't know this computer" they don't show the wrong picture, they just start saying "I don't know this computer!" and make you enter questions...which is different (and annoys me, especially when it doesn't seem to remember my dang computer ever, but I understand why/how it happens)

Since we're talking bank/online security aggravations, it drives me batshit how often the questions are not factual, one-answer questions. Father's year of birth, great. Favorite movie? How am I supposed to remember at a later date what I might have said?

HUNKITUDE RATING: 8/10. Don’t deny you watched Reading Rainbow for a FEW MORE YEARS than was strictly necessary.

So guilty as charged here.

t drives me batshit how often the questions are not factual, one-answer questions. Father's year of birth, great. Favorite movie? How am I supposed to remember at a later date what I might have said?

Yes! Or even when they have options, it's "Favorite movie" and "favorite book" and "where was your honeymoon?" and "who was your best man?" Thanks, bank. Rub it in. And yes I could make up fictional answers, but I'd never remember them.

so I have a child hood neighbor, that probbably knew form birth that she was going to be an artist. She is doing VERY welll and yes she majored in art

[link]

the article has some of the prices her art has fetched.

That Hunks of PBS list? Made me so happy with #2 Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews!

HUNKIEST ATTRIBUTES: I mean, can we just keep looking at the photo?

HUNKITUDE RATING: 10/10. Package deal takes it to another order of hotness magnititude.

That there was my 10th grade year. 9th grade? One of them anyway.

OH MY GOD this is the third time this car alarm has gone off in the last 30 minutes and I am going to CUT SOMEONE.

so I have a child hood neighbor, that probbably knew form birth that she was going to be an artist. She is doing VERY welll and yes she majored in art

I can't claim success on that level, but I knew from a very early age that Art was what I wanted to do with my life - by Middle School I was looking at Interlochen brochures - and I remained laser-focused on that through college and into my professional career. There were other things I had options to pursue a career in (Psychology had a certain appeal, and the head of the Mathematics department once horrified me by saying I would make an excellent mathematician if I wanted to...), but there was never any doubt about what my first choice was going to be.

For the record, I picked what was behind door #3: do the Nestea plung einto bed.