 "Photo: Christina Valentine/The Spectator")
When considering a major, how much weight should be put on my future financial success and how much weight should be put on the fulfillment I’ll get out of it in the end?
Photo Editor Wayne Biebel: Unfortunately, I think that the world we live in today demands that we pursue the money game thing.
A&E Editor Aice Groesbeck: I don’t think of life as a pursuit of money. This isn’t Monopoly, Wayne. This is real life. When you cross the street, you don’t collect $200, you either make it to the other side or you get hit by a bus. That’s life.
WB: Okay, well, that’s not what I meant, Alice. What I meant was that we must submit and attempt to “make it” financially or take on large financial responsibilities before we can begin to pursue any real happiness. For example, as soon as we enter adulthood at the tender age of 18, we have to take out loans to pursue a higher level of education.
AG: I don’t submit to anyone. No one is the boss of me.
WB: Yeah, that’s true. If you want to be smelly and die in a magic bus ‘cause you make simple mistakes, be my guest.
AG: Being your own person doesn’t mean pulling an “Into The Wild” and dying from poisonous berries in an abandoned bus. Yeah, I have student loans and, hell yeah, they are kicking my ass. But, I know that for what I want to do with my life, I need loans in order to get my degree. Let’s stop talking about loans and money, it’s making me depressed.
WB: Ha! You admit submission to the money game. It is useless here. Money ultimately inflicts some sort of suffering on everyone. Go talk to Siddhārtha Gautama about it.
AG: I’m not on a first name basis with Buddha. Also, let’s get back to the question. I don’t think our meanderings have really answered it too terribly well.
WB: Look, Alice, all I’m saying is that our finances are something that we should consider before making leaps and bounds in life. I, too, want to follow my dreams but I dont want dollar bills blocking my way.
AG: I want dollars blocking my way because then, I’d just pick them up and tuck them away. Make it rain!
WB: Just stuff those dollar bills in your mouth and eat them like a pole dancer, why don’t you.
AG: I bet strippers don’t take out loans. And I don’t think I should promote exotic dancing as a future career. Freshmen are impressionable.
WB: All of the freshmen, guys and girls, alike will end up with jobs no better than that if they don’t make wise decisions concerning their credit.
AG: Whoa, pump the brakes, old man! I don’t think having mounting student debt will turn us all into whores and johns. But at the same time, it is a rough road ahead for us all. Do you think there is a silver lining in sight, or are we all doomed to work at the Dollar General or Hooters until we are 65 to pay off our debts?
WB: Uh… I didn’t mean vulgar jobs. What I meant was people working in a barn shoveling manure and chasing chickens for a place to stay and some fresh eggs. But no, I don’t think everyone can find their silver lining. And you know, there never has been one really, at least not for the masses. However, I do feel if people use their heads, they can make what they want out of this life and and have a piece of the pie, so to speak. As clichéd as this sounds, I feel that the richest people in the world make their money by doing what they love.
AG: Yeah, and as the song goes, “You are what you love and not what loves you back.” In other words, pick a profession that pays, kids.
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