you could sell your baseball cards just to pay your rent

[pemberleya]

there was a piece in the post's outlook section yesterday that i won't link to b/c the post demands that you register (it's easy and worth it) about how boys suck at school and turn into 25-year-old losers who work stupid jobs and spend all their money on video games and beer

Comments

[xljisretardedx]

First, I totally agree with his assertion that students should be given multiple ways to learn material - especially more opportunity with hands-on learning. However, I don’t think there’s a necessary gender component to this. It’s just smart teaching, for boys and girls.

1) All of his evidence is anecdotal, which means he has no evidence that there is a real rising trend of men pissing their lives away.

2) He’s talking about people sitting around in do-nothing jobs going nowhere with their lives until one day they’re 30 and they realize that this little post-college break they took is their life. Like that didn’t happen before?

Plus, the percentage of our population with college degrees has doubled since 1970 (from 11.1% to 24.4%). It stands to reason that as more people get into college overall admissions standards must be lowered. It’s not like we evolved in the past 35 years. We didn’t get smarter as a species. There’s no reason for such an increase outside of more colleges with lower standards. With lower admissions standards it’s obvious why more college grads are doing nothing with their lives.

3) I’m always wary of pointing out something as a backlash against feminism. It’s a strong claim to make, and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. However, as I’m relatively sure that this “trend” is just as prevalent among women as it is men, and with the whole “save our young men” tone of the piece, I’d have to say that the assertion merits looking into.

As an aside: I don’t think there’s any evidence the wage gap between men and women will just go away because of the enlightenment of subsequent generations. It’s something we have to work against. There’s no incentive to hire women over men when women are guaranteed by law nine months of maternity leave and employers aren’t allowed to ask them about their family plans. Of course, I’m all for those protections for women. I think the only reasonable solution is to guarantee men the same amount of paternity leave.

[pemberleya]

i agree about the paternity leave. i think all the evidence of this sort of thing is anecdotal at this point, but that doesn't mean it's not true. there are more girls than guys in my school, and i'm seeing success all around. but then i'm also seeing lots of the guys the writer's talking about schlepping away their young adulthood.

that's why i brought it up. i'm polling to see if my internet friends are seeing a pattern. i'm not convinced that i do.

[xljisretardedx]

Officially, I do not see the pattern. I did a survey of my email address book of everyone at least on year out of college and no older than 32. I classified them into three groups: A) in grad school, B) in a job they actively pursued, and C) in a job they took just because it will pay the bills (ostensibly, the schleppers, though not necessarily).

Boys: A) 3 B) 8 C) 3
Girls: A) 5 B) 8 C) 5

I excluded my friends from Emerson as that would have skewed the results, but I included my non-Emerson, Boston friends.