[rf]

While we're at it, I just finished my freshman year here. While it's a bit more traditional than St. John's or Hampshire at least academically, it's a great place to go if you want to study a variety of things out of interest, as people tend to be enthusiastic about academics and will understand when you say "OMG I want to take every class in the catalog" rather than responding "BUT I ONLY LIKE THE 12TH CENTURY/JAVASCRIPT/WHATEVER" or "what? ...school?"
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[zak]

[Tokyo Rude]

Everyone should teach english in Korea with real life pirates.

[shrugtheironteacup]

My sister took a few classes at Reed when she was still in high school.

This is my way of saying "hey, I'm in the Portland area myself, fancy that."

More on topic: I finished high school at a local community college in December, about a month before I turned eighteen. My job was barely enough to pay for my classes even when living at home, and then in a fit of youthful idiocy I quit said job rather abruptly at the beginning of June.

Then RECESSION.

With one job under my belt that I had probably pissed off I didn't have any success at finding work for about a year and a half. So I couldn't afford to go to school. I could barely afford bus fare to look for jobs. I hung out at the library a lot and felt guilty for mooching off my parents and making my girlfriend pay for everything she wanted to drag me to.

..then I got a full time job watching holes.

..then I got laid off one day and my girlfriend dumped me the next.

..then I couldn't find work again and I went to live in Washington with some friends for the summer.

..then I got a horrible job and worked through community college (which was a lot like high school, only with ash trays) but still had to live with my parents. I eventually "studied" welding. All my old academic credits expired. I became frustrated dealing with the incredibly obtuse way the welding department ran itself and how it led to my basic skills rusting while picking up random credits just to keep my health insurance.

Type 1 Diabetic UITB

Now listlessly blue collar, looking for something that fits my spotty manufacturing education.

...

Huh.
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[RecessRapist]

About four years ago I was a somewhat shy and self-doubting kid. I was kinda fat too.
Though my best friend was the complete opposite of me: mad ripped, outgoing, etc. Basically he was a wigger gangsta kid but he still had half a brain, so I hung out with him when i could(He moved away when we were kids and became a gansta the following year) and learned lots of real life stuff(and had a lot of awkward experiences too) that made me less shy and I started to have a ''Hey, I can actually do it of I try!'' mindset.

Back then i would spend entire evenings on my computer and not even go outside on weekends, until I met one kid that introduced me to his circle of friend that I quickly became a part of and I started partying like mad, talking to people(lots of girls too!) and working out.

Nowadays I go outside a lot, be it to smoke marijuana, ride my bike or just take a walk with my pals. Now I'm even starting to shape my shut-in friends(from my previous circle) into decent folks. Though now if I spend too much time inside I feel lonely. :(

[Hot Stott Bot]

[Hot Stott Bot]

[Hot Stott Bot]

[psiga]

[Hot Stott Bot]

Well, obviously there are bad things about being in debt, like paying it back, but it is certainly not necessarily a bad thing.

[psiga]

Renting leverage.
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[haircute]

[CubaLibre]

[Mr Mustache]

[CubaLibre]

[parker]

[CubaLibre]

This isn't meant as an insult to anybody, but I'm pretty surprised your parents don't just kick you out on the street. I mean, mine would. Mine did, basically. Soon's I graduated college, cut off. Period.
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[dongle]

Parker, you sound almost proud of that.

I just don't understand how people can want to /not/ do things. There's a difference between "I'm going to live off my parents and play videogames" and "I'm going to live off my parents and volunteer and do art and solve intellectual problems that fascinate me".

My parents are giving me a bit of leeway after I graduate this Sunday, but that's because I am studying for tests and volunteering before moving out in September. They'd probably give me leeway anyway but I'm a classicist and I believe in the honor of independence/self-sufficiency*.

* I acknowledge that it didn't play out quite like that (lol slave society) but the sentiment is valid.

[Mr Mustache]

[SplashBeats]

i spent a couple of months living with my parents doing nothing, but mainly out of necessity (semester ended, had to leave dorms, had no car, thus, no job, as eastern kentucky doesn't have any public transportation to speak of) and it was really fucking boring

the first month was really nice, as it gave me time to unwind from my wild-ass first year of university and hell sometimes a dude just needs to do nothing, you know?

but then i wanted to get out of there so bad it drove me up the walls. so i sold a bunch of games (useless shit), took the money and roadtripped to austin, texas for a week. it put the life back in me, i swear, and a month or so later i got my shit together and moved into this fine house.

my parents absolutely insist on paying for some of my living expenses now, because i'm kind of the kid with the best shot at getting a degree in a family which has never had a college educated member, and they want me to focus on studying and not worry about money. of course, i still do, since i have hangups about accepting charity, mainly because i think money is worth a lot more if you earn it with your two hands. i also think that any purchase that isn't essential to your basic comfort & survival or somehow intellectually enlightening is wasteful (probably why i own like 5 games) so i have odd opinions about money.

i can't fucking fathom how any of you could enjoy a listless, nonexistence in your mom's basement. sure, it's safe, secure, and you'll have food on the table for quite a while, but hell, man, i've been stuck without the means to feed myself a few times, and i can't say it was enjoyable, but it was certainly good for me.

life ain't life without both the ups and downs.

man up, hikkiomori*.

* Simon Belmont is exempt from this since he seems to generally loathe his situation and is trying his damnedist to fix it

[Toto]

Well, the thing is, with some degrees it's very difficult to work. Well, you can work enough to support yourself in terms of spending money only, but actually having enough money to move out (ie. something like 250 AUD a week) requires time to work.
Example, I would have dearly like to have moved out this semester. But with 24 hours a week of contact hours, I don't have the time to work without sacrificing academic stuff. Maybe because it's 1st year and I'm freaking out, but I don't see how someone doing a lot of hours at Uni could work.

[Hot Stott Bot]

It is also because you go to a decent Australian tech school which is several orders of magnitude more challenging (or at least time consuming) than a typical American college such as Joe's....

[Toto]

HSB what do you know of Physics?
Also for you:

http://mahler.cse.unsw.edu.au/webcms/course/index.phtml?cid=1258

Here are some past exams. Not too tricky, but keep in mind this is the first Computer Science course people will have done, so it's quite tought, IMO.

[Hot Stott Bot]

Physics?

I'm not so good at physics, that's what I know.

My weakest science subject. >_<

[SplashBeats]

shut it HSB. u of louisville is a fine institution that's well respected in quite a few fields. i'm not going to some ass fuck ivy league prestige factory but i'm not going to a community college. i live off loans and grants during the semester, to facilitate spending as much time on my studies as possible.

it annoys me that i occasionally take flack from a bunch of shut-in pervert stalkers about my choice of university because it isn't ivy league or i'm not doing a compsci degree.

[Felix]

throwing in, because why not:

i go to uconn. i'm not sure about louisville, and i don't mean to perpetuate the stereotype, but the amount of effort that i need to invest is a complete and total joke and has never stopped being one.

during the semester, i work for the university's resnet for like $9/hr, nine hours a week (i could conceivably invest a bit more time here; i don't do anything on the weekends but drive down to wesleyan to see my girlfriend or vice versa, although the work is of the soul-crushing call center variety so y'know who's counting).

my dad pays my tuition bill, which is pretty darned cheap (4.5k/semester), and my mom throws three grand at me a semester to live on. i rent a room in the basement of a one-story grad student house off campus for $375/mo plus $50 utilities, and i really wish they'd cancel the digital cable. i don't pay my own car insurance or cell phone bills. i can't afford to; they have money. if i had a serious problem about supporting myself and being independent i suppose i could take out some loans, but as much as we hardly get along i am pretty sure that would seriously offend them both.

for the latter half of high school, and every intervening summer except one up through right now, i've worked at my local gamestop. i can't really stand it anymore; i've never had very much faith in my work ethic although to the best of my knowledge it has never been tested per se and y'know there might just be a link between the two of those. i have a pretty high opinion of "laziness" in the face of overwhelming disinterest, the way that only people who have never been hard up for money seem to, and even having typed that i still kind of regard it more as enlightenment than a lack of worldliness or what have you.

i'm probably going to stay up there next summer and take one of the handful of mid-semester positions that resnet has available (my mother's house, where i'm living now, is about half an hour away). this will be, appropriately, because i can't take very much more of her or gamestop - please forgive me for how adolescent that sounds - and because it will make summer rent money a nonissue ($150 after taxes for a twenty-four hour week at gamestop; $300 untaxed for a thirty hour week at resnet). i will probably be very lonely and bored.

by the by - i just crunched some numbers, and the hypothetical fifteen grand i'd be making if i maintained a thirty hour week at resnet year round is exactly why i don't feel at all guilty about letting people who make six times what i do throw in about five percent of their earnings toward keeping me going. i may not deserve it, but hell if i don't have a bigger problem with that word than i do with any other in the english language (easy for me to say, ha ha); moreover, hell if it doesn't make sense.

i don't really think much of money or college degrees and i'm very proud of that.

also, because i didn't specify, i am doubling in cognitive science and film at a university that has neither a cognitive science nor a film department. essentially, it's a lot of philosophy, psych, drama, and english courses.

[Hot Stott Bot]

[Wilkes]

[Zebadayus]

Edit: This is General Burning Fest.

[Wilkes]

hi zeb you are pretty good at defending joe

[Zebadayus]

Edit: Not an axe post.

[Predator Goose]

[Wilkes]

[Zebadayus]

EDIT: Sorry, this is not The Axe.

[Wilkes]

[Wilkes]

not respecting the correct forum itt

[Hot Stott Bot]

[dongle]

[Wilkes]

[parker]

[SplashBeats]