I'm a person who has been fairly successful at paying my bills over the years. Maybe I've forgotten to pay my phone bill once or twice, but I've never had problems with a system where I was actually trying to pay my bills.
I have not consolidated my loans, and I was in that weird transition period where some of my loans are still with Sallie Mae and some are with Direct Loan. In just the past few months, I've had a false belief that I had hit the "confirm" button on my payment. The button was buried at the bottom of the screen, so I forgot that even though I told them to pay a certain amount, that I still had to confirm that I wanted to pay that amount.
This problem got me into the habit of paying early enough so that I could revisit the website in a few days to see if I could catch problems before they turned into issues.
This system is paying off....slightly.
Earlier this month, I had typed in the dollar amount to pay. I looked on my bank account, noticed that it had actually posted, but went back to see if the payment actually took.
For some reason, both my Stafford and Plus loan on that one website were a few dollars short! According to them, I still owed about $17 for the month. I felt that was weird, but I compared what went through the bank to confirm that they didn't take out the full amount, but lost $17 in the process. Seeing that the dollar amounts matched, I went back, added in the extra money, and then went back and made sure that the dollar amounts actually read zero. I'm not sure what happened, but since it's a computer, it's hard for me to argue that I typed in the right dollar amount, even if it is fishy that the payments I made for both loans were just a few dollars too low.
As I feel the annoyance, all I can think is that I'm looking years into the future and having these problems haunt my every step. All I'm doing is very base line activities. I can't imagine what a mess it is for people who fall behind. Seriously, people, you can't even effectively tell your computer how to remove the set amount of money that I owe from my bank! All I need are these jokers trying to ruin my credit.
I can't wait until I become employed. I'm going to live in a tent and eat bread and beans until I get rid of you people.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Work Smarter; Not Harder
I caught this gem of a story that covers the fact that the United States is slipping in the world rankings for churning out college graduates:
We are now ranked 12th in the world for creating college graduates.
Yes, in spite of the rise of for-profit schools, it appears that people aren't bothering to finish their degrees!
The math of this article is fairly simple: College Degree = Success.
And, as usual, southerners are blamed for dragging down this great nation.
Quote:
Hmm. Maybe we should be giving them a medal for doing their part in not contributing to the number of people filing for bankruptcy. If you're in Arkansas, and your job options include being a pig farmer and running the General Store, I don't think that racking up $30,000 in student loans is going to help your situation that much.
People in large metropolitan areas are used to having a wide variety of careers to choose from. Chances are, you can do something with that Economics and Advertising degree. In many areas that are relatively sparsely populated, the food chain looks like this: Doctor, Lawyer, Business Owner, Health Care Professional, Realtor, Cop, Home Construction/Repair, Low-Level Bureaucrat, Car Sales, Auto Repair, Retail Worker, Bus Boy.
Yes, identify which of these lines of work needs a college degree to successfully complete the job. Either you completely bite the bullet and give nearly 10 years of your life to rotting in college and graduate school, or you take a couple of semesters at the community college before the light bulb pops on that Intro to British Literature has nothing to do with selling houses or taking drivers license photos at the DMV.
You can't really blame some 18 year old Arkansan who was the first in their family to proudly go off to college to suddenly give up when they see that it is a road to nowhere. Not only are they already leery of the amount of debt they will have to take on thanks to skyrocketing tuition, they have seen for themselves that their older friends who have already graduated are moving back home and have resumed their former jobs at the local Sonic. Other than a few degree fields like nursing, there is very little opportunity that makes relocation a viable option.
If there were recruiting fairs or stories about how their friends had jobs lined up from the beginning of their senior year, there would see a lot more interest from the students in actually finishing their degrees. Instead, they get a year or two in their studies, figure out that they aren't Rhodes Scholar material, know that the job banks are nearly empty, and realize the remaining two years of their degree is a waste. In some ways, they end up being more marketable by simply giving up on their degree rather than being branded as a graduate who will probably try to leave the minute a "good" job opens up.
It is also not surprising that students would quit going to college since many of the jobs that created the economic base that funded their schooling have moved out of the country. If mom and dad's job at the sock factory is now in China, and the rules require that parents become partially responsible for repaying many of the loans that their children are taking out, it is fairly likely that there have been many serious talks where mom and dad have had to break the news to their children that they can no longer afford to pay to send them to college.
So where is the incentive to actually finish?
Unfortunately, it is too expensive for the average person to be educated just for education's sake. When the expense of an education can't be parlayed into an economic benefit, it simply becomes a luxury that many people can't afford. We can't simply make it a goal to have a better-educated society simply for its own sake if we are going to turn around and crush the students who step up to the plate with ungodly debt and no prospects for paying their bills.
We are now ranked 12th in the world for creating college graduates.
Yes, in spite of the rise of for-profit schools, it appears that people aren't bothering to finish their degrees!
The math of this article is fairly simple: College Degree = Success.
And, as usual, southerners are blamed for dragging down this great nation.
Quote:
Nowhere is that trend more apparent than in Arkansas, a state of deeply entrenched poverty, where just over 40 percent of students finish college with bachelor’s degrees in six years or less. Arkansas is one of several southern states that have seen college enrollment rates increase, even as college completion rates remain stubbornly low. The contradiction has frustrated education officials and prompted calls for action at the highest levels of state government.
Hmm. Maybe we should be giving them a medal for doing their part in not contributing to the number of people filing for bankruptcy. If you're in Arkansas, and your job options include being a pig farmer and running the General Store, I don't think that racking up $30,000 in student loans is going to help your situation that much.
People in large metropolitan areas are used to having a wide variety of careers to choose from. Chances are, you can do something with that Economics and Advertising degree. In many areas that are relatively sparsely populated, the food chain looks like this: Doctor, Lawyer, Business Owner, Health Care Professional, Realtor, Cop, Home Construction/Repair, Low-Level Bureaucrat, Car Sales, Auto Repair, Retail Worker, Bus Boy.
Yes, identify which of these lines of work needs a college degree to successfully complete the job. Either you completely bite the bullet and give nearly 10 years of your life to rotting in college and graduate school, or you take a couple of semesters at the community college before the light bulb pops on that Intro to British Literature has nothing to do with selling houses or taking drivers license photos at the DMV.
You can't really blame some 18 year old Arkansan who was the first in their family to proudly go off to college to suddenly give up when they see that it is a road to nowhere. Not only are they already leery of the amount of debt they will have to take on thanks to skyrocketing tuition, they have seen for themselves that their older friends who have already graduated are moving back home and have resumed their former jobs at the local Sonic. Other than a few degree fields like nursing, there is very little opportunity that makes relocation a viable option.
If there were recruiting fairs or stories about how their friends had jobs lined up from the beginning of their senior year, there would see a lot more interest from the students in actually finishing their degrees. Instead, they get a year or two in their studies, figure out that they aren't Rhodes Scholar material, know that the job banks are nearly empty, and realize the remaining two years of their degree is a waste. In some ways, they end up being more marketable by simply giving up on their degree rather than being branded as a graduate who will probably try to leave the minute a "good" job opens up.
It is also not surprising that students would quit going to college since many of the jobs that created the economic base that funded their schooling have moved out of the country. If mom and dad's job at the sock factory is now in China, and the rules require that parents become partially responsible for repaying many of the loans that their children are taking out, it is fairly likely that there have been many serious talks where mom and dad have had to break the news to their children that they can no longer afford to pay to send them to college.
So where is the incentive to actually finish?
Unfortunately, it is too expensive for the average person to be educated just for education's sake. When the expense of an education can't be parlayed into an economic benefit, it simply becomes a luxury that many people can't afford. We can't simply make it a goal to have a better-educated society simply for its own sake if we are going to turn around and crush the students who step up to the plate with ungodly debt and no prospects for paying their bills.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Don't Let the Salaries Fool You
The other day, I read a very entertaining article which suggested that we do away with the bar exam.
Everybody has their opinion on the bar. I waffle too much to even address if we should have a bar exam, so that will be left for another day.
I'm going to address a side point that the author raised about attorney salaries.
Quote:
I clicked on the bio of this writer. Surprise, surprise, they are in academia! And instead of using personal anecdotes, or even questioning why this urban legend of thousands of unemployed attorneys exists, they reach for NALP numbers.
The professor/blogger says this bon mot in another blog entry:
According to this professor/blogger's theory, absolutely nobody should have been an unemployed attorney working the perfume counter at Macy's. Third year law students should have not had to even think about finding a job once they graduated. They should have their pick of desperate employers long before they were measured for their tams. They should have been begged to start work early by those who are swamped with work. Even if BIGLAW was making a few cuts, it doesn't mean that there aren't severely understaffed areas like small firms or public interest groups who have had to turn away cases because they just don't have the labor resources to take them.
I thought an actual clue that there are many unemployed attorneys would be hearing that there were well over 100 applicants for the same low-paying jobs that I had been applying for, but apparently not. Those numbers can be apparently explained away by assuming that there are over 100+ attorneys out there who are unhappy with their current employment and who have decided to lateral over into something that pays less than $40,000 per year.
But let's not stop there: Let's define non-saturation. If the professor wishes to talk about salaries, then we should also speak of what is missing in the compensation packages. If the legal profession were not overly saturated, a good majority of employees would get compensation packages that includes:
Signing bonuses
Paid moving expenses
Company housing
Paid vacations
Health insurance
Offers to pay for travel expenses for interviews
Week-long wooing sessions where they take you (the POTENTIAL employee, not the ACTUAL employee) and your spouse out to 4 star restaurants and Broadway productions
Retirement plans
Reimbursement on your student loans
AND
The biggest sign of non-saturation?
THE ABILITY TO NEGOTIATE YOUR SALARY.
I don't think anybody who has been on a job hunt recently can claim that they were engaged in skillful negotiations to get a great salary. All I've heard about is people who were in a take-it-or-leave-it position who chose to walk away. To me, that doesn't sound like a desperate employer who absolutely can't anybody for the job. It sounds more like an employer who has a large stack of resumes on their desk from people who were just as competent as the person they were offering the job.
Everybody has their opinion on the bar. I waffle too much to even address if we should have a bar exam, so that will be left for another day.
I'm going to address a side point that the author raised about attorney salaries.
Quote:
More importantly, I think that the high salaries of lawyers combined with the high cost of even very basic legal services show that we have too few lawyers rather than too many, and that the best way to determine the “right” number of lawyers is through market competition, not government mandate.
I clicked on the bio of this writer. Surprise, surprise, they are in academia! And instead of using personal anecdotes, or even questioning why this urban legend of thousands of unemployed attorneys exists, they reach for NALP numbers.
The professor/blogger says this bon mot in another blog entry:
I should note that the NALP and Labor Department data do not account for lawyers who are unemployed. Unfortunately, neither these sources nor others I have looked at have shown anything approaching a good estimate of the unemployment rate among lawyers. However, it seems unlikely that there is large Marxian “reserve army” of unemployed lawyers out there. If there were, one would expect lawyer salaries to drop substantially as competition from the unemployed drives down the pay of those who have jobs, especially at the lower ends of the distribution (e.g. — the 10th and 25th percentiles noted in the post).
According to this professor/blogger's theory, absolutely nobody should have been an unemployed attorney working the perfume counter at Macy's. Third year law students should have not had to even think about finding a job once they graduated. They should have their pick of desperate employers long before they were measured for their tams. They should have been begged to start work early by those who are swamped with work. Even if BIGLAW was making a few cuts, it doesn't mean that there aren't severely understaffed areas like small firms or public interest groups who have had to turn away cases because they just don't have the labor resources to take them.
I thought an actual clue that there are many unemployed attorneys would be hearing that there were well over 100 applicants for the same low-paying jobs that I had been applying for, but apparently not. Those numbers can be apparently explained away by assuming that there are over 100+ attorneys out there who are unhappy with their current employment and who have decided to lateral over into something that pays less than $40,000 per year.
But let's not stop there: Let's define non-saturation. If the professor wishes to talk about salaries, then we should also speak of what is missing in the compensation packages. If the legal profession were not overly saturated, a good majority of employees would get compensation packages that includes:
Signing bonuses
Paid moving expenses
Company housing
Paid vacations
Health insurance
Offers to pay for travel expenses for interviews
Week-long wooing sessions where they take you (the POTENTIAL employee, not the ACTUAL employee) and your spouse out to 4 star restaurants and Broadway productions
Retirement plans
Reimbursement on your student loans
AND
The biggest sign of non-saturation?
THE ABILITY TO NEGOTIATE YOUR SALARY.
I don't think anybody who has been on a job hunt recently can claim that they were engaged in skillful negotiations to get a great salary. All I've heard about is people who were in a take-it-or-leave-it position who chose to walk away. To me, that doesn't sound like a desperate employer who absolutely can't anybody for the job. It sounds more like an employer who has a large stack of resumes on their desk from people who were just as competent as the person they were offering the job.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
It's Too Soon.
Sometimes, I link articles that seem relevant to the unemployed-attorney plight. Today, truth is stranger than fiction, so I included a link to a job-hunting article on "The Onion."
It's not quite as funny as that sitcom "Outsourced," but a chortle in itself.
And speaking of "Outsourced", does anybody find this premise funny?
Do the networks view this as the same kind of funny-haha that people experience when watching home videos of some guy getting racked in the nuts by a 2X4?
Is this supposed to be like "Hogan's Heroes" where the audience at home finds comic relief in watching prisoners of war trying to escape the Germans?
I'm sure that John McCain enjoys his box set with a few tall ones on those nights he can't quite go to sleep.
While watching somebody get racked in the nuts is funny, we know that the pain is temporary and the guy will be up and walking again tomorrow. There isn't a Detroit-sort of outcome where the guy is going to go on unemployment, develop a drinking problem, and then wind up in prison after assaulting the neighbor.
Somebody will point out that I haven't "seen" the show. That's true. But it sounds vaguely racist in that many of its chortles come from watching the Indians try to learn American culture. Maybe they see it is a modern "Perfect Strangers" where they figure Americans are resentful enough in this climate that we'll have a bit of joy poking fun at the new equivalents of Russian yokels. Still, it's still a bit like making a sitcom about 9/11 or mortgage foreclosures.
"Coming this fall on NBC, a new comedy called 'Life Savings.' Watch as the residents of Barstow engage in humorous antics to delay the repo man for yet another week as Dave Johns, who was laid off 16 months ago after the State went bankrupt, tries to get his cupcake mobile business off the ground."
It's not quite as funny as that sitcom "Outsourced," but a chortle in itself.
And speaking of "Outsourced", does anybody find this premise funny?
Do the networks view this as the same kind of funny-haha that people experience when watching home videos of some guy getting racked in the nuts by a 2X4?
Is this supposed to be like "Hogan's Heroes" where the audience at home finds comic relief in watching prisoners of war trying to escape the Germans?
I'm sure that John McCain enjoys his box set with a few tall ones on those nights he can't quite go to sleep.
While watching somebody get racked in the nuts is funny, we know that the pain is temporary and the guy will be up and walking again tomorrow. There isn't a Detroit-sort of outcome where the guy is going to go on unemployment, develop a drinking problem, and then wind up in prison after assaulting the neighbor.
Somebody will point out that I haven't "seen" the show. That's true. But it sounds vaguely racist in that many of its chortles come from watching the Indians try to learn American culture. Maybe they see it is a modern "Perfect Strangers" where they figure Americans are resentful enough in this climate that we'll have a bit of joy poking fun at the new equivalents of Russian yokels. Still, it's still a bit like making a sitcom about 9/11 or mortgage foreclosures.
"Coming this fall on NBC, a new comedy called 'Life Savings.' Watch as the residents of Barstow engage in humorous antics to delay the repo man for yet another week as Dave Johns, who was laid off 16 months ago after the State went bankrupt, tries to get his cupcake mobile business off the ground."
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Fun Reading for 0L's: What, Exactly, is a Personal Injury Mill?
Dear 0L:
I know you are currently investigating which kind of law you would "like to go into" once you graduate from law school.
If you go to a lower-tier school and don't end up in the top 5% and law journal, your best bet at employment is a mill.
And there are many kinds of mills. There aren't just the personal injury mills who run their ads on television during Jerry Springer. You also have divorce mills and real property mills (they will search title and sell you title insurance).
What they all have in common: Phone numbers you can spell out (1-800-AMPUTEE), television advertisements during Judge Judy, and a staff filled with new graduates who are being worked 10-12 hour days for little pay.
Read more about mill structures here if you think you still think you will be able to "practice law" when you graduate.
I know you are currently investigating which kind of law you would "like to go into" once you graduate from law school.
If you go to a lower-tier school and don't end up in the top 5% and law journal, your best bet at employment is a mill.
And there are many kinds of mills. There aren't just the personal injury mills who run their ads on television during Jerry Springer. You also have divorce mills and real property mills (they will search title and sell you title insurance).
What they all have in common: Phone numbers you can spell out (1-800-AMPUTEE), television advertisements during Judge Judy, and a staff filled with new graduates who are being worked 10-12 hour days for little pay.
Read more about mill structures here if you think you still think you will be able to "practice law" when you graduate.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
If Medical Schools Didn't Have to Find Residencies for Their Students, it Would Resemble the Legal Profession
Upon graduation, the medical student and newly christened Dr. Don, one in a class of 300 students, ranked 47% of his class, was one of 80% of his class without a job and saddled with $250,000 in debt. He began to wonder how he would repay his loans because the search for a residency was not going well.
After initially believing that he was one of "the chosen ones" (or one of the "lucky bastards") for getting into medical school, his search for a residency was quickly sucking the life out of him. He sent his resumes to OCI, but nobody offered to even interview him. Career services had spammed his inbox every semester and assured everybody that even somebody in the 99% once got a job interview so nobody should "worry" because they will all find jobs eventually. However, at graduation, only 8 members of his class had landed residencies with "prestigious" medical facilities. Another 23 landed something at the free clinic. Another 27 were still planning to work at their old internships and hoped that the newest batch of resumes that they were mailing out would land them "something." Another 15 had taken various positions such as food sample presenter at the grocery store and perfume counter assistant at Macy's. Another 19 were going to get their business degree.
Months later, his bills becoming due, one deferment down, and the latest batch of 230 resumes being ignored, Dr. Don decided to create his own residency.
It's what people told him to do. Why, he was now a doctor who had graduated from medical school. Plus, it was his own fault that he couldn't find a residency. He should have "tried harder" while in medical school to get into the top 10% of his class. Besides that, he should have "tried harder" to get a residency. It isn't enough that he sent out 300 or even 500 or 1,000 resumes and chased down every last residency position in a mall in the bad part of town in the middle of Butt Feck Idaho. (Actually, he let that one go and didn't apply for it because it was clear across the country. Now, he wonders if he's completely missed his one opportunity to ever have a residency). He needed to call and harass these employers to see if they got his resume, otherwise they wouldn't know that he really wanted this job and he wasn't just simply spamming them. He needed to redo the margins on his resume and properly space the dates because the employers would automatically throw it in the garbage can if they figured out that he wasn't insanely dedicated to detail. He needed to qualify his "interests" section and specify where he liked to travel because its not enough just to say that he liked to travel. He needed to write the name of his medical school organizations on his resume in bold and italics, otherwise, the employer who was absentmindedly scanning his resume for the exactly two seconds they dedicate to each individual resume might miss that he was "involved" while in school and was simply a loser who went home and took a nap after class. He needed better "Thank You" notes, otherwise, they will think he is insincere about wanting the job. He needed to fold his hands in a particular way during the interview because if he gestured too much, he would look a bit threatening and maybe like he didn't even want the job. He needed to go to more medical conferences and meet other practicing doctors because nobody likes to hire people who they've never met. He needed to show up at happy hour with the local medical association because he needed to pass out business cards like candy. He needed to shine his shoes because dirty shoes suggest disorganization and inability to take his image as a successful attorney seriously.
This guy was a complete failure because he only did about half of it.
Where he went to school and the sheer lack of residency positions had nothing to do with his unemployment. He was just a creep. A loser. What in the hell is he doing here? He doesn't belong here. And if he can't dedicate every breathing second to making himself the perfect candidate in the way that Nicole Kidman should have tried harder to be a Stepford Wife (for even if she was a Stepford Wife, she obviously still wasn't Stepford-y enough). If it means slapping on a little rouge and pretending like he watches Boston Red Sox games, it didn't hurt a damn thing because he would be a complete moron if he didn't do it. This is a competition, my friends. Perfect resume margins said everything that the employer needed to know about Dr. Don's ability to diagnose cancer. If he didn't correct those margins, the employer would take notice and draw an immediate conclusion that Dr. Don was just the kind of guy that missed those subtle symptoms that House would catch.
He also wasn't applying for nursing positions. Or jobs for orderlies, medical billing, or lab technicians. He was told by the nay sayers, "Hey, you have a medical degree, which allows the possessor to pursue a wide range of employment because it is still a science degree. They would appreciate your medical skills and ability to 'think like a doctor.'"
But it wasn't reality.
An employer looking to fill a $10 an hour job will be weirded out by having a medical doctor on the staff. He knew it. But he applied to those nursing assistant positions anyway. It didn't hurt because there were many days that there were no doctor positions posted on the job boards. It was better to apply to A job rather than NO job.
Tired of hearing criticism and feeling like he wasn't doing "enough," Don created his own residency position out of the bedroom in his apartment.
He would be the head of his residency. For the next four years, he would train himself to diagnose and treat patients. Who cares if most of his experience has come from cutting on cadavers while in medical school? This shouldn't be too bad. He put in a few hours as a volunteer at the clinic where he was treating V.D. and ear infections. He would simply open up his very own V.D. and minor respiratory infection practice. He would then work his way into more complex diseases at some point.
Dr. Don visited the Office Max where he purchased stacks of generic billing receipts and card stock to print his business cards (he discovered to his delight that they now make special printing paper that doesn't leave perforated edges).
He went home and purchased medical supplies off of Ebay for $15.73. They were slightly used and came from an estate sale from the untimely death of Dr. Geezer McGee. Dr. McGee did things the "old" way, so the supplies were slightly dated, but they would do the job. Dr. Don would have purchased better supplies, but he is severely in debt and had to go for what would do the job.
Dr. Don went home and set up his home office. He couldn't yet afford an office because he was in a Catch-22 where he needed income in order to afford an office. He thought about running a virtual office with an answering service and where he would either meet patients at their homes, in the hallways of the hospitals, or in the special office that he could rent by the hour like he was in Hollywood and Vine. He contacted a guy who graduated two years ahead of him for advice who then put him in touch with Dr. Louise. Dr. Louise has practiced medicine for 15 years and frequently allows new doctors to use her office to meet patients in exchange for free help from the new doctor in diagnosing the occasional cold when she was backed up.
Dr. Don picked up his first case.
He went down to the hospital and waited in the lobby. He saw many of his old classmates hanging around in their JC Penney suits. Their entire conversations revolved around which emergency rooms were filled with the most uninsured people. They were all giving each other tips on what forms to fill out and what time they needed to show up in order to hit the rush just right.
Dr. Don saw a guy who was bleeding out of his ear, high as a kite, and who had no health insurance. He tripped over his other classmates who clamored for the work and found a social worker who offered to get the state to pay $200 to diagnose and treat the crackhead.
Dr. Don took the crackhead back to his "office." It turned out that the crackhead had gotten into a knife fight and had a cut in his earlobe that required stitches. He got right to work sewing on the ear.
Due to his inexperience and the adrenaline rush, Dr. Don not only forgot to clean the wound, but mistakenly prescribed an antibiotic that only works on pneumonia. The crackhead got a major infection where he lost part of his ear.
Dr. Don was then sued for medical malpractice by the crackhead who would have otherwise been tossed out of the hospital that day for not having health insurance. He lost and his premiums skyrocketed thanks, in part, to the fact that he also failed to miss tell-tale signs of an obvious heart attack in another patient, and spinal meningitis in another.
After initially believing that he was one of "the chosen ones" (or one of the "lucky bastards") for getting into medical school, his search for a residency was quickly sucking the life out of him. He sent his resumes to OCI, but nobody offered to even interview him. Career services had spammed his inbox every semester and assured everybody that even somebody in the 99% once got a job interview so nobody should "worry" because they will all find jobs eventually. However, at graduation, only 8 members of his class had landed residencies with "prestigious" medical facilities. Another 23 landed something at the free clinic. Another 27 were still planning to work at their old internships and hoped that the newest batch of resumes that they were mailing out would land them "something." Another 15 had taken various positions such as food sample presenter at the grocery store and perfume counter assistant at Macy's. Another 19 were going to get their business degree.
Months later, his bills becoming due, one deferment down, and the latest batch of 230 resumes being ignored, Dr. Don decided to create his own residency.
It's what people told him to do. Why, he was now a doctor who had graduated from medical school. Plus, it was his own fault that he couldn't find a residency. He should have "tried harder" while in medical school to get into the top 10% of his class. Besides that, he should have "tried harder" to get a residency. It isn't enough that he sent out 300 or even 500 or 1,000 resumes and chased down every last residency position in a mall in the bad part of town in the middle of Butt Feck Idaho. (Actually, he let that one go and didn't apply for it because it was clear across the country. Now, he wonders if he's completely missed his one opportunity to ever have a residency). He needed to call and harass these employers to see if they got his resume, otherwise they wouldn't know that he really wanted this job and he wasn't just simply spamming them. He needed to redo the margins on his resume and properly space the dates because the employers would automatically throw it in the garbage can if they figured out that he wasn't insanely dedicated to detail. He needed to qualify his "interests" section and specify where he liked to travel because its not enough just to say that he liked to travel. He needed to write the name of his medical school organizations on his resume in bold and italics, otherwise, the employer who was absentmindedly scanning his resume for the exactly two seconds they dedicate to each individual resume might miss that he was "involved" while in school and was simply a loser who went home and took a nap after class. He needed better "Thank You" notes, otherwise, they will think he is insincere about wanting the job. He needed to fold his hands in a particular way during the interview because if he gestured too much, he would look a bit threatening and maybe like he didn't even want the job. He needed to go to more medical conferences and meet other practicing doctors because nobody likes to hire people who they've never met. He needed to show up at happy hour with the local medical association because he needed to pass out business cards like candy. He needed to shine his shoes because dirty shoes suggest disorganization and inability to take his image as a successful attorney seriously.
This guy was a complete failure because he only did about half of it.
Where he went to school and the sheer lack of residency positions had nothing to do with his unemployment. He was just a creep. A loser. What in the hell is he doing here? He doesn't belong here. And if he can't dedicate every breathing second to making himself the perfect candidate in the way that Nicole Kidman should have tried harder to be a Stepford Wife (for even if she was a Stepford Wife, she obviously still wasn't Stepford-y enough). If it means slapping on a little rouge and pretending like he watches Boston Red Sox games, it didn't hurt a damn thing because he would be a complete moron if he didn't do it. This is a competition, my friends. Perfect resume margins said everything that the employer needed to know about Dr. Don's ability to diagnose cancer. If he didn't correct those margins, the employer would take notice and draw an immediate conclusion that Dr. Don was just the kind of guy that missed those subtle symptoms that House would catch.
He also wasn't applying for nursing positions. Or jobs for orderlies, medical billing, or lab technicians. He was told by the nay sayers, "Hey, you have a medical degree, which allows the possessor to pursue a wide range of employment because it is still a science degree. They would appreciate your medical skills and ability to 'think like a doctor.'"
But it wasn't reality.
An employer looking to fill a $10 an hour job will be weirded out by having a medical doctor on the staff. He knew it. But he applied to those nursing assistant positions anyway. It didn't hurt because there were many days that there were no doctor positions posted on the job boards. It was better to apply to A job rather than NO job.
Tired of hearing criticism and feeling like he wasn't doing "enough," Don created his own residency position out of the bedroom in his apartment.
He would be the head of his residency. For the next four years, he would train himself to diagnose and treat patients. Who cares if most of his experience has come from cutting on cadavers while in medical school? This shouldn't be too bad. He put in a few hours as a volunteer at the clinic where he was treating V.D. and ear infections. He would simply open up his very own V.D. and minor respiratory infection practice. He would then work his way into more complex diseases at some point.
Dr. Don visited the Office Max where he purchased stacks of generic billing receipts and card stock to print his business cards (he discovered to his delight that they now make special printing paper that doesn't leave perforated edges).
He went home and purchased medical supplies off of Ebay for $15.73. They were slightly used and came from an estate sale from the untimely death of Dr. Geezer McGee. Dr. McGee did things the "old" way, so the supplies were slightly dated, but they would do the job. Dr. Don would have purchased better supplies, but he is severely in debt and had to go for what would do the job.
Dr. Don went home and set up his home office. He couldn't yet afford an office because he was in a Catch-22 where he needed income in order to afford an office. He thought about running a virtual office with an answering service and where he would either meet patients at their homes, in the hallways of the hospitals, or in the special office that he could rent by the hour like he was in Hollywood and Vine. He contacted a guy who graduated two years ahead of him for advice who then put him in touch with Dr. Louise. Dr. Louise has practiced medicine for 15 years and frequently allows new doctors to use her office to meet patients in exchange for free help from the new doctor in diagnosing the occasional cold when she was backed up.
Dr. Don picked up his first case.
He went down to the hospital and waited in the lobby. He saw many of his old classmates hanging around in their JC Penney suits. Their entire conversations revolved around which emergency rooms were filled with the most uninsured people. They were all giving each other tips on what forms to fill out and what time they needed to show up in order to hit the rush just right.
Dr. Don saw a guy who was bleeding out of his ear, high as a kite, and who had no health insurance. He tripped over his other classmates who clamored for the work and found a social worker who offered to get the state to pay $200 to diagnose and treat the crackhead.
Dr. Don took the crackhead back to his "office." It turned out that the crackhead had gotten into a knife fight and had a cut in his earlobe that required stitches. He got right to work sewing on the ear.
Due to his inexperience and the adrenaline rush, Dr. Don not only forgot to clean the wound, but mistakenly prescribed an antibiotic that only works on pneumonia. The crackhead got a major infection where he lost part of his ear.
Dr. Don was then sued for medical malpractice by the crackhead who would have otherwise been tossed out of the hospital that day for not having health insurance. He lost and his premiums skyrocketed thanks, in part, to the fact that he also failed to miss tell-tale signs of an obvious heart attack in another patient, and spinal meningitis in another.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Discussion: Frontline Episode About For Profit Schools
A couple of weeks ago, PBS's "Frontline" aired an episode about for-profit schools like The University of Phoenix.
Not Quite Ave Maria, but Getting There.
(Ironically, I could not watch it when it first aired. I was working at a temp job, and all I have is a VCR when it comes to recording television. I'm still miles away from getting a DVR, and am probably further from having a DVR in my lifetime thanks to the debt of advanced schooling).
Frankly, I'm not sure what compels people to choose University of Phoenix over the local university or community college, although its not as mysterious as people who would choose ITT Tech over a community college.
I knew a person who went to ITT Tech nearly two decades ago. He couldn't find the promised "good job" with the amazing "skills" that they taught him. He defaulted on his student loans. The government garnished his wages, and it was no small cry of victory when he finally paid off his loans.
One of the more interesting parts of the "Frontline" piece is the explanation about how schools hide the default rates on loans. Schools like University of Phoenix boast a repayment rate of 90%. According to one interviewee, the schools lobbied Congress to define a default as failure to pay WITHIN two years of going into repayment.
That means if you get in trouble four years after you went into repayment, you don't count as a statistic. Therefore, the populace at large is led to believe that college is still a great investment. Otherwise, how else would everybody get the money to make those payments of hundreds of dollars per month?
It is interesting, isn't it? I keep hearing statistics that over 40% of student loans are currently not being paid for some reason or other, but I'll bet the vast majority of schools boast a 90%+ repayment rate just like University of Phoenix.
I suppose a scenario can play out like this:
When you reach the end of your six month grace period, you will probably not have a job. You can ask for a deferment which will give you another six months to look for a job. In the meantime, hundreds of dollars continue to pile on your unpaid loans. At that point, you will probably find something menial and start repayment....which, in your mind, is OK because you are new in the job market and you're young which means that you don't have major expenses like a house or family. A few years later, you morph into a true adult with obligations. The car breaks down. You have a child. Your rent increases.
Your salary, however, stagnates. You might get a cost of living raise, but it only covers inflation of what you were already buying. The "upward mobility" that you thought was going to come thanks to your college degree doesn't exist. Your superiors are holding onto their jobs because there is nowhere to go, and there are cuts everywhere else. Those two years you spent working as a receptionist in a doctor's office is not going to count for crap in jumping careers to "what you majored in" because they can already find somebody with years of relevant job experience to fill that spot. Your salary won't increase to take into account for the fact that you need to feed others in the household.
That is...IF you get to keep your job. They may run you off from your job, and that point, if you slip up and miss a payment in the melee, you can't defer your loans unless you are in "good standing."
But then, the first payment you miss won't count as a default. You will be "delinquent" for a while. I'm not sure where the magical threshold appears, but the chances are, this shit storm won't hit until well after the two year "statistic" period is over. You'll try to keep up as much as you can in the beginning because you have heard how the Student Loan People are just like King John's tax collectors in the newest "Robin Hood" movie where they go through the countrysides and pillage their own citizens for their last penny. After a while, it's too overwhelming for most of those people to keep up with and that's when they shut down.
More than a few of those people become so embittered for being sold a shit sandwich that they just quit paying.
Not that I advocate not paying, but what does it truly say about this great country when the education machine is trying desperately hard to hide the fact that student loans are being defaulted upon at an incredible rate?
"Oh, we don't need changes in the bankruptcy laws! See the statistics? Over 90% repayment rate! YOU are the only one who can't pay back your loans! And why is that? YOU are a deadbeat! You should try something like getting a roommate and stop eating as much. Try remaining sedentary as you may hurt yourself and need medical attention (which is expensive) and avoid expenses like the occasional cup of coffee from Starbucks. We know that you went to school to 'better' your standard of living, but seriously....coffee? WTF? As a side note, schools do not charge unconscionable rates of tuition because the students are obviously doing well if they can take on a loan payment of a few hundred dollars and still live not live in a cardboard box."
What I want to know is, how did the schools sell this to Congress?
"Hey, could you limit your statistics on student loan defaults to the first couple of years or so after repayment?"
"That's a weird request. Why?"
"No particular reason."
"Come on! There must be some reason."
"Defaults that happen later on are obviously for some other reason than the cost of tuition. Instead of remaining childless and living in a bad neighborhood and working three jobs to pay us back, that person obviously chose to have a life, which is highly irresponsible."
"Sounds reasonable."
Not Quite Ave Maria, but Getting There.
(Ironically, I could not watch it when it first aired. I was working at a temp job, and all I have is a VCR when it comes to recording television. I'm still miles away from getting a DVR, and am probably further from having a DVR in my lifetime thanks to the debt of advanced schooling).
Frankly, I'm not sure what compels people to choose University of Phoenix over the local university or community college, although its not as mysterious as people who would choose ITT Tech over a community college.
I knew a person who went to ITT Tech nearly two decades ago. He couldn't find the promised "good job" with the amazing "skills" that they taught him. He defaulted on his student loans. The government garnished his wages, and it was no small cry of victory when he finally paid off his loans.
One of the more interesting parts of the "Frontline" piece is the explanation about how schools hide the default rates on loans. Schools like University of Phoenix boast a repayment rate of 90%. According to one interviewee, the schools lobbied Congress to define a default as failure to pay WITHIN two years of going into repayment.
That means if you get in trouble four years after you went into repayment, you don't count as a statistic. Therefore, the populace at large is led to believe that college is still a great investment. Otherwise, how else would everybody get the money to make those payments of hundreds of dollars per month?
It is interesting, isn't it? I keep hearing statistics that over 40% of student loans are currently not being paid for some reason or other, but I'll bet the vast majority of schools boast a 90%+ repayment rate just like University of Phoenix.
I suppose a scenario can play out like this:
When you reach the end of your six month grace period, you will probably not have a job. You can ask for a deferment which will give you another six months to look for a job. In the meantime, hundreds of dollars continue to pile on your unpaid loans. At that point, you will probably find something menial and start repayment....which, in your mind, is OK because you are new in the job market and you're young which means that you don't have major expenses like a house or family. A few years later, you morph into a true adult with obligations. The car breaks down. You have a child. Your rent increases.
Your salary, however, stagnates. You might get a cost of living raise, but it only covers inflation of what you were already buying. The "upward mobility" that you thought was going to come thanks to your college degree doesn't exist. Your superiors are holding onto their jobs because there is nowhere to go, and there are cuts everywhere else. Those two years you spent working as a receptionist in a doctor's office is not going to count for crap in jumping careers to "what you majored in" because they can already find somebody with years of relevant job experience to fill that spot. Your salary won't increase to take into account for the fact that you need to feed others in the household.
That is...IF you get to keep your job. They may run you off from your job, and that point, if you slip up and miss a payment in the melee, you can't defer your loans unless you are in "good standing."
But then, the first payment you miss won't count as a default. You will be "delinquent" for a while. I'm not sure where the magical threshold appears, but the chances are, this shit storm won't hit until well after the two year "statistic" period is over. You'll try to keep up as much as you can in the beginning because you have heard how the Student Loan People are just like King John's tax collectors in the newest "Robin Hood" movie where they go through the countrysides and pillage their own citizens for their last penny. After a while, it's too overwhelming for most of those people to keep up with and that's when they shut down.
More than a few of those people become so embittered for being sold a shit sandwich that they just quit paying.
Not that I advocate not paying, but what does it truly say about this great country when the education machine is trying desperately hard to hide the fact that student loans are being defaulted upon at an incredible rate?
"Oh, we don't need changes in the bankruptcy laws! See the statistics? Over 90% repayment rate! YOU are the only one who can't pay back your loans! And why is that? YOU are a deadbeat! You should try something like getting a roommate and stop eating as much. Try remaining sedentary as you may hurt yourself and need medical attention (which is expensive) and avoid expenses like the occasional cup of coffee from Starbucks. We know that you went to school to 'better' your standard of living, but seriously....coffee? WTF? As a side note, schools do not charge unconscionable rates of tuition because the students are obviously doing well if they can take on a loan payment of a few hundred dollars and still live not live in a cardboard box."
What I want to know is, how did the schools sell this to Congress?
"Hey, could you limit your statistics on student loan defaults to the first couple of years or so after repayment?"
"That's a weird request. Why?"
"No particular reason."
"Come on! There must be some reason."
"Defaults that happen later on are obviously for some other reason than the cost of tuition. Instead of remaining childless and living in a bad neighborhood and working three jobs to pay us back, that person obviously chose to have a life, which is highly irresponsible."
"Sounds reasonable."
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