Wal-Mart

[fclbrokle]

On my way up to teach at UChicago's Splash, I was asked to stop in at a Wal-Mart to pick up some tape. After asking if there was anything else, I was asked to pick up some origami paper. I got the tape, and I failed to get the origami paper. That's the short version. The long version is how much I learned in the process

Comments

[meep]

It helps to have a wide variety of relatives, if you can swing it

[fclbrokle]

Yeah, my closest relatives outside of my two parents and one living grandmother is something like my third cousin twice removed in Paris. Who teaches at a university.

Ditto your other paragraphs. It's amazing how hard it is to break outside of your own sphere. But I'll do you one better: my parents don't think it's possible to find a good job without a Ph.D.

[meep]

I've seen comparisons of salaries for those with PhDs vs. masters vs bachelors, and PhD usually doesn't fare that well, but that's probably due to the more narrow range of possibilities "acceptable" to a PhD-holder compared to a person with a masters degree (as well, I'm wondering if they're including the MBAs in there.... as MBAs tend to make more than someone with a PhD in comparative literature.) It's a matter of taste, though. Academic life didn't suit me, and I'd rather make money, as an example. Lots of ex-math grad students in the actuarial world (some even with PhDs.... which nobody gives a damn about in the actuarial world

[isomorphisms]

It may shock them to find out that only 20% or so of the population has bachelors degrees, and that many of the 80% of adults without can do very well in their lives.

Yeah, less so now than a generation ago, however, largely as a result of the credentialing arms race we've talked about before. I was chatting with a friend last night, who mentioned that his father is illiterate - not "he's not much for reading", but he actually can't make any sense of text. He worked as a truck driver and managed to support a wife and eight children on his salary, but with his lack credentials, he wouldn't be employed as a driver today.

[secret_panda]

I grew up in a very small, rural town where you were either somehow connected with one of the local universities or had a very low SES. (Clearly that's not strictly true, but the majority of the doctors, lawyers, dentists, school teachers, etc were married to a professor.) It's amazing how quickly stereotypical markers of SES become ingrained in one's judgment system. For instance, where I grew up, racial minorities marked a high SES (it's traditionally all-white area), but obesity, a certain accent, dyed blond hair, tatoos, or even a messy house marked low SES. Actually, it's quite odd, in high school membership in FFA (generally) marked you as having a low SES but membership in 4H marked a high SES. And, this one's really strange, being a Girl Scout during elementary school marked low but during high school marked high (Cub/Boy Scouts generally marked high). It was an interesting mix for such a small town, and I've always wondered how analogs of that phenomenon play out in cities

[ukelele]

Your town was apparently mine, only smaller and probably more Midwestern. Huh.

[fclbrokle]

Of course, once these trends establish themselves it's very hard to reverse them: high-SES places will take measures to be reasonably exclusive, while low-SES places will be avoided by high-SES people.

[polynomial]

I live about two blocks from a gas station that attracts a lot of people who aren't associated with the university. It also attracts me with its wonderful Polar Pop (tm) special (32 oz. of fountain soda for $0.74 after tax!), and being severely addicted to diet coke I venture there quite often.

One of the "eye-opening" (for the lack of a better term) moments occurred when I noticed that one of the cashiers was smoking a cigarette outside the door as I was walking in. Normally this wouldn't have bothered me except for the fact that she was very, very pregnant. Later, while waiting in line and overhearing her conversation with a customer, I learned that this was her fourth kid, and she's single

[ukelele]

with a rather fancy cell phone

Whole lotta cell phones are free when you sign up for the service, and cell phones are very common toward the lower end of the socioeconomic scale; if you rent, you probably move fairly frequently, and not having to deal with landline setup (and, until recently, number changing) every time is a plus.

[polynomial]

At some point you have to make a sacrifice: do you want text massaging, or do you want your kid to be healthy?

[ch3cooh]

Maintenance of one's self image is non-trivial. For example /with extremely expensive shoes/ would be a /very/ good marker for fairly low SES where I grew up.

[ztbb]

I know this isn't the intended takeaway from your post, but, there's a card with a 5% return at restaurants? Which one?

[fclbrokle]

Heh, no worries. Discover Card has 5% cashback bonus October-December if you sign up for it online. Otherwise, my Chase Business card gives 3% since they consider it a business expense.

[easwaran]

Wow.