Well, maybe this title is a bit of a lie. What does harvard, or mit, or many other schools that charge you 80k/yr give you. You will likely make friends with cool people. This is the main important one. Is that worth 80k/yr? Maybe? I mean, you can be rich and depressed, maybe “can” is the wrong word for that. I think you WILL be depressed if you’re rich and surrounded by peopole that dont really like you, or maybe not surrounded by people at all. The classes are classes, just like anywhere else. Books have the same information, but classes make sure or “make sure” you learn it. (as a side note, most of the things I know how to do must be refreshed in my memory if I havent done them in a while, or just read and done on the spot). So, that has some value, but let me posite something a bit different. Would it be of more value to your child to pay for four (or maybe six if they get a masters) years of life and tuition for you child, or just make sure they always have rent and food covered for the rest of their life. Say over 4 years you pay 78k/yr for harvard. That comes out to 312k from you for four years and in exchange they get a non transferable completely illiquid maybe or maybe not valuable thing. That’s option one. However, what if you just put 78k/yr into an index fund for them. at 7% per year in some snp500 you would likely have 360k if 7% continues. So well what does your kid have now? Well they have food and shelter for the rest of their lives. A lot of financial people refer to something known as the 4% safe withdrawl rate. Meaning you will likely be able to sustain and in most cases have your egg grow rather than just be spent for the rest of your life. so 4% of 360k is 14400 per year. What does this give you. You can have housing and food for the rest of your life. If you’re lucky to find roomates, you can live in a city, which is where all the cool stuff is. Otherwise you can move to somewhere a bit more less desireable with more fun money. My apartment (which is about the best deal you can find in boston) is $850 a month, Previously in dorchester it was $550 a month. I was lucky to find these deals. Maybe it makes sense from a standpoint of life to just do this, but maybe it also takes away a bit of meaning to the person’s life if you just give them everything. In the past we had to hunt to survive for all our lives. Later having to farm for all our lives. The human brain is probobly wired to like, have this as a major achievement in our minds, and to just give that to someone, it might feel un-earned. If my parents offered to either A, put x amount which would be equal to tuition into a college fund, or B, send me to college for four years, all expenses paid, I dont know if I would want to choose either. Previously I thought I didnt want to go to college on someone else’s money because of a personal distain for the cost of college. Now, well, I mean, maybe it’s worth it? Is harvard worth it? Eh, I think harvard is kinda lame. MIT is probobly worth it, they have so much cool science stuff that you might not be able to get at another college. I was walking around the halls and saw this ball of, well come to think of it, I cant remember what it was, but it was emiting some form of radiation that required calculations of KE that were passed 1/2MV^2 taking relativity into consideration. That was probobly pretty expensive, and it’s cooler than having it read to you out of a textbook. They also have like a place with free bananas all day, that’s an unironically great use of institute money.

This comes to my own path.

Would I recomend my path to anyone else? Uhhhhh maybe? I’m not anyone else So I dont really know. To make a long story short, at 14 I planned on busting my ass for four years in highschool to get into a great college. My memory is foggy on why I would want this, because I never imagined myself going to college, hating school for a large part of my life, and just wanting to dropout at 16 and get a GED. But, with my mind set on something I’m going to try my best to do it. I was pretty successful I’d say in highschool. I had lots of weak areas, Took Algebra 1 while taking Geometry and Physics, which both require algebra. I started working on my english too. (Sidenote, I know there are so, sooo many typos, and incorrect pieces of grammar, and run-on sentences, and a lot of other stuff in these posts). Spelling has overall been my weak point. However, I put in effort, and overall I think it was successful in improving my ability to convey thoughts and be gramatically correct when it matters. I may have been sucked up in the hype train of college admissions a bit. I had almos no real want anymore to go to the colleges, but it was more of a game maybe? When I set my mind to something, I have the ability to continue soley based off the sorta “I’m going to do what I came here to do” mentality. I toured colleges, went to harvard summer school, and didnt really feel all too much. I think another pitfall is trying to force emotions. I wanted to want to go to MIT if that makes sense because I put a lot of effort into attempting to get there. But man, it felt like I was waiting for this amazing “I just knew I had to go there” feeling that I didnt get. Many people discribe this, and for some I think it’s true, however for others it may put a pressure on them to feel something not there. I ground it out and applied to schools. I didnt really want to go to any of them, olin seemed cool, I did atleast want to get into MIT, I think I was pretty depressed at the time (Start of 2022-may2023). I did not however get into MIT, likely for the best, but I had emailed an MIT professor about building a fusion reactor a while back, and that turned into a job offer for fixing geiger counter circuit boards. Taking a semester off to work at MIT and then going to a comparatively almost free school (university of alabama) seemed like a good option. Looking back, that was one of the riskier choices I’ve made. I really had nothing concrete in writing at all, I just kinda showed up and things moved from there, worst case I couldve gotten a job and some experience living in the real world I guess if it didnt work out. “It’s important to do things for the right reason” is some advice passed on from a previous partner’s father. God dammit I hate that it’s true. If I had just gone to college I think I would still be depressed. Maybe feeling a bit trapped and unsure of why I was where I was. Overall I take full responsibility for all of my actions. At the moment I’m living in chinatown working two jobs (only about 40hrs/week) and it’s cool? I guess? Looking at it face on it’s a bit stupid to wear it as a badge of honor that I can support myself at 18, and I’m an adult rah rah rah. In America it seems like there are different levels of being an adult. 18, legally an adult, maybe? In practice unless you are married, or in the military, you’re kinda just at the first level. The second level is 21, when you can have a first beer, Yay! and then the third level is somewhere between 22 and 25 where most people become independent from their parents. or atleast that’s what it seems like. Getting a job absolutely sucks, they dont tell you about that. Not like, working, I mean getting the job. This is one of the main reasons I’m interested in becoming a merchant mariner. The way normally it works in life is either A. Someone you know gets or gives you a job, or puts in a good word. or B, you apply to like hundreads of online jobs. As a merchant mariner, when you want to work you go to a union hall, and pick a job off the board. In practice this might not be so easy, but in theorey It seems better. Short (or not so short) well defined contracts. You may come and go as you please, and appartently there’s a need for mariners in this day and age. The path to the good jobs in that industry is through a college degree, or a two year program with a 5 year service commitment (I dont like bein boxed in though). I havent decided fully if I want to go for this as my path, but I’ve applied to schools in the surrounding area and am condering UA still. I like working with my hands and electricity is cool. I know how to program, but I think debugging someone else’s code for a web app that lets you do something lame would drive me to insanity. As Nat Friedman says “Enthusiasm Matters!”

I know this turned from a bit of a critisism on college prices, then turned to a examination of that critique, and then a more personal blog, however this is my blog and ill do what I want.

Reecently re-did my website. It looks ok? IDK I removed a lot of personal stuff, and moved it to be more “professional” The photos section could still use some work, and it’s pretty sloppy coding to be honest. (used a template, and modified it heavily)

What does the future hold? Not sure, but both of my fkn mopeds are broken at the moment which absoloutely sucks

As a note, I think I’m going to try to move on from who I was. I am the me that I am right now really. Not to say I wont learn from it, but some aspects of the past me feel untrue to the now me. Wow, revolutionary, people change Yeah, I know it’s not groud breaking, but maybe I’ve repeated the same story of who I am to myself enough. It serves nobody.