Thread by @SignsofSpring

@BeckSamBar I'm in a completely different field, but got the same form letter, many, many times. Meanwhile, the people I know who goofed off in school and partied when they "should have" been studying are all gainfully employed.

@BeckSamBar I see you live in Chicago. Just wait until you finally run out of any hope of finding work in your field, go looking for a regular job and run into the word "overqualified," over and over.

@BeckSamBar What one eventually sees is what a horrible idea going to grad school was. It doesn't just fail to open up any doors, it closes almost all of them, forever.

@BeckSamBar I know somebody who's been looking for his first job since he completed the coursework for his PhD in Math in 1989. He was 28, at the time. He is now 58 and still has yet to find even a single employer willing to overlook the fact of his education.

@BeckSamBar He missed out on his whole life because he stayed in school. That's how the system has been working, and that's what you and I have to look forward to.

@BeckSamBar He's not an isolated case, either. As he'll point out, if he had robbed a bank and survived, he would have been out of prison, years ago, and would have been able to make use of any number of programs intended to help ex-cons find employment.

@BeckSamBar On the other hand, behave yourself, get your degree and just have the bad luck to emerge from school at the wrong time, and how many people will try to help you?

In 30 years of looking, this guy has seen help from nobody. That's a grand total of zero.

@BeckSamBar This is the insanity we face. We live in a dystopian hellhole of a society in which violent crime is a better career choice than higher education, and one's best preparation for a career consists of getting drunk or stoned with the right people.

@BeckSamBar No idea of how to fix that. You say you have kids, you're pretty, you probably have a husband. Being a housewife isn't all you wanted or deserve, I'm sure, but it beats couch surfing with bouts of homelessness.

@BeckSamBar That's what lies ahead for a guy who can't get a job because he's experiencing something functionally indistinguishable from a blacklisting. If one is going to be refused employment because one has taken too many courses, how is one supposed to get past that?

@BeckSamBar You husband and your kids will be there for you, as you deal with your anger and your depression over the thought that all of that work was for nothing, that you prepared for a research career that will never happen, but at least they'll be there.

@BeckSamBar My older male friends - all they've got is me, as I come up with increasingly unconvincing arguments against sui-cide.

@BeckSamBar Dash inserted, because while society won't do a thing about that which drives people to that act, it'll certainly move quickly if it notices anybody talking about the problem.

@BeckSamBar I think they know my arguments are BS. Certainly I do. When I'm telling somebody who is a few years short of what used to be retirement age and still is dreaming of being given that first chance to flip a few hamburgers than things are going to get better, I know what I'm full of

@BeckSamBar I'm just trying to keep somebody from going off a roof, and wondering if I'm really doing him a favor. No families for these guys, hardly any friends and little real acknowledgment of their humanity,

This is the reward for all of that hard work.

@BeckSamBar An education is the most worthless investment one can make. Sad, but true.

@BeckSamBar Please pardon the seeming vanity of what I'm about to do, but given the behavior of the admins on Twitter, this is simple prudence.

@BeckSamBar The unroll

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