I'm done with school on Thursday. Forever. And I don't really care. I feel like I should care, but I don't. It'll be nice to not have homework anymore, but I'll also be working more than twice the hours I am now, so it kind of balances out. Just like getting my B.S., working on my M.S. has been very anticlimactic. You put in a ton of time and effort, and all you have to show for it in the end is a piece of paper.

To be fair, this piece of paper provides a much larger income than most other pieces of paper, but in the end it is just another piece of paper. It doesn't mean I am any smarter. It doesn't mean I am better qualified. It might mean I am slightly more attractive, but that could just be my imagination.

Why did I spend these past 18 years working towards this? Hopefully not just so I can make enough money to afford to put my kids through it too. (It's okay to read that last sentence again. I know it's poorly worded.) I am reminded all too often, by my own experience and what I have witnessed, that a degree gives very minimal indication of one's education and abilities and provides even less preparation for the future. The vast majority of what I do at work, I learned at work or on my own time. School provided me some opportunity to hone these skills, but in aggregate the five years of college didn't amount to much. Although, I could tell you in FAR too much detail exactly what happens to an atom if you ram a photon into it. Fascinating, huh?

I guess it comes down to this. What I want out of life is to learn. And I want somebody to pay me for it (or at least I want to have enough money where I don't need to be paid). And I don't want to have people checking on my progress along the way with tests, homework, or status reports. Some of my favorite moments in recent history have been at Starbucks with a coffee in one hand and a book on linguistics in the other (check out "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker. v.g.). I've learned a lot about linguistics without having been "taught" anything. Most of the stuff I find most interesting or useful I taught myself. Computer programming, linguistics, German, and soon, hopefully, Old English.

The only problem with this method of learning is that people in the real world demand some sort of proof that you know what you say you know, which brings me back to that silly piece of paper. It's a horrible quantifier of what one knows. I've seen people get Physics degrees when they couldn't physics their way out of a box on the physicingest day of their life! But, I digress...

I just hope the stock market keeps going up so I don't have to work for anybody or go to school for anybody anymore.

I've always wanted to punch a kangaroo in the face.

Is there something wrong with me?