Andy Boot Camp Update 3/25/11

I few weeks back I posted about finally wanting to do something about the spare Michelin Man I'm carrying around.  I made several bold statements and I still intend to keep every one of those goals.  But Life gets in the way, or should I say, Life takes precedence.  My wife and I had a baby girl a little over a month ago and she, along with my wife and son, are more important than anything else right now.

That being said, all is not lost.  I have made some progress.  Not as much as I hoped for but a little bit is better than nothing.  Here are the completely irregular weigh-in totals:

01/14/11          318.6 (That's embarrassing)
01/21/11          319.2 (I must have made a wrong turn at Albuquerque)
01/28/11          317.6 (Slow and steady wins the race?)

03/10/11          307.8 (Stress is a hell of a drug)
03/18/11          314.2 (Wait, what?) (Disclaimer: This is the only weigh-in done at night)
03/25/11          309.8 (Back on track....I guess)


I'm not necessarily happy with the progress so far but I'm creeping closer to the exit from...Tres-town? Drei-ville? Three's Company? Tri-force? I haven't decided what to call the magical sub-300 pound threshold.  Maybe "making my re-entry into Earth's atmosphere from my own orbit"?

Oh well, thanks for all the support and please enjoy this awesome Blind Melon song about the number three.

Is College Still Worth It?

I got a statement from my student loan people recently. It said I paid $5600+ in interest on my school loans in 2010.

This means that in the two years I have been paying on school loans, the same amount of time I was actually in school, I have paid just under $12,000 in INTEREST. While my principle balance went down less than half of that.

And did I mention this debt was spread out over seven different loans because of various rules? Or that four of these loans (consisting of over 2/3 of the total amount borrowed) were accruing interest while I was in school?

All of this adds up to me paying 176% of the total amount borrowed by the time the loans are paid off.

If you've endured the grammar and numbers and are still reading this, I would like to thank both of you.

I bring this up to ask the question:

Is it still worth the investment to go to college?

I have heard all of my life that you can't get a good job without a college education. Yet everywhere I look I see people making $15-25/hr with nothing more than a high school education (and several people making WAY more). And I question if some of these people went to a real high school. Meanwhile, the suckers (those of us to went to college) might be making the same amount, or maybe a bit more, but with YEARS of school loans to pay off.

Is it worth making $6000 more a year if every bit of that has to go to school loans for ten or fifteen years? Right now my school loan monthly payments are about $50 less than my mortgage payment on a three bedroom house. I could afford a SECOND HOME with the money I'm throwing at school loans. How many doctors are out there making $100,000+ and still struggling because of ridiculous amounts of school loans? I would venture a guess somewhere in the "quite a few" range. (I'm nothing if not scientific.)

College as a whole is a very worthwhile experience. Between the knowledge gained, acquaintances met, and the experience acquired, several years spent in college can greatly influence a person's future. But I think the experiences and learning habits that a person develops may outweigh the fun facts a person may take from his classes.

Now, I'm not an idiot (at least not solely based on the prior sentence). I am not implying that the subject material is worthless. I certainly don't want a doctor who doesn't know his uvula from his vulva (I'll let you Google vulva yourself) diagnosing my mystery illness. But I think that the techniques learned with respect to observation and analysis are more important than trying to memorize every possible piece of information about your chosen career path.

I learned many things in my years of college. But I would put my current "Things learned in college" to "Things learned on the job" ratio at about 15:85. And some things, such as proper terminology, I am forced not to use. You should see the looks I get when I throw out words like "browser" or "forward-slash".

So, what do you think?  Does a college degree (I'm not going to say education) mean as much as it used to mean?