Writing this blog post late, but wanted to add to the conversation at least on here but also in class. My parents are an excellent an example of people who took immediate action of reducing income risk in the future. Having left the collapsing Soviet Union in the late 80's early 90's, they emigrated to the United States in hopes of better opportunities. My mom's formal education in the Soviet Union was in Theater Tech, where she worked in a theater in St. Petersburg after finishing school. As the Soviet Union started relaxing travel restrictions and for other personal reasons, she left the Soviet Union with my then one year old older brother.
Coming to the United States there was not much opportunity to continue working in theater, especially with the cultural and language barriers. She did however see that the technology industry was starting to develop rapidly and even though she never imagined herself working anything with computers, she enrolled in a Computer Science Masters Program at Depaul. Her determined work ethic allowed her to get her masters despite the fact that she was just learning the language and knew nothing about computers, although Computer Science as a discipline was largely different from what it is now. But this allowed her to find a relatively high paying job and learn the technology of a specific industry, in this case payroll and automatic processing (ADP) which she still holds today. It was a similar story for my dad, who was a medical doctor back in the Soviet Union, and although he didn't get a formal education here, was able to learn programming and get a tech job as well.
As for myself, this still motivates me to pursue Computer Science and programming at least as a set of transferable skills that I hope will come in handy in the future. So far I have had much success in applying these skills to side projects and even getting internships, so I hope that I will continue to have success with it. And because I went to mostly community colleges before UIUC, I have been able to work full time and be a full time student for the first 3 years of my university career and pay off semester by semester. And since I transferred to UIUC, my parents have been able to help pay for my education and expenses without me having to take out any loans for my remaining time here, which will help out greatly in my future life.
Coming to the United States there was not much opportunity to continue working in theater, especially with the cultural and language barriers. She did however see that the technology industry was starting to develop rapidly and even though she never imagined herself working anything with computers, she enrolled in a Computer Science Masters Program at Depaul. Her determined work ethic allowed her to get her masters despite the fact that she was just learning the language and knew nothing about computers, although Computer Science as a discipline was largely different from what it is now. But this allowed her to find a relatively high paying job and learn the technology of a specific industry, in this case payroll and automatic processing (ADP) which she still holds today. It was a similar story for my dad, who was a medical doctor back in the Soviet Union, and although he didn't get a formal education here, was able to learn programming and get a tech job as well.
As for myself, this still motivates me to pursue Computer Science and programming at least as a set of transferable skills that I hope will come in handy in the future. So far I have had much success in applying these skills to side projects and even getting internships, so I hope that I will continue to have success with it. And because I went to mostly community colleges before UIUC, I have been able to work full time and be a full time student for the first 3 years of my university career and pay off semester by semester. And since I transferred to UIUC, my parents have been able to help pay for my education and expenses without me having to take out any loans for my remaining time here, which will help out greatly in my future life.
As I want to see you get back on track with the class I am commenting on this here, in spite of it being a late post.
ReplyDeleteIf you recall, in the last class we briefly mentioned hedging. I wonder if your dual approach with economics and computer science can be seen as a kind of hedging, as eventually you'll probably do only one, but until that time you can have more options as to where you might end up.
In your last paragraph you talked about working full time while being a student as a kind of safety play financially, because no debt is accumulated that way. That is correct but in another way it might be risky (and graduation rates at community colleges bear this out). That is, of necessity, you put in less time into your studies and absent the time commitment there is the risk of dropping out/not completing your schooling. If you view the issue as dual risk, it may be that a middle solution to balance the risks is better than an extreme solution that minimizes only one of the risks.