<story><title>Your waitress, your professor</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/opinion/your-waitress-your-professor.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>The other day my wife and I were at a baby clothing store. We were chatting with the young woman at the counter, and she was complaining about her student loans. I asked her what her major was, and she said it was physics. I said &amp;quot;oh&amp;quot; with a degree of surprise that made me cringe. I mentioned my brother had majored in physics. She asked me where he went to school, and I told her he went to Yale. She said &amp;quot;oh, my parents went to Yale, but I went to MIT.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I felt bad about the encounter, and I couldn&amp;#x27;t figure out why. Statistically, you&amp;#x27;re safe in assuming that any random person working at a clothing store isn&amp;#x27;t an MIT grad making pocket money while working on her PhD. I realized later that I felt bad that it mattered to me. That when she revealed she was smart and educated, in my head I moved her from one class of people into another.</text></comment>
<story><title>Your waitress, your professor</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/opinion/your-waitress-your-professor.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jetskindo</author><text>We go to school because it is a tradition. Parents wants to see their kid in the funny hat. You are almost shunned when you drop out.&lt;p&gt;Not to say that school is useless, I loved learning. But I knew that the computer science degree I was working towards wouldn&amp;#x27;t make much a difference in the field I was hoping to work in.&lt;p&gt;Going to school should be an investment.  It is too bad that most of us are too young to understand the risk we take when taking loans or choosing an education path.</text></comment>