<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>vitno</author><text>The logic here seems... hypocritical, or at least inconsistent.&lt;p&gt;At the beginning:
&amp;quot;In class I emphasize the value of a degree as a means to avoid the sort of jobs that I myself go to when those hours in the classroom are over.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;At the end:
&amp;quot;My perhaps naïve hope is that when I tell students I’m not only an academic, but a “survival” jobholder, I’ll make a dent in the artificial, inaccurate division society places between blue-collar work and “intelligent” work. 
(also, that diaresis...)&lt;p&gt;It feels to me like the first statement says &amp;quot;I lie to my students and present them with unrealistic expectations of the world&amp;quot;
and the second says &amp;quot;If I say something, I&amp;#x27;ll let them know that they are deriving little value from their education... and thus put my career further behind.&amp;quot;</text></comment>