College Thoughts To be or not to be

I’m sick of being a college drop out. I have the time and the money and I only have ~20 credit hours left, so I’m finishing my BS in CS. One of the lib ed courses I need to finish is “Democracy and Democratic Theory.” Off I go to buy textbooks.

And the required texts are Hobbes, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and a short book on writing. No textbook in sight. I have never met or heard of this woman (Prof Kosmetatou at UIS). But, she has already made my list of favorite teachers ever.

I almost don’t want to take the class now, because I don’t want to ruin this image in my head of this prof, teaching undergrads outside her department, who could pick some crappy textbook and phone it in, and instead says “No. You can damn well read the originals.”

The thing is, I’m a working programmer. I’m within the skin of my teeth of my BS in CS. It’s really just electives to go. I didn’t drop because it was hard, I dropped because I needed a roof over my wife’s head and someone offered me a bottom feeder, 60hr/wk programming job.

After I take the theory of computation class, I haven’t the foggiest idea what else to take. The rest, in my major (!!!), sound so goddamn boring. And I’m looking at the graduate programs, and I can’t imagine getting my MS in CS.

But I could see myself applying to any one of the liberal arts MAs at Uni of Dallas. Or St John’s College. Until the sensible part of my brain screams “$30-60k for an MA no employer will respect!?! Just to take interesting classes?”

And the other part of my brain says “Yeah, so? Lots of your coworkers drive $50k cars. So what if you spend $50k on a masters that never ‘pays off’? They chose theirs, you chose yours.”

And then the other sensible part of my brain (also known as my wife) says “You won’t finish the BS until next Christmas, so just calm the f down.”