<p>IBclass06, of course my comment was (semi) sarcastic. i have real reasons for my choice. Durrr basketball greek life durp durp durp.</p>
<p>ROF wrote: “…Janitors belong to the lower rung of society”</p>
<p>OK, NOW I get it. ROF is of Indian heritage. Rung = Caste.</p>
<p>At least we’ve had a reminder about Society. As much as I’d like to promise that we live in a meritocracy, the plain fact is that it does not always work out that way. anonymityyy observed that people fall into low-pay, low-respect jobs because of situations that sometimes happen despite hard work and ability. And I would note that, after 26 years of post-college employment <a href=“I%20went%20back%20for%20the%20MBA%20some%2024%20years%20after%20getting%20my%20bachelor’s%20-%20long%20story”>i</a>*, that sooner or later you will be denied a job/promotionb/raise because you did not go to the “right” school, you grew up in the “wrong” part of the world, you “don’t fit” the image your company has of the ideal executive, you’re too young, too old, too fat, too pretty, too aggressive, too timid, et cetera ad nauseum. When that happens to you, it’s a small comfort to realize that it happens to almost everyone. And the ones to whom it has not yet happened, sometimes fall into the illusion that it is because they are superior to everyone else. Ken Lay never put a foot wrong in his life … until Enron fell apart and he helped destroy the careers of thousands of people and the life savings of thousands more. Robert Nardelli was unanimously acclaimed as a brilliant man who was just right to be a CEO … and in his career he drove out thousands of talented employees from General Electric, nearly killed Home Depot, and helped drive Chrysler into its bankruptcy. Yet the man is still considered a top business leader and has no intention of reconsidering the way he runs his companies or treats his employees. Bernie Ebbers thought nothing of lying to his family, his board, his employees, or his stockholders. And Martha Stewart still insists she did nothing wrong in her ImClone fraud and obstruction of justice. There’s no shortage of people who think that ethical treatment of employees and colleagues is unimportant, that contempt for anyone less wealthy than themselves is just fine, and that business judgment does not need to include a personal responsibility for respecting everyone according to their persons and their work. </p>
<p>I asked Ring-Of-Fire about manual jobs, because you don’t understand that kind of work until you’ve dug a quarter-mile line for pipes, or cleared out a septic tank, or taken apart a truck engine and rebuilt a transmission to save the customer the cost of a new one. In the end, it’s the hands-on work that matters, and all the managing and direction and strategy is just accessories to the real job. And in this day of intellectual work and projects, there are still tougher jobs - who actually reads the thousands of lines of code to find a simpler syntax, who digs into the audit deep enough to understand the hidden expenses and possible mis-direction of assets, who stays up doing research on a situation to find relavant comparisons and leads to new solutions - than just sitting in a suit and bragging on your investment returns. If ROF works in investment banking, he should be reading up on the new SEC rules regarding Risk Management, he should be reviewing his customer’s tolerance for risk and evaluating their portfolios in the new environment, he should be carefully watching the trade of T-bills and major debt instruments in order to accurately project the impact on interest rates this fall. For some reason I don’t think he’s doing any of that … it would be too much like work.</p>
<p>Character and level of education are highly correlated in my opinion. You guys are focusing on extremes while I’m focusing on what generally happens.</p>
<p>There are such things as “failures” and janitors and custodian represent this well. They never wanted to be janitors or custodians but were forced to due to their poor work ethic. Don’t give me an economic excuse since America is a developed country and even poor families have the opportunities to succeed.</p>
<p>I’m a janitor at home. I can’t imagine what our house would look like if I ceased my janitorial functions.</p>
<p>It has been 25 years since I graduated from college. 25 years later I can still remember the janitor from my sophomore year. He was philosophical, nice, smart, interested in getting to know us, always had time to talk. I really liked him.</p>
<p>When I think back to being a kid the people who really impacted my life were the occasional camp counselor, teacher or babysitter. The ones who took an active interest in me, the ones who never seemed to get tired of seeing me, the ones who offered the odd nugget of wisdom that a kid could understand.</p>
<p>I had no idea at the time what their interest would mean for me down the road, I was a kid. I wish so much I could thank them now. Do they have any idea of how much of a difference they made for me, probably not.</p>
<p>It isn’t the big thinkers that shape us, it is the people who are willing to be involved when there is nothing in it for them. It isn’t the people who swoop in for a brief time. It is the ones who are there for us because they want to be.</p>
<p>If you just aspire to great things and don’t appreciate those beneath you you’ll never mean anything to anyone. I wouldn’t want that kind of life.</p>
<p>Come on it’s the fit- financial and otherwise. our valedictoiran with a 4.7+ gpa went to Fordham–the free ride was quite persuasive.</p>
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<p>i miss 174 IQ partier</p>
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<p>Proof please. I have not noticed this to be true at all, so you really need to start backing up your statements with what we educated people call “evidence.” It’s what distinguishes us from you, apparently. ;)</p>
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<p>Wrong again. I suggest you listen to the advice of others and stop making yourself look bad.</p>
<p>1) You have no proof beyond their position that they have bad work ethic; none whatsoever.</p>
<p>2) You have obviously not worked for anything in your entire life, probably because you appear to be an entitled snob who, even with every opportunity granted to you, had to settle for Duke. Do you think you would be where you are today without the very people you condemn as lazy and worthless? Poor families do NOT have the opportunity to succeed in every situation; you are truly a product of your environment if you’re that pathetically naive.</p>
<p>Janitors often make more money than teachers, get good benefits, and don’t have to discipline the kids, on the contrary many are well-liked by the students.</p>
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<p>This is an amazing post, if anyone skimmed over it before they should read it now.</p>
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My best friend’s mother works as a manager at Target. One of the people she recently interviewed for a job had a PhD from Princeton and had worked as an adjunct professor in Old Testament studies. Here was a highly educated individual, who had worked hard and yet (at least temporarily) failed to get a job people like you would respect. </p>
<p>No doubt it was due to his “poor work ethic.”</p>
<p>Dear ROF,</p>
<p>I am pretty confident I know who you are in real life, and the sad thing is, nearly nothing you have claimed in any of your posts is true. I am not going to expose the entirety of your lies and deceit right now, but much of your opinions are quite appalling, and if you were half the man you purport yourself to be, then maybe I would think that your extreme views are warranted.</p>
<p>However, when you are no more than average, and use this fake life on College Confidential to give yourself happiness, that is the saddest thing of all.</p>
<p>You are not an elitist; you have conservative views so that you can convince yourself you are an elitist. People shouldn’t be getting mad at you. They should pity you, because the person that should be the most offended at everything you say should be yourself. I say this because if the only way you can sleep at night is that a few random people on a message board think that your life is much nicer than it really is, then in short, your life is ****ed.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the entire thread, so apologies if my post is useless. </p>
<p>To the OP, I guess you could say that I went to a school “beneath me” but I don’t really see it that way. I love my school (in state at Iowa State) and can’t imagine being anywhere else as an undergrad. I was also accepted at several of the “Top College & Universities” as specified by the CC’s separate forums, as well as other top state and private schools. Finances kept me in my home state, and I think it’s totally worth it.</p>
<p>To the guy who made the following comment about janitors:
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<p>If he was still alive, I would arrange a time for you to meet the man who was my high school’s head custodian for 24 years. He was born just before the Great Depression, served in World War 2 and the Korean War. Opened a local hometown business that thrived and he retired in 1980. The high school needed a few new custodians, and three months after he retired said he would do it to help out the school that he had graduated from as they hadn’t found anyone. He worked for minimum wage (and donated half to a local charity), tutored students for free in math and spanish, volunteer taught drivers ed, and never missed a home athletic event, concert, or awards ceremony, and rarely missed a road event. </p>
<p>Not all janitors have that kind of background, but at least those people are WORKING and doing SOMETHING with their lives instead of sitting on their couch collecting unemployment and welfare. I coach a kids baseball team in an inner-city program, and three of the dads are janitors, a few more parents work at a nearby auto factory, and one works in a toll booth during the day while attending community college at night. They love their kids, they provide food and clothing for their families, and are happy as can be. </p>
<p>Get off your high horse and see that just because someone isn’t doing a fancy job doesn’t mean they’re dumb, uneducated, unmotivated, or whatever other excuse you can pull out.</p>
<p>What’s with these new screen names “ring<em>of</em>light” and “enforcer” claiming to know “ring<em>of</em>fire” in real life? I wonder if all three are one and the same person trying to seek notoriety on these forums.</p>
<p>174 IQ partier was cocky but funny, ROF is cocky and dumb.</p>
<p>In the spirit of July 4, I sincerely hope that ROF doesn’t live in America. He/she/it stands against everything this country was founded on.</p>
<p>“In the spirit of July 4, I sincerely hope that ROF doesn’t live in America. He/she/it stands against everything this country was founded on.”</p>
<p>Unfortunatley, he does. His view of people is so warped. It is truly sad.</p>
<p>As for janitors -
My husband has a cousin whose father died just before his senior year of HS, leaving him, his mother, and his younger sister. The father left no insurance and no savings, altho there were so Soc Sec benefits. The mother worked at the part time at the post office, but couldn’t work full time because the sister had a brain tumor and required extensive care. She wasn’t supposed to live more than 6 months after the diagnosis - but ended up living 25 years.</p>
<p>Anyway - the son went to work as a janitor at the local college. He wanted to work full time and drop out of HS, but his boss insisted that he finish school. He fininshed HS and tried to take some college courses, but the needs for money was too great and he ended up dropping his classes and working double shifts. A few years later he got married and ended up supported his family along with his mother and sister.</p>
<p>Over time, his commitment, work ethic, and intelligence were noted and he worked his way up to various supervisory positions. He is now the head of the janitorial and maintence department for the entire university system (consisting of 4 different campuses). He reports directly to the university President and makes more money than many of the professors (with PhDs) - all with nothing more than a HS education.</p>
<p>ROF - your generalizations about people in janitorial/maintenance positions are rude, disrespectful, and in many cases - just downright wrong.</p>
<p>You say you correlate character and level of education. Sorry, but I don’t care how many degrees you pile on behind your name…you will never have “character” - only arrogance.</p>
<p>back to the original post topic… haha. it seemed that with all the to people in my CA high school’s graduating class they applied to Ivies and stanford, but with crazy low acceptance rates this year only one got into Stanford, and everyone else ended up going to their number two choice, Berkeley. so now like 12 of them are all going to Berkeley together. It seems like in these times, it is definately easier to get into the publics than the privates even though they are just about as good.</p>
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You don’t anything about me. I have worked for everything that I have accomplished in my life. My parents provided some external motivation, but I have handled almost every school related matter on my own.</p>
<p>You’re not even a college student yet buddy. Stop trying to educate people who actually function in the real world without mommy and daddy’s training wheels.</p>
<p>EVERYONE IN AMERICA has the opportunity to succeed. If your family can’t afford books, then you better camp out at your local bookstore and study there. If your family sends you to a bad school, you better still take advantage of all the opportunities and resources you have there. Even if no one teaches you the value of education in your family, then you should still be aware of its importance due to the constant reinforcement that the media gives this subject.</p>
<p>The United States is at a major comparative advantage over places in Africa and Asia where opportunities for higher education sre simply not offered or are hard to access for certain individuals. </p>
<p>Don’t tell me there exist a large number of people in America who simply had no opportunity to succeed academically and professionally and now comprise the country’s cheap labor workforce. They screwed up their lives when they were younger and now they are facing the consequences.</p>
<p>Stop with the political correctness BS.</p>
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People who collect unemployment checks and welfare money are generally individuals who are in a state of transition from their past job to their next. So, it’s not like there exists this vast portion of America that are doing nothing with their lives.</p>
<p>So, the standard for receiving admiration and gaining praise in this country is simply “WORKING and doing SOMETHING” with one’s lives? Wow! I’m so glad we live in a nation that demands so much of its citizens!</p>
<p>Sorry, but I hold the standards for praise and respect so much higher than that and so should you.</p>
<p>That’s a cute little story you have there. Good and honorable people exist in every occupation in the United States and should be expected of from American people. This man still lived a below average life though. Just because he is a person of good character, that doesn’t make him a successful and admirable person who is deserving of my respect.</p>
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Great! Another successful janitor story! How about the thousands of janitors nationwide in impoverished, inner city school districts who make a substandard wage and have no means to support their families? You should really tell any younger kids you have influence over those stories so they don’t throw their ambitions and lives to the winds and become janitors.</p>
<p>I’m tired of living in a country that rewards mediocrity and “participation”. None of your words hurt me at all, but instead they fuel my desire to help the United States reclaim its former state of glory by having a larger workforce that is well-educated and qualified to compete in the global marketplace.</p>
<p>We can let poor immigrants from Mexico become janitors and trash collectors, since they so desperately want to live in the United States and be part of its future. I do not wish any of my fellow Americans that kid of fate.</p>