No white hats

I've thought for some time that the increasingly common practice of walking away from one's mortgage is a shameless, selfish, and immoral action, motivated solely by self-interest and utterly devoid of honor.  While I still believe that this is true in that it is wrong to break one's word, I've come to think that there is another side to the contract.  I'm not referring to the trite perspective that lenders should not lend to those less likely to be able to afford to pay back the loan.  It is obvious that mortgage lenders generally are greedy and motivated by profit and little else, but that does not absolve anyone from taking out a mortgage they cannot afford.  But while the mortgagee has the moral obligation to pay back the loan in full in a timely fashion, the contract itself does have the provision that the mortgagee makes the payments or surrenders the property.  Some might argue, then, that there is an implied choice to pay or default, particularly since the lender makes every attempt to insure that in the case of default the value of the property exceeds the principle of the loan (though in many instances that hasn't been the case in the recent real estate market).  While it is occasionally true that a default, foreclosure, or bankruptcy is not the fault of the borrower (e.g., sickness, accident, job loss), it is often the result of greed and irresponsibility.  But on the other side it is hard to sympathize with creditors that are also greedy and irresponsible.  There usually aren't any good guys in these situations.

Internships

I'd like to talk to you briefly about one of the deadly sins.  I am from a generation that lived in a dark time.  When I entered my senior year, the world had been ravaged by a deadly scourge manifested by mechanical bulls, Saturday night fevers, and shaking booties, a culture laid to waste by the evils of disco.  It was the year that Elvis died, the year that the Ebola virus emerged, and the year that Microsoft became incorporated, among other tragedies.  And worst of all in my senior year, there were no internships. But now, despite a flagging economy and swine flu, you live in a bright time. Boogie fever is dead, Fidel is gone, and the land is now filled with iPhones, Nickelback, and double-stuffed Oreos.  And best of all in your senior year, there are internships.

Now many of you have labored in your six years of college in pursuit of the almighty GPA under the misconception that the purpose of your education is to get a job.  However, we are not a vocational school, and it turns out that the purpose of your education is to become educated, which means to learn the knowledge and skills to help you in the many facets of your life.  One of those critical areas is success in your career, but all your degree and GPA can do is help to get you in the right pile of resumes for an interview.  At that interview you will likely be confronted by one of life’s most pernicious paradoxes:  you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience.  And therein lies the rub.

Enter the shining light of internships.  An internship is the opportunity to get experience now.  An internship is the opportunity to learn what you like, and importantly what you don’t like, about a career field.  An internship is the opportunity to create a differential advantage for the brand that is you.

Now is the time to manage your life, to stop finding reasons why you can’t and start finding reasons why you can.  I once had a roommate who was one course away from a degree in economics and quit school to become a bellhop.  Perhaps the siren call of toting luggage was overpowering, but more likely he didn’t know what to do about his future.  All of us reach that cross-road, frightened of what the Fates hold in store for us.  But you have the opportunity to see into the future and control your destiny through this thing called internship.

And at last we arrive at the moral of the story.  The deadly sin of which I have been speaking is not sloth or greed, it is envy.  I envy you the opportunity the lies before you.  How I wish that there were internships back in the dark days of the plague that was disco.  Without exaggeration, an internship is the single most powerful career-impacting life-managing destiny-changing action that you can take as you approach the cross-roads.  Yes you can, and I envy you.

Bo didn't make a peep

Referring to an incident at a Houston Astros game at which a young man named Bo got out of the way of a foul ball and let his girlfriend get hit.

“As soon as we got here and I saw where we were sitting, I said ‘Baby, I’m going to get hit,” Sarah said. “He said, ‘No, you won’t. I’ll catch it if you do.’ We just had this conversation and sure enough, the ball comes at me. He just bailed.”  Bo doesn't know baseball and Bo doesn't know chivalry; now Bo alone.  Go figure.

Keep back!

What is it with these emergency vehicles with signs on the back stating "Keep back 500 ft.?"  By the time I get close enough to read that, I'm way closer than 500', and with people behind me, I won't be able to back up.  And do these folks realize just how far 500 feet is?  That's a city block, almost two football fields!  Can barely see the truck from there.  Why do they need all that separation anyway?  Like 400 feet isn't enough space?

Tuition insurance

Heard a radio ad for a product that provides tuition insurance.  Paying the premium provides coverage for tuition for students who withdraw from their college courses.  That is, if a student drops out, the insurance plan will reimburse the student's tuition.  This might seem like flight or cruise insurance, but in those instances, one is guarding against an unforeseeable circumstance in the relatively distant future that inhibits intended action and for which little recourse exists to recapture the early prepayment.   For tuition, the payment typically is made just before the semester, and there are opportunities to recapture payment in that withdrawals are refunded on a prorated basis.  Also, leaves of absence and incompletes may be issued.

So while schools will refund some or all of the tuition anyway, making this a largely unneeded and unwarranted expenditure, the interesting issue is the insuring against the unforeseen circumstance.  There are certainly a lot of "legitimate" (sickness, etc.) withdrawals, but the majority are made by students trying to avoid a bad grade.  Many years ago we used to see a lot of students towards the end of the term show up in our offices looking for extra credit or breaks of various kinds to suddenly and miraculously improve their grade, replete with dire tales of what would happen if they received a poor grade.  There is still some of that, but these days it is more typical for students to look for assurance that they can simply withdraw without penalty and in essence wipe the slate clean, except for the money they or their parents have flushed away.

In any case, the tuition insurance, to put it kindly, is usually a very poor investment.