In the Clear

I got my tax return, and out of curiosity, decided to check out my university debt. I was pretty chuffed to find out that I'm in the clear! After many years of slaving away, I've finally paid of my debt.

There are so many horror stories on reddit about graduates in the US who are crippled by college debt. I think it's crazy that their debt can be $300,000 or more. That's a decent chunk of a house, even with house prices being what they are. I'm immensely grateful that we have HECS / HELP in Australia, and your debt is slowly paid off as you work, with the interest rate being very reasonable.

I met someone at work who was an international student, and she said that she had to pay $10,000 per semester while studying, which is why she had to work so many shifts. She was from the Philippines, and she said that unlike a lot of international students, her parents aren't super rich, so she was pretty much on her own. I haven't seen her since I quit, but I hope she managed to find a job in her field. She said she was hoping to save up enough money to bring her family over - another reason why I felt bad, as I'm fortunate not to have that kind of pressure on me from my family.

With it becoming harder and harder for university graduates to find work, people are starting to question whether studying at university is even worth it. I have to say, I'm not sure those extra years studying psychology and Japanese were worth it. Well, on one hand, if I hadn't, I would have spent less time at university, and probably would have met MrFodder. And you have to wonder whether it was those things that made my resume stand out above others when it came to deciding who to interview for my current job. A lot of large companies are starting to look for more well-rounded people, as they figure if you have the baseline skills required to do the job, it's more important to find someone who has soft skills and can work with others than someone who is the super bestest programmer in the whole wide world.

Plus, studying Japanese made me more confident about going to Japan, which in turn made me more confident about going to Western Europe. I don't think I'd be the person that I am today if I hadn't done that, as I feel like being somewhere that's not-Australia is really fascinating, and made me question a lot of the things that I take for granted (e.g. it's really not normal for the public transport system to run behind schedule all the time).

As far as things I learned at university go, I don't think I use most of it. The best skill I learned at university was how to think, and how to find information when there's something I don't know. With the prevalence of things like Wikipedia, I think it's less important to be able to memorise a heap of dates, and exactly how Knuth's Algorithm works. I mean, I vaguely know a lot of stuff off the top of my head, which makes it easier for me to know what I'm looking for when I'm searching, but those exam-ready responses I had memorised have long left the confines of my brain. Plus, I've found that the world of programming moves so quickly that a lot of the stuff I did learn at university is now out-dated. I remember using Java 4 at uni, and Java 8 is out now, with Java 9 well on its way. One of my former co-workers brought out his massive Windows 3.1 study guide and we all had a bit of a laugh at it.

The biggest thing that I got out of university is probably all the people that I met.

Sappy moment: I don't think he even knows, but Pharmacist gave that keyring to me in my first year of uni when I joined the chess club. Now he knows!