Random Thoughts Thread

[noiseredux]

has anyone sold stuff on Amazon? How was the experience vs. selling on eBay?

[foxhound1022]

I know carpenters, masons, painters, etc. All those guys make $30-45 bucks an hour when you average it out. Not bad for having no college degree.

Vocational school really does need to be made more apparent for high school kids.

^This. My school district actually had a program where you could opt to finish school at one of the Vocational facilities in the area after 10th grade, and continue after to get a jump-start in whatever field of study you were interested in.

[Forlorn Drifter]

Even with all the schools who have Ag programs we can't get enough people, so I'm not sure how effective programs for vocational work go. If they do work, I'm 100% in favor of them, and I imagine that they at least work better than Ag, as vocational work can be found in the cities, seeing as that's where everyone seems to be moving nowadays.

[marurun]

The advantage to vocational programs is that you can actually hit the ground earning much more quickly. The disadvantage to the vocational programs is that you have less job flexibility in that if your particular vocation changes too dramatically or the market does and those jobs dry up, it's much harder to change career paths. The folks that do traditional general education/liberal arts paths do have a great deal of flexibility in terms of being able to be quickly trained in most technology/knowledge jobs. The cost of that flexibility is a longer delay getting into the job market and a harder time trying to find a job (that flexibility comes from a certain lack of specialization). Generalizing a bit here, of course.

[Ack]

I think the problem with military training is that they train folks specifically for the military's needs, and those needs are not always the same as civilian needs, meaning the training is often rather specific. For example, a medic isn't a doctor or a nurse, and medic training doesn't prepare them well to jump straight into either field (though EMT would probably be a breeze). What you would need is for the military to provide appropriate documentation so that schools could map the skills the military trains to their own classes and core competencies, and then the schools could perhaps make sure those mappings are correct by requiring some sort of placement test for applicable classes (at least for a few years until that relationship between schools and the military is solid enough that those placements aren't needed). It would also be appropriate for the military to provide some basic classes to help their specialists expand in their areas beyond the specialized military training. To continue with the medic example, if someone is a trained medic in the military, perhaps they could have the option to take a class or series of classes while serving that prepare them to enter nursing school (and knock out some of the required classes) or complete EMT certification before they exit service.

I think the other problem that exists is that many programs also include certain gen-ed prerequisites, for example, you need biology, chemistry, anatomy, genetics, and other pre-med gen-eds to go into medical school or nursing school. When you are trained to be a medic, you don't get that same broad educational base. Sadly, some of the schools best prepared to help veterans are the most questionable, being of the for-profit variety. They are good at accommodating veterans but bad at placing them in programs with good ROI.

Medic might not be the best choice for this discussion, as that level of military training and education actually is mapped out versus the civilian world.

Now a combat medic isn't a doctor. The roll is effectively a battlefield EMT. Said medic will stabilize the wounded individual, pull him or her off the front line, and make sure he or she gets back to a field hospital which is staffed by military personnel who are fully trained and educated doctors. They are trained enough to handle first aid and trauma care, and in the instance that a doctor is not immediately available, they'll provide the best medical care they can, but their goal is to make sure you see an actual physician.

However, combat medic training also goes beyond traditional EMT training, and it involves basic training as well as an additional coursework which can vary in length depending on the kind of involvement, ranging from 16 to 68 weeks. During that time, combat medics also receive training in IV procedure. After this training, combat medics then receive their assignment but also receive further training in such areas as giving inoculations, hemorrhage control, and use of chest tubes. At this point in their training, the army will use them in the same roles as licensed nurses.

If they so desire, combat medics who reach this point can then seek continued training through the two year Physician Assistant Program. Enlisted personnel who complete this course become officers and can take the civilian Physician Assistant test. All who succeed are granted a Master's degree.

Special forces medics will then go through another eight month course where they are trained in more advanced procedures on top of their spec ops training, including running combat laboratories, delivering babies, performing minor surgery and dentistry procedures, training in veterinary techniques, and even receive education in parasitology related to the region in which they will be operating.

[marurun]

If they so desire, combat medics who reach this point can then seek continued training through the two year Physician Assistant Program. Enlisted personnel who complete this course become officers and can take the civilian Physician Assistant test. All who succeed are granted a Master's degree.

Sweet! That's really cool. I'm glad they have that kind of program available to them. I wonder how many take advantage of it. I'd like to see more military specialization training lead to those kinds of opportunities. If there are others, I wonder how many are utilizing them. I'd hate to see folks go into the military, not take advantage of those perks, and then exit the military with inadequately-developed civilian-life professional skills, in part because they passed on their options.

[J T]

I don't like that when I walk down the driveway that all the animals scurry off or fly away in a panic. I consider them my friends and neighbors, but they have evolved to fear me for the species I happen to belong to.

[Xeogred]

So what's with this slant against millennials in mainstream media? The idea that I get is that the people producing such content are more than likely within that mold as well, so what gives?

I'm not really sure what generation it fully encapsulates and the term itself is pretty stupid, but I figure I'm at the tail end of it (late 20's / early 30's) and over the last few years I've noticed a lot of jokes against this "group" in mostly derogatory ways. Is it older people knocking on the young per usual, or some kind of satire/irony going on?

The latest example was while watching Transformers 3 (Bayformers), and there's one scene early on where you see Shia's character struggling with life, probably early to mid 20's trying to get his life on track. There's a part where some middle aged adults joked "he's one of those ""millennials"", then it cued some kind of montage of him working this lame entry level office job and tried to be funny about it.

I don't take offense to the lame term or dig too much into it, but at this point it's been hard to not notice the onslaught of people latching onto the phrase and attempting to be funny and generalizing.

The new "hippies" I guess?

[MrPopo]

I just lump them all under "damn kids". I don't have time to dice the damn kids up into little groups of different generations.

[darsparx]

Well and despite how inaccurrate wikipedia is on most things a millienial is actually:

early 1980s as starting birth years and use the mid-1990s to the early 2000s as final birth years for the Millennial Generation.

Which apparently lumps me into them. But your other parts aren't far off from the trait section from the same article. My thing is I have a hard time identifying with that because I hate living in the city and the whole traffic thing about it. I'd rather live somewhere quiet but still able to get decent internet and access to stores that sell retro video games(even if they might be a little expensive that way) to pursue interests like anime, music and video games.

I just find the whole generational labels(not to mention any others) that divide us like this to be annoying anyways. Especially since that's part of the problem in today's society anyways but that's another story.

The whole knocking on younger and maybe a little bit of "irony/satire" is definitely going on. Especially since there's a definite small but vocal group of my generation that is a little more lazy at least when it comes to tasks that technology can do now beyond other things we apparently would rather not do. It's just hard to put a finger on what it is in particular honestly. But ti's not funny or interesting anymore to hear the term and I'm honestly sick of it since I feel so polarized and distanced from what is considered the "norm" these days with everyone's interests.