Stephanie and I went to U-C to check out housing. After we crunched some numbers regarding rent, utilities, the expense of traveling back and forth to Iowa, the cost of owning a car, and paying someone to look after the dog when she visits me, I decided that there is no way I can afford to attend without funding. What gets my goat is that I have a lot of accomplished experience in both educational leadership and teaching, I was in a doctoral program at Columbia that offered me $12,000 to stay, my GRE scores are exceptionally high, and yet my own state university couldn't find me a dime. . . and I know other students got funding. I'm not trying to be conceited, but I really can't image who else would be more qualified for funding than I. It really doesn't make any sense. There are MASTERS students there that have funding. What the crap? It all seems pretty fishy, doesn't it? Something makes me wonder if there some deal where programs don't want to seem eager to take doc students from other universities, so they don't offer them money or something. Regardless, I'm not willing to pull out another 25k in loans for a program that doesn't want to fund me. I'm a talented guy; I'll find sustenance and joy in life elsewhere. I can read Heidegger and Nietzsche and write on the weekends, if I want. I don't need to spend the next 6 years of my life struggling financially so I can have some privileged academic give my ego some sort of approval that I'm "smart" and can "do things", just because they hold some sort of arbitrary title of tutelage. ANGER! GRRRRRRR!

On a positive note, this means that Stephanie and I won't be separated, and we can finally live under the same roof after being apart for over a year. I also get to see my dog every day. A lot of talented and bright people never go into academia or leave it, for precisely this reason. It's too bad, really. So we're not only the only industrialied western nation that doesn't offer healthcare to all of it citizens, but post-secondary education is still reserved for the welath in this country (unlike every other western industrialized nation). Things that should not be for profit and subsidized by the state: health care and education (all of it).