Years of Hard Academic Work A Day to Celebrate

My youngest daughter, Linzi, received her Masters degree from the Sacramento State University this weekend. Her division had their ceremony at Arco Arena. These degrees are very different from undergraduate degrees not just because they represent a dignified body of academic pursuit and a thesis or a project but they usually represent in many of the students a re start of the academic process after obtaining and working in the field for a period of time.

For Lindsay this was most certainly the case. This graduate degree represented not only the pursuit of more academic endeavor after the Bachelors was granted by Sonoma State, put the continuation of a more specialized degree that enhanced her job while she was working in the field. It was not easy to work and get the this next degree and motivations for its pursuit had to come from within. Life coaches were hired and life continued past its easy phases, if there is ever one of those. Lindsay married Sean who has been very supportive of her throughout her pursuits. In the end it got down to her really wanting to finish this degree and the writing that it required.

In the quest for this degree Lindsay worked for the planning department of a major entity until budget cuts took her job. She practiced what she learned in the academic world. What the academic world could not predict was the catastrophic changes that came with reordering our economic where with all. What juiced our economy, real estate can no longer be dependent to finance our dreams or our desires.

The harsh realities have hammered this generation. It has temporarily set back this generation out of its middle class roots and required it to do some time in our parents generation. Single income households are the rule as only one can get work. This has happened with teachers as well as government employees.

It has hammered past generations too. We lost generations of teachers back in the 70s as education was not allowed to expand to meet the need of the growing populaiton. Jobs coming out of college were hard to find. A whole group of teachers were trained and never found jobs in teaching or business for that matter. It took us as a nation a long time to get to where we were planning again for a future. We are once again faced with similar issues. And once again a particular party has as its solution to the problem.. trickle down economics.. give me a break!

The question in this era is how long with our recovery take? Will the recovery get us back to using these people in what they were trained? Have we laid off our expertise to plan us out of future fixes for a gut check based on current economic conditions? I hope not. Lindsay should be there with her academic and practical experience in planning to help us get to a sustainable future. Sadly I fear that we are a few years before we come to the place where this will be possible. What will be the fallout?

My hope is that we will figure this out soon and get planning our way to what we need and project a genuine future for the middle class the true strength of our nation.

Good luck Lindsay with our future in mind. I am so proud that you have another academic feather in your cap. It may take that for what you need to do for us in the future.

: ) DAD