HOW TO NEVER GET FIRED

Guest blogger Laura Mayfield has been killing in with her parody blog series "Smart People, Stupidly High Salaries." Check out her latest blog below and the rest of her work here.

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Power Ranking Grad School Degrees By How Much I Respect Them

There comes a point in every young adult's life when they're faced with two options: do I get a personality or do I go to grad school? Before you decide to spend six figures on a piece of paper, you should consider the important factor of whether I, a person on the Internet who is either a stranger or your friend who has devoted his life to a mid size meme page, respects your choice. I just want you to have all the information.

7. Dentist School

Congrats man! You spent your prime adult years training for the least important job of all time. It goes without saying that dentists are among the biggest crooks in American history and an absolute joke of a doctor. They are perpetrators of what I see to be an alarming trend in our society – the obsession with teeth whiteness and straightness (did you know brushing your teeth wasn’t widespread until WWII??) I firmly believe that we’ll look back on the fact that we subject our children to braces as the equivalent of modern-day Chinese foot binding and shudder in shame.

Let’s get something straight – I do think we should have clean teeth. Which is why I respect dental hygienists. They do 90% of the actual work. The dentist just comes in, taps your teeth twice, and tries to make small talk with you while sticking his hand in your mouth. Then, he’ll either tell you that you look fine but you should come back in 6 months or that you need very expensive and most likely unnecessary surgery.

Thinking about becoming a dentist? Think twice. Go start a blog and a meme page like a real man.

Honestly! Flossing is a fucking joke man.

6. MBA

Listen, I have no problem with getting your MBA. It’s a great way to advance your career, network with other rich people who also want to become richer, and have something mildly interesting to talk about at pregames. But, do I respect your MBA? Not really.

The academic side of an MBA is an actual joke. Most programs don’t even give you a GPA! I know you ‘have a lot of classwork and can’t go out tonight’ but what if you just…didn’t do it? Are you going to fail out of your MBA program? You think they’re going to say no to your $60k tuition because you didn’t do your accounting homework? Just look up the answers online like a grownup man.

With an MBA, you’re paying for the opportunity to party like you’re in college again, a fancy line on your resume, and the outside chance that your classmate who’s the heir to an international coal business lets you work for them after graduation or at least come to their compound in Costa Rica for spring break.

Honestly, it’s worth it. But do I respect it? I simply don’t, I’m sorry.

5. Law School

Oh, look at me, I’m a big fancy lawyer! I can memorize 1,000 laws in one day! Clearly, I don’t really get how law school works, but I have two qualms with it.

1 – Half the people don’t really want to be lawyers. They either just graduated and don’t know what they want to do or they’re at some sort of crossroad in their lives, so they decide to go to law school to figure it out. They proceed to spend $150k and 3 years to realize they don’t like it, but then they’re trapped. They can choose to waste their degree or suck it up, join some big firm, and hate themselves forever.

2 – The quality people I’ve seen with law degrees. Of course, there are some very smart people I know who have law degrees. But there are also a ton of people who I see graduate from law school, and I think ‘really?? That kid is a lawyer now? I could do that.’

This may be a flaw in my personality, but if I think that I can do something, I don’t respect you for doing that thing.

4. MFA

The opposite of Law school because I definitely don’t think I could do this. You have to be actually talented and passionate about art to get into an MFA program, which unfortunately does not apply to me. The big question with this one is whether or not it’s actually worth it.

I’m sure that after you’re done with the program, you’ll definitely be better at drawing or pottery or whatever, but here’s another thought. What if you saved your money, and just took a MasterClass? You could take the amount of time and money required to get an MFA and complete every single MasterClass twice. In six weeks, you could be a master of screenwriting, woodworking, and learn to butcher a deer for like $100. These are much more useful skills for the apocalypse than a modern dance degree.

The OG Masterclass

3. PhD

My respect for this degree is mainly based on the amount of time it takes to get it. 7 or 8 years of studying the same topic is a commitment I just simply am not capable of. Out of all the grad school degrees, PhDs are definitely the biggest experts in any field, which is impressive but also very limiting.

For example, it seems to me that if you have a PhD in sociology, you have two career options.

1 – Write articles about Sociology for an academic journal that are only read by other sociology students.

2 – Become a professor and convince students to get their PHDs in sociology.

Either way, you are stuck in the infinite loop of sociology students. And don’t even get me started on theses. What if halfway through, you decide that your thesis topic is dumb, and you realize that you spent years of your life on a document that no one is actually going to read? I would have a mental breakdown twice a week.

I would have a little more respect for this degree if they didn’t call themselves Doctors. Just stop with that. The only doctors I will allow are Zhivago and the medical community, not some nerds who studied Ancient Rome for their entirety of their 20s.

2. Masters in Education / Social Work / Something like that

Children are the future. Thanks to Whitney Houston, we all know that. It’s certainly admirable to become a master of teaching kids how to read or whatever it is you learn in these programs. As far as graduate degrees go, this is #1 for value added to society.

Unfortunately, this is a degree where your job prospects are very limited financially. You spent a few years and a significant amount of money for the chance to get a job as a teacher and make $50k before taxes.

It’s hard for me to respect such a poor financial decision and makes me think less of educators. As we all know, money is everything. This makes me worry that you won’t be teaching our children this important lesson.

1. Med School

The perfect combination of insane time commitment, amount of work required to graduate, value added to society, and future earnings potential. But the biggest thing I respect about doctors is their bravery.

It takes a lot of courage to admit you’re so boring that you need to go to school for 7 years to build your entire personality around the fact that you’re a doctor. Did you go to med school so you can save lives or just so you can ‘complain’ about how busy you are with studying so we can give you sympathy for a choice that you made of your own free will? I get that you’re so stressed about your boards or your ankle test tomorrow, but I don’t really feel bad for you. Please stop playing coy and diagnose my ‘elbow that sometimes gets clicky’ when I ask you to at our friend’s birthday brunch. I know you secretly like the attention and it’s really been bothering me for a few weeks.

I also respect Dr. Dolittle

Haunting Hippo Costume of the Week

Our. Culture. Is. Not. Your. Costume. Everyone in this group costume should be absolutely ashamed of themselves and never allowed to run for political office. I will make it my life's mission to ensure they never find happiness or peace again. Namaste.