State of the Student Loans

In the State of the Union address, Obama proposed that after college students would only have to pay 10% of their income on student loans and that after 20 years their loans would be forgiven-- only 10 years if they worked in the public sector. Under this proposal students would have the peace of mind that they won't be paying for college for the rest of their life and that they won't be overly burdened by the payments each year.  But Congress will have to back this up with a fair bit of money.  The following example will illustrate:  Let's say that you attended Harvard University and paid for it with student loans.  At an annual tuition rate of $36,828 a year, that's a total of $147,312 debt from getting a bachelor's degree.  Now if you end up in a job that makes $40,000 a year, every year you would have to pay a maximum of $4,000.  Over 20 years you will have only paid back $80,000, and the bank/government/whoever-gave-you-that-loan is out $67,312.  Of course many students would pay back their loans, but some won't, and the money will come from the taxpayer.  I'm not sure how I feel about paying for someone else's student loans.  

Why I Began

My mother taught me to program when I was nine years old.  I still remember using my mom's homemade word processor and typing my first program in Turbo Pascal.  It was a simple calculator program: a user entered two numbers with an operator and the computer printed the answer.  It was a blissful, ecstatic, intoxicating, feeling of relief when I ran it and it worked.  With my mom looking over my shoulder, I had written a program with if/else structures, a loop, variables, and pure logic.  The logic is what drew me to computer science.  If you did this and this, the computer would always give you that.  I didn't go into computer science for the complicated games, the crazy graphics, or the cool programs.  I chose computer science as my field for the thrill that comes by using logic to solve a puzzle.  If more women were introduced to computer science with a bare bones editor, a simple puzzle, and a straightforward language more women would enter the field.

This is in response to DePalma, "Why Women Avoid Computer Science" 

Do People Really Want Privacy?

There has been talk about the right to privacy being implied by or added to the Constitution.  But I suppose like any other right, a person has the right to give it away.  A new site that launched last week, http://blippy.com/, allows users to automatically share information about what they are buying.  A user enters his credit card information and the world gets to know that he spent $23.45 on groceries. It is the financial equivalent of twitter.  There are serious disadvantages to this site.  Blippy's database of credit card numbers would become a sought after target for hackers. This tool could be used by cyber stalkers to  track their prey, govvernments to track individuals with interesting purchase records, and collections agencies to bother those behind on payments over every unnecessary purchase.  People may use this as just another way to flaunt their wealth, puff up their pride, and keep up with the Joneses.  And users are letting people look at their credit card statements! I grew up being taught that credit card statements were to be shredded before being thrown away-- not posted on the internet.  I hope people can prove me wrong.  I hope they want privacy and not Blippy.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/21/blippy.philip.kaplan/index.html

Perfectionists

There is a breed of students known as the perfectionist.  College is designed to root these students out; to simultaneously reward and punish them.  They receive high grades, high test scores, great job offers, and are held up as an example to the other breeds.  But they also suffer from depression at any failure; they have no time for their loved ones; they procrastinate the worthwhile but not immediate; and they miss out on life.  The challenge for a perfectionist isn’t doing calculus, English, or operating systems homework; it is not reading an irrelevant chapter, it is not doing an insignificant assignment, it is not wasting their time, and life, on the unimportant.  In short the challenge for a perfectionist is learning how to not get things done.

This post is in response to Oaks, "Focus and Priorities", (Ensign, May 2001)

Hello World!

This is a blog set up for the computer ethics course (CS404) offered at Brigham Young University.  If you stumbled upon this blog and care about the responses of a college senior to the state of the computing world, please go ahead and read it.  Or if you happen to be interested in what said college senior is up to (Hi Grandma!), then enjoy the elegant prose mixed with life found here.  And if you have come to grade my blog posts on a five-point scale, I welcome you along with your five points.