08:09 – Jasmine started her junior year of college yesterday. When I talked to Jas over the weekend, I asked if she was looking forward to starting classes. She waffled a bit, and finally said that she was looking forward to seeing her friends again but returning to classes also meant returning to a very high stress level. It sounds like college isn’t much fun for Jas, just constant work. She doesn’t have much time or energy for parties, or even for socializing with her friends.
I ran into Kim while I was walking Colin yesterday, and we had a long talk about Jas, college, jobs, and so on. Kim expects Jas to do well in her final two years of college, but she also expects Jas to move back in with her after college because she’s afraid Jas won’t be able to find a real job. She said it’s not just Jasmine who’s stressed out and working herself to death. All of her friends are terrified about their job prospects after college, and with good reason. Something like 70% of the new real jobs that will be created over the next couple decades are going to require STEM degrees. Jasmine and her friends–all non-STEM majors–are going to be competing for that remaining 30%, and there’ll be a lot more of them seeking real jobs than there are real jobs available. Most of these kids are going to end up competing for mini-jobs, part-time and temporary minimum-wage jobs at Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and McDonalds. And most of them will be starting out under a crushing burden of student loans. Welcome to the post-employment economy.
Work on science kits continues. We need to get started on a new batch of chemistry kits this weekend. For the first half of the year, we sold about three chemistry kits for every two biology kits. That ratio has changed lately. For the last month or more, chemistry kits have been outselling biology kits about three to one.