[Christopher's note: split from https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/vengeance-matriarch-4652]
We're actually quite simple creatures most of the time, just don't take away our coffee.
Or give us too much coffee, that's bad too.
Don't make fun of our favorite T.V shows or books either. Those are among the small number of things we'd be willing to fight for.
I'm just saying that we have a lot of people who look at the text of cards from a legal, engineering, or proggramming background, and the ways of the literary crowd are not our ways.
Honestly so much made sense the second I read that Christopher was an English major.
I play with a lot of lawyers too... nothing irks them more than vague rules. If SotM was a competitive they would have come to blows by now. As it is they just rather not play it that often.
We have two English Literature students, a Philosophy student, an Art student, a Theatre student, and a Nursing student.
We generally just run to the forum with rules questions!
Please tell me I'm not the only one here who hasn't had the time or money for college in their life....
My weekly game group consists of 2 doctoral candidates who work at the Wright Patterson AFB, a Masters' student studying English as a Second Language, an ex-teacher turned defense contractor, my wife (who's a thesis presentation away from having her Masters' in Biology), and myself with a Master of Arts in Teaching (English/Language Arts).
Don't worry! I'm totally in a very similar boat!
I didn't, so I took out huge loans over 6 years (leaving twice to work for more money) and now It's 10 years later and I don't have a degree and those loans will be paid off in another 10 years.
I learned a lot, and met my wife so no complaints there, but yeah, that's my story.
I was one class from graduating (dumb error on several people's part) when My wife got her job in Chicago, and after moving to Pittsburgh I looked into finishing, but you can't take your last classes off campus or transfer them in, and 4hours of driving 3 days a week with an infant I was responsible for wasn't going to happen.
I've made two attempts at a degree at university and had to give up half-way through both times due to fibromyalgia. Lack of sleep, constant pain and fatigue and cognitive difficulties due to said pain and fatigue don't mesh terribly well with studying, unfortunately. I'm smart and used to do well academically but now I'm often completely unable to think or learn or remember anything in the slightest bit complicated, like my natural brain's all covered up with a heavy blanket.
I'd totally go back and finish if it was possible. But I can't see it happening. :/ I'm stuck in idiot mode.
My group consists entirely of college students, with majors including film (which is what I am), computer science, biology (focus veterinarian), psychology, and music. So we've got a diverse group of scientists and artists.
Ahh, film. My undergrad in media theory/production was filled with being on student film sets. I swear most PA's got treated better than I did as the "sound guy". Really choose the bottom rung of that social ladder. Most of them never noticed the hidden fart sounds scattered through their films.
Get your damn boom out of my shot.
I hope that you meant this sarcastically, because I've run into far too many people who think that the fact they didn't go to college meant they weren't smart or something. Drives me crazy when we create unfair expectations like that… 
Ahem. Shouldn't you be working on some film… 
(Totally kidding, Evan - given how long I sat on that "project", I'm the last person to complain! 
)
Nah, I'm smart. It's just, you know like in an RPG when you get hit with a curse or accidentally drink a potion that halves your INT score? That's what it feels like, like my brain can't work anywhere near the capacity I know it has. I call it "idiot mode" because it doesn't reflect my true intelligence. I got into one of the best universities in the country (twice) and I have 6 A Levels, so I can't be naturally stupid. 
No negativity towards non-college-people, smart or otherwise - I know many smart people who didn't go and many not-so-smart people who did. And there's different kinds of intelligence anyway, I just happen to be lucky enough to be good at traditional learn-stuff-then-take-an-exam-on-it type intelligence. My dad didn't go to college and couldn't understand calculus if I spent months coaching him, but he can work out how to score a given number in so many darts finishing on a double like lightning, and recalculate if he misses a shot. And you should see him reversing a car with a trailer or caravan - he does it more easily than most people drive forwards. It's very impressive.
Meh, it's also cool if you're not smart in any way. If you're happy, and occasionally doing something useful in some way, I'm good with that.
It's not an entirely unfair expectation…from the situation that Silverleaf describes, she has a hard time doing anything that would make her feel like she was improving her own mind, so being bummed out as a result isn't entirely a result of her being brainwashed by the for-profit education industry. (Though of course such brainwashing does totally exist.)
Some sort of education is a very good thing to have, and we should probably not encourage a social perspective that it's unnecessary and that a completely un-educated hick's IQ means as much as the same number attached to someone who's literate and scholastically well-rounded. The issue is that the Institutions of higher learning are far too stultified and formal, and do not make proper allowances for people's individuality (such as the issues that Silverleaf describes). If someone isn't able to study, they shouldn't be expected to; they might take far longer to achieve the same amount of coursework, but they ought not to be charged far more money as a result (especially on top of their medical bills). There are other ways for them to demonstrate progress and prove their worth as a human being - but it should require some proving. Even if all people are created equal, they definitely aren't all equal by the time they reach the age of majority; they deserve to have the same opportunities, but some people never take any advantage of said opportunities, and shouldn't be entitled to all the same rewards as those who did.
College isn't for everyone in the same vein that the millitary isn't for everyone. Some people don't need a college education to make a successful business to be happy in life, other people like the academic environment as well as the people they meet there. I think education is great and something everyone should strive for, but if you go to college it should be because you want to. If you're only going because you feel some obligation to, then you probably will get burned out quickly and have a miserable time. Although I think college is great, I do think it's wrong to look down on people who didn't go or jobs such as garbage collectors, mechanics, or coffee shop workers because those jobs are needed and performed by real people with their own hopes and dreams.
Those jobs may be needed, but most people who are doing them would rather be doing something else, if doing something else didn't arbitrarily require a college degree. (I have literally seen job postings where they don't care WHAT your degree is, but absolutely insist you MUST have one. I want to see someone who has a degree in something utterly ridiculous like Pre-Columbian Nuclear Economics apply to those jobs.)
That's a gross overgeneralization. There are some mechanics who love working on cars. There are people in the food service industry who love making food (I look at the huge amount of food trucks in major cities right now).
Implying that a 'utilitarian' job isn't as worthy as an academically-rigorous job and that every mechanics must have some deeper desire to do something "worthwhile" is a disservice to both their job and their choices as a human being.
They want to know you have the commitment and ability and work skills like organisation and such (and let's face it, intelligence) necessary to gain a degree. They don't care what you actually know, just that you were able to be successful at that level, since it's easier than actually testing everyone for the relevant skills.
In fact the opposite is also true: some people don't get jobs because they're overqualified, and employers understandably assume that they just want a stopgap job until a "real" job comes along. No point wasting your time and money training the person who'll have moved on in three months.