• Why get a degree? • Military spending instead of healthcare? •Soldiers are cool •Save your plastic bags Why get a degree? It’s no wonder why island youth are discouraged from obtaining college degrees. For almost the past three years,
• Why get a degree?
• Military spending instead of healthcare?
•Soldiers are cool
•Save your plastic bags
Why get a degree?
It’s no wonder why island youth are discouraged from obtaining college degrees.
For almost the past three years, I held a job that I obtained through a friend whom also worked at an establishment that had a vacancy. As the economy slowed, I was one of the employees to be laid off. I have been now been unemployed for nearly six months.
Before starting this job nearly three years ago, I was attending school and obtained not only one but two degrees in communication. All of this combined with years of job experience, I thought being laid off was a setback, but I have a degree and maybe it’s time to find my true potential and put my skills to the test.
I started looking at every single Internet and printed source that I could find and started applying for jobs. Every time I filed an application and reached the interview session, I was hopeful. That is until the interview session would be over and I was told that I was not a “match” for what they were looking for, only to see the vacant position to run a few more weeks in the newspaper and then on a later date to come back to the same establishment and see a younger, less qualified candidate working in the position that I had previously applied for.
Sitting at any interview with hope in my eyes is no longer reality for me. It seems as if employers hold the same island mentality that our parents have been warning us about since childhood — “It is not what you know, but who you know.”
The fact that I have a college degree, intellect and a strong desire to work doesn’t even catch the attention of potential employers that I have met with. They just see an unfamiliar face and don’t even both to pay attention to any of my abilities.
At the end of the day, I end up questioning myself. I have these degrees and so much potential but it seems as if employers don’t even see that written on my resume that is right in front of them. If employers cannot see the potential in someone with a degree, then what potential can a youth see in obtaining one?
Kathleen Wilson, Lihu‘e
Military spending instead of healthcare?
As a correlate to a letter on Nov. 10 about military recruiters being allowed into a kindergarten classroom (“How old is ‘old enough?’), it’s worthwhile noting that the U.S. budget for the military, including the wars, for 2009 is between $859 billion and $1.6 trillion.
That’s seven to 10 times more, on an annual basis, than the projected cost of the Obama health care plan that would extend coverage to 95 percent of Americans.
Consider as well that while 3,000 Americans died tragically on Sept. 11, an estimated 45,000 Americans die annually, just as tragically, because they don’t have health coverage.
With respect to these comparisons, how does one accurately define “defense” for American citizens? For whose benefit are three quarters of a million U.S. military personnel deployed to over 720 bases in more than 120 countries?
Martin Luther King said, just prior to his assassination, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
Kip Goodwin, Kapa‘a
Soldiers are cool
I was amazed especially after the attack at Fort Hood to a read a letter where a father was critical of a soldier daring to show up in uniform of all things for a career day (“How old is ‘old enough?’, Nov. 10).
I cannot understand the attitude that those who commit to defend, those who put their lives on the line for you and for the safety and freedom of your family should not be seen in public or held up as an example to our youth.
Sir, they not only shoot bad guys, they are shot by very bad guys. There were so many offensive statements in that letter on the Marine Corps’ birthday and the day before Veterans Day that it is hard to know where to start.
It will suffice to say that there are many soldiers who do not “flock to the recruiters for a job and benefits.” There are many who simply believe in something greater than themselves. They believe in liberty, they believe in the principles of freedom upon which our country was founded. They make great sacrifices for their beliefs.
Yes, that is cool. Your son should think so, and so should you.
Sara Lehmann, Kapa‘a
Save your plastic bags
I am going to go to the grocery store to get my groceries packaged in plastic, after that I have an appointment for my swine flu vaccine. To all my contrarian conspiracy-theorizing friends: What do you have to say to that?
I suppose you think Barack Obama, the devil himself, wants to vaccinate everyone so he can have total control and make people believe he was born in a manger and is a Christian.
Plastic bags can be re-used for all the political crap Kaua‘i has endured the last year, like the Alakai Superferry, banning plastic bags, trying to put on a hold on the continued construction of the pedestrian trail and building a home where a dead body may lie somewhere underneath.
Save your plastic bags. I am sure we will have a lot more crap to use them for before the final ban in 2011.
James “Kimo” Rosen, Kapa‘a
