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So, due to the circumstances of my recent lay-off, I had the opportunity to go back to college and get another two year degree.  While I won’t go into detail, it is a pretty sweet deal and has turned out much better than I had anticipated.

Still, it is interesting to go back to college after twenty years (am I that old?) to learn something new.  My previous degree was in AutoCAD Drafting, both hand and Computer aided.  This time around I decided to go into Accounting.  The reason for that is that I have rarely seen accountants or any of those in that field out of work for long, plus at 40+, trying to get into a manual labor job wasn’t a smart idea.  At best I’d only have 20 years of work out of me, whereas I figure I will need to work until I am dead anyways as it is very likely social security will not be around when its time to pay for me.

The first week involved a bit of sticker shock looking at books.  I am taking three classes, Practical Accounting I, Macro-Economics, and Business Ethics.  The books for all three of these classes totaled about $550 for 4 books.  Why I have no idea.  The first day of Practical Accounting explained that all accounting is based off of a 600 year old math formula: A=L+OE+R-E.  Yeah, they may got me by the privates this first time, but I did some research after this surprise, and me and Amazon are going to be fast friends here.  The thing that ticked me off the most?  An accounting workbook that was for sale on Monday at $92, was $112 on Thursday.. DURING THE SAME WEEK!

That is some serious BS.

Anyways on to my classes.

I have Macroeconomics, Practical Accounting, and Business Ethics for my starting classes.  So far, they’ve turned out to be rather.. well, fun and interesting.  Course, these days I listen to NPR driving the hour long trip to school instead of any music stations (however, that could be because I have my choice of gospel, pop, and mariachi.. and only those).  Practical Accounting seems akin to a very complex game of Sudoku, almost reminiscent of comparing chess with the 3D chess board on the old original series Star Trek.  Business Ethics is pretty involved because first we’re learning about what makes “ethics”, and reading a lot of early modern English, which is harder to understand than trying to learn Russian.

However, the most interesting class in a gaming manner is Macroeconomics.  I am absolutely surprised at how many concepts in Macroeconomics were much easier to understand due to my interaction in Eve Online.  Sure, there are some obvious connections, but it is fascinating how deeply, and in many cases randomly, politics effects the market.  It makes the OTEC, announced here, more personal to me.  What is also interesting, is that someone has already documented this.

I am sure that my recollection is one that is similar to hundreds of other Eve players just entering the college in any number of countries, so I won’t bore you a long list of what cool similarities there are.. besides.. I have a ton of homework to get on anyways.