Skilled Labor

Having explored the value of unskilled labor, the question must be asked: what of skilled labor? What of the educated, the talented, and the innovative who find work plying their trade? It's all well and good to value the labors of those whose jobs are manual, tedious, and repetitive, but shouldn't the skilled workers be valued even more?

It's a fair question, and a necessary one in this capitalist society, in which value is measured by its price tag.

Only Yesterday

Today I went to see a Studio Ghibli movie called "Only Yesterday." Apparently the movie was originally released in Japan in 1991, and was only recently dubbed due to the rights being held by Disney. Menstruation is a major part of a whole segment of the movie, and I suppose Disney wasn't down with that. The rights passed to another company a while back, though, so the movie finally got dubbed and released in the United States this year.

The movie is about a woman at a turning point in her life, who suddenly finds herself reliving memories of herself in the fifth grade. The movie switches back and forth between her present and her past in a way that feels almost disjointed, to be honest. Still, this look into the life of a normal young girl in Japan in the 60's was pretty cute and charming, though at some point my attention started to waiver. It's a slice of life movie, so if you plan on watching it, understand that it's going to be fairly slow-paced.

I think we all sometimes find ourselves dwelling on moments in our pasts, much like the main character in the film. Reflecting on the movie now mostly results in me reflecting on my own childhood. There isn't too much else to say about the film, so instead I'll see if I can conjure up some of my own grade-school memories; things I personally remember as if they were only yesterday.

Responsibility

Responsibility is a tough concept to understand. We try to teach it to kids from a young age by giving them responsibilities of their own: a pet to take care of, an allowance, chores, and so on. It's taught as something punitive, with focus on the downsides to responsibility rather than the upsides; a popular example being when a kid asks for a pet and their parent has to sit down and make it clear that a pet takes a lot of work. It feels like a scare tactic, trying to convince a child that the benefits aren't worth the trouble.

I don't think countless parents warning their children of the work involved in keeping a pet is the cause of people's general distaste for responsibilities, but the fact that parents warn children away from responsibility seems indicative of a general revulsion at the concept.

Back to School

After a few months of trying to grasp Unity and other game programming on my own, I decided that I needed some guidance. I looked into the local community college just hoping to brush up on my programming and was charmed to see that they actually have a game design curriculum. So, instead of learning C++ and building something from scratch, I'm learning C# and Unity (though I still kinda want to go and learn C++ just because).

I've since been through a semester at Pima Community College, and I've just started my second. I'm not getting a degree or anything--I just want to learn enough to be able to do the rest on my own. It's been an interesting experience so far, though, so I figured I'd share my thoughts on returning to college. How many years has it been since I earned my bachelor's degree? Six years? Seven? I'm honestly not sure when I graduated from Nicholls State. It was pretty anticlimactic.

Anyway, here's my new experience: