I've heard a lot of silly ideas about how to pay for school, but this one takes the cake:
I had way too much going on. I was in a folkloric dance troupe, working at Rite Aid and manning a health hotline. I thought lots of extra-curriculars would get me into a good law school. But my grades started to suffer; I was put on academic probation and my financial aid was suspended.
I wasn't able to ask for help. I wanted to fix my problems secretly without disappointing anybody, so I robbed a bank.
I still ask myself how I got the idea. I was desperate. I thought, "no one will know." I'll never speak of it. It'll be just one time and I'll just move forward.
I walked in and gave the teller a note. Some of what you see in the movies is true. Tellers are supposed to acquiesce to whatever you ask. I got a few thousand dollars and it all went to pay for school. I thought, "Let me just try this one more time, so I can pay off a little more debt."
It didn't work: a judge sentenced me to 30 months in prison.Just in case you needed to hear it from me, don't do that.
A life of crime with plans for law school. Oh the irony.
ReplyDeleteThere is no irony. A dumb law student is destined to become a judge, thats why the court had mercy on him. He will be out in a year and half.
ReplyDeleteGive a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.
ReplyDeleteOr: "When you owe the bank $100,000 it's your problem. But when you owe the bank $100,000,000 it's the bank's problem."
DeleteAnd to think all I ever did was those medical studies where they pay you $20 to stare at shapes or perform driving simulations. At least it bought me groceries!
ReplyDeleteA buddy in grad school choose to participate in a clinical trial. He had a heart attack (I assume from the drug, as he was a healthy 25). He fortunately recovered.
ReplyDeletePity the late 90s/early 00s are over: a less risky and more lucrative approach could have been to raise capital for a biotech with 'genomics' in the name.
Anon: Its not a robbery when the rich people do it
ReplyDeleteThe real irony is that he's probably more comfortable and carefree now than he ever would have been going through school. Also, pounding license plates has a better future than law, which is swirling the same toilet as science PhDs.
ReplyDeleteGotta love the American justice system. Someone steals a few thousand dollars, gets nearly 3 years in prison. On the other hand, devise an underhanded scheme to rob the US public of billions of dollars while sinking the economy in the process, you get a taxpayer funded bailout and bonuses for all your execs. USA! USA!
The real irony is that he's probably more comfortable and carefree now than he ever would have been going through school.
DeleteMinus hiding from sexual predators and inmates trying to impress their gang leaders by putting a shank into some new meat in the chow line.
"The real irony is that he's probably more comfortable and carefree now than he ever would have been going through school."
ReplyDeleteDoubt that, likely still has a hard time sitting down.....
Before we cast stones at someone with astonishingly bad judgement let us remind ourselves of the chemical version of this intersection of poverty and rationalization. Sort of "Breaking Bad ... the Home Edition". I can well remember chemistry grad students that used department equipment and glassware in their kitchens, never bought toilet paper, paper towels or cleaner (or anything else they could lift from the cleaners closet or trolley)and drank 95% ethanol from the lab. There was also the year of the Italian post-doc where everything that wasn't nailed down got stolen and when she left in the middle of the night it was discovered that she was hoarding pretty much anything she could carry from the department in her apartment ...
ReplyDeleteLet's see for me:
DeleteNope, nope, nope, nope, nope, (well, I did take garbage bags) and certainly not.
Free food, on the other hand...
Doing something like that can never be justified. Joining a folkloric dance troupe was a massive lapse in judgement....
ReplyDeleteOh, c'mon, we never used the lab ethanol. We distilled it first...
ReplyDeleteCould be still worse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IIk8wGdgBQ
ReplyDeleteYou all should really click the link and read the story. For one, it's she not he. Second, she's already out of prison and working in a halfway house helping other people getting out of prison. Pretty inspiring, actually. I hope she does actually go to law school someday.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, I agree. It's nice to see that she's turned over a new leaf (I assume).
DeleteThat said, I think she probably didn't take into account that she's likely ineligible for the bar, depending on her state. Too bad.
She can go to business school...
Delete