NOTE: See Part 3 here.
At the beginning of your senior year at university, you will begin being hounded by graduate and professional schools. There are a number of different options for the prospective student, and we’ll go through them now.
- The Ph.D., M.A., M.S., M.F.A. degrees are academic degrees. In theory, the Ph.D. will take you five years, while the M.A. and M.S. will take you two. At the end of the typical program, you write a book-length publication called either a thesis or a dissertation. Successful completion qualifies you to speak, teach, and write on your own authority. A popular misconception is that you have to get an M.A. or M.S. before you get a Ph.D.. Once you have a B.A./B.S., you typically apply for one or the other program; though about halfway through your Ph.D., you may be awarded an M.Phil., which qualifies you to teach and write. Are you confused yet? Me too.
- The J.D. is the degree that allows you to take the examination given by the local bar association. Passing this examination qualifies you to practice law in your state or province. This degree typically takes three years to complete.
- The M.D., D.O., D.D.S., which is the degree which qualifies you to enter a medical or dental residency. A residency is sort of like an apprenticeship. Successful completion allows you to open up a practice and see patients. This degree typically takes three to four years, and the subsequent residency takes two to four more.
- The M.B.A. is a general business/finance degree. Some programs have specialized concentrations. Given that so many people come back to school in middle age to obtain these degrees, there is a wide variety of options available. These take 18 months to three years to obtain, with most students finishing two years after beginning.
There are various examinations which are given, in order to assess your abilities as a post-graduate student. One of the most common is the GRE. Even if you take the LSAT or the MCAT, a good GRE score is worthwhile, and you should consider taking the GRE in your senior year even if you aren’t sure you want to go ahead to more school. Both the GRE and the LSAT are quite expensive to sit, and your school’s admissions officer can help you get both waived or reduced. I know this, because I decided to be the typical stingy Mormon and get my fees waived. If I recall correctly, my school paid them both.
Should you go to graduate school? That depends on a lot of factors that I can’t properly assess. In my case, I went because my father’s side of the family places a very high importance on education. I reacquainted myself with my father while I was at university, and while he never pressured me, I knew this was a tradition and I felt obligated to at least investigate a law degree. Even so, I hated the idea of being a solicitor. It seemed (and still seems) like a high-stress life, where I’d be surrounded by unethical people.
One of the reasons I got an academic degree, rather than a JD, was due to the funding I was offered in my academic program. The reason I got such funding was my GRE score. I got a much less impressive LSAT score (I believe it was 155) which didn’t qualify me for anything. If Sigmund Freud were here, he’d tell you that I subconsciously threw the LSAT. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but anything is possible.
One thing people told me, when I was starting out, was that I would make a lot more money with a J.D. or M.B.A. than I would with an academic degree. I knew this was true, and for me it wasn’t much of a factor. A life of reading and writing about interesting stuff was worth the pay cut. One benefit of a graduate degree was an opportunity to continue learning, simply for its own sake. Once I was awarded a graduate degree, I started teaching. Once I started teaching, I was able to easily slip into other programs, and keep taking graduate coursework, and I ended up with a couple of other graduate degrees.
Upon arriving at graduate school, I was shocked by the workload. A graduate degree is very demanding, and you’ll never appreciate this without diving in and doing it. For this reason, I’d encourage any young man to put off marriage until he is out of graduate school. There was a joke circulating at my program, aimed at incoming married students. The punch line was, “you won’t be married when you’re done…” It’s simultaneously cruel, funny, and true. It is very difficult to keep a woman happy when you’re working 16 hours per day on your book.
Of the people who entered graduate school with me, over half failed to finish. Of this population of washouts, about half left because they got good job offers, and decided not to finish. The other half failed a class, failed the comprehensive exam, or just weren’t sufficiently motivated to finish and defend their work.
A common assumption is that such people aren’t intelligent enough to complete the program; but, I believe that a larger factor in washing out was inadequate commitment. A lot of people go to graduate school simply because they feel insecure about finding a job, and getting out into the world of work. They go off to a new school and find that they’re met with a huge pile of work, which doesn’t pay well, and courses to take on top of that. Suddenly, a straight job doesn’t seem so bad. If you are considering graduate school, be honest with yourself about your motivations. Completion is not really possible without the underlying drive to get it done.
My wife and I were married while we were both undergraduates. We both later got our Masters degrees. Whether it be education, marriage, or anything else in life, determination and drive matter. If you have a shared purpose (and you should) then education is no marital threat.
Like students, so many married persons lack the drive to succeed. Unlike education though, marriage takes two serious individuals.
I’ve never met your lady, but from all the shit you talk here, I’ll remind you that you got very, very lucky.
Not wishing you ill, brother; but, how do you know that your wife isn’t going to turn on a dime, five years hence, and strike up a Facebook conversation with the dude that took her to the freshman barn dance?
Now, even if your wife never does this, there are examples of women who do, and a couple have appeared on this blog (say hello to Jenny Erickson). Any woman can say she’s 100% committed to plan x, and mean it, at t_o, and subsequently she can say she’s committed to ~x at t_1. Moreover, our feminist society supports the can’t a girl change her mind mentality, which means there’s nothing any of us can do after such contracts are broken.
This is a tragedy at any time. If a divorce action happens to a brother while he’s preparing his thesis, it usually leads to a washout, which means he’s lost years of work, and all his future plans go down the toilet.
This is one of the hidden truths I wish more young bros would absorb.
I.ve tried to express this in different ways unsuccessfully. I took a more secular, non-traditional path towards marriage than my Anabaptist peers. So objectively and relatively speaking my marriage is on shakier grounds (more unlucky). I.m not exceptional or lucky in that context. Even my peers with occasionally rocky marriages have been together for ~20 years. Quite a few have 4+ kids. We don.t divorce and we work it out when we have problems.
How absurd. She couldn.t do that any more than I could cheat on her. Knowing us both, the latter is more likely, although still ridiculous. Is it so hard to believe that this isn.t a consideration?
Also Mennonites don.t dance.
We.ve long since passed the point where we have to convince each other using words or even that we.d need to convince each other of anything. We are way past that.
When you talk about relationships it bears little resemblance to the dynamics of a healthy, long established relationship. See the Sigma Frame article(s) on the stages of marriage.
Divorce is always a tragedy and avoiding it is important. But not at the expense of all else. Your advice is on education is fine, but not if it means avoiding marriage (unless marriage is not ever a consideration for the young man). Don.t waste your youth.
Here is the link to the Sigma Frame article on the 4 stages of marriage: https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-four-stages-of-marriage/
That’s horrendous advice for any young brother. Not only will marriage kill such a young man’s dreams, his bride will also be much less attractive than the woman he’ll be able to snag, once he finishes school.
No man should even consider marriage unless he is 1. self-sufficient, and 2. wanting to have children and live the family life. This rarely happens before age 25-29.
After school, the marriage minded man will choose a woman worthy of his status. That almost always means someone in the 19-24 year old age group. That’s also the age when one’s wife will have the easiest time bearing children.
Boxer,
You know that a man of 25 has worse odds of achieving marriage than a man of 20. That.s just basic probability. It.s false to claim otherwise.
At 25 the pool of available women has also shrunk, especially if you require a virgin (and you should). Not every women will marry a man who is older than she and the age difference carries cultural differences.
In short, delaying carries significant risks that increase divorce or celibacy odds. What.s the point of increasing your divorce odds to avoid divorce during your education?
We can argue over whether a man should marry only after he has a degree, but that.s debatable. Moreover, he could be in a one or two year relationship and only marry the moment he graduates and gets a steady job. This is a good plan.
It.s important also for a man to cultivate communication as soon as possible. This involves friendships and possibly dating/marriage. Waiting is bad.
Other plans include vocational-technical school while still in high school.
It is way more important for the newly married couple to have a shared purpose and drive than it is to have a degree completed.
They should wait to have children until the degree and job are firmly entrenched when those funds are needed most.
Derek Ramsey argues:
The opposite is true. A 25-year old man has a larger pool of eligible women from whom to choose. Given that the average 25-year old man has a much higher income than the average 20-year old, he also has an increase in quality.
I used to think I wasn’t a very good statistician. You’re making me look positively proficient.
Boxer
‘You know that a man of 25 has worse odds of achieving marriage than a man of 20. ‘
Where’s the evidence that supports that…if anything that’s the case for women. They are the ones delaying marriage.
earl,
It is basic probability. He has some odds of marriage at 20, some at 21, and so forth until the day he dies. The man of 20 has better odds because he has those extra years to accomplish his goals. To use common statistical parlance, he has more selections to possibly choose the colored marble he wants out of the bag.
Boxer.s statement that a man of 25 has a better chance than a man of 20 at that moment is irrelevant to the goal of successfully marrying at some point in life. If the chance of marrying during ages 18-24 was very low, then he would have a point that it wasn.t worth the slight increase in cumulative probability. But that is a very common age to marry and those that come out the other side unmarried are generally of lower quality (and fewer virgins).
The lifetime odds of a younger man marrying at some point is always greater than the odds of the same man at an older age.
Derek:
Even backpedaling in this weird direction doesn’t work. See below…
A man has 365.25 days to try his hand at 20. After the passage of this temporal span, he’ll be 21, and he’ll have 365.25 days to get married as a 21-year old.
I’m giving young men good advice as to a successful marriage, rather than simply a marriage at some point in life. Nearly half of those marriages fail, and the costs of that failure are overwhelmingly borne by my target audience.
The chance of a successful marriage is abysmally low. I explained that yesterday.
Only if said 26-year old man was limited to marrying late 20s women. He’s not.
https://v5k2c2.androsphere.net/2018/07/05/an-essay-on-the-ontology-of-the-two/
Hope this helps,
Boxer
No man should even consider marriage until he’s done with school, earning some money, and has some experience with women under his belt. That’s at least, AT LEAST, age 25, and I’d argue putting off to 28 is better. I was 28 when I got married and I STILL wasn’t ready. Of course, I was firmly Blue Pill then, and veterans of the sphere know my story.
thedeti,
Probability tells us that a man should start ASAP to improve his chances. But, as you and Boxer pointed out, he has to be .ready. or he might harm his chance of a good marriage. Logically then, he should also ready himself ASAP.
A man should follow Boxer.s advice to improve his life by getting a useful education, but not exclusively. He should be readying himself in other ways. An education alone not sufficient.
If a young 17 year old were reading this, he has plenty of time to get good advice, prepare himself for marriage, and set himself up for success. He should not postpone marriage once he is ready even if he has not graduated.
Graduation and marriage are not mutually exclusive.
We talk about young men getting ready for marriage with is noble advice…but I think my point was missed so I’ll repeat it again.
Young women are delaying marriage. And it’s often not because they are holding out until the right man comes…it’s so they can go to college/career/travel/fornicate/do drugs/hate men/and in general not develop any home making skills.
Outside of getting lucky and finding the small number of women in their early 20s who want to get married…the majority of them aren’t going to be keen on doing it. And you can’t marry the unwilling.
“Outside of getting lucky and finding the small number of women in their early 20s who want to get married.the majority of them aren.t going to be keen on doing it. And you can.t marry the unwilling.”
I agree. You shouldn’t delay trying to find a spouse and get married (presuming you are ready for marriage) because you need to maximize your chances. Boxer makes it sound easy for a 25 year old man to marry the quality 21 year old virgin of his choice. More likely is the man who follows this educational plan and then can’t find anyone of quality to marry.
If you can point me to a quote, in which I said any such thing, I’ll give you a thousand dollars.
If you feel I’m giving bad advice, you’re welcome to publish a detailed riposte. I’ll link to it. This repetition with no foundation isn’t very compelling.
Deti:
I don’t know it very well. If you’ve got a little autoencomium up someplace, please post a link. If you ever want to write one, consider letting me publish it here. I think such things are useful, for the generation coming up.
Boxer
Of course you didn’t, but you implied it, whether this was your intention or not.
If a man insists on a virgin (and he should), then this is a “deprecating asset” over time. The longer he waits, the more likely that every woman he knows will surrender her virginity or marry. Those that are left may not be marriage potential. It’s an ever decreasing pool of potentials. This is the point earl is making.
There is only one solution to this problem: change the pool of women you know. This requires a large amount of personal changes and social interaction. If you happen to be an introvert or be otherwise socially challenged, this is going to be quite difficult. Each new group is going to suffer from a decreasing percentage of unmarried virgins available.
One of the advantages of being a young man is that you are in a lot of low risk, forced social situations with young women. High school or college classes will include many eligible women to interact with. Churches, youth groups, bible studies, and related events will be similar. These include people for which you should have a lot in common culturally. These advantages and opportunities disappear quickly and are probably not replaced by the chosen vocation.
Your general advice is solid, but the opportunity cost for waiting to marry until after you have a degree and a career is heavy.
If I had followed your advice, I would have been unmarried like earl as most of my potentials would have married off and started having kids by the time I graduated from college. I almost certainly would have eventually settled on an inferior wife or been an incel due to lack of selection. I would have had almost no access to quality candidates. This is despite the fact that I am an extrovert and very good at making friends with women. I didn’t get lucky to get such a great wife, I got lucky to marry at all.
True. I’m drafting up something on my blog. We’ll see if I get around to actually finishing and publishing it.
No, I didn’t imply it, either. Being dishonest not only casts you in a bad light, but it also detracts from your point.
The whole point of this blog is getting one’s masculine needs met. No worthwhile project is “easy,” and I’ve never pretended otherwise. Most of the things young men want are possible, however, if they go about achieving those things effectively.
I’m over 30, out of shape, and have a mediocre, (relatively) low-paying job, and I regularly get interest from virginal young things, many in the 19-24 age range.
This is yet another straw man. Earl has made no such point. If he did, I’d argue it with him.
Boxer
‘If a man insists on a virgin (and he should), then this is a .deprecating asset. over time. The longer he waits, the more likely that every woman he knows will surrender her virginity or marry. Those that are left may not be marriage potential. It.s an ever decreasing pool of potentials. This is the point earl is making.’
No the point I was making is the longer she waits the more likely she will surrender her viginity to some silver tongued cad or never marry.
My waiting will not cause a loss in hope…I understand what marriage is about, to ultimately receive grace from the sacrament to do God’s will, being the authority in the marriage and hopefully a family if God gives us children. That doesn’t change as I age. The only thing that has changed as I age is realizing marriage isn’t about me anymore, it’s about doing God’s will.
And I have yet to this point ever had a woman come up front to intentions of marriage to me…even women in their late 20s-early 30s. I’ve stated it more often and as such it hasn’t happened.
I’ll ask you Derek…did your wife state clearly her intentions she wanted to be married? Either for the reason she wanted to be married and knew that time wasn’t her friend here or she saw she wanted to be married to you? That’s the decreasing pool of women…not how many virgins are out there.
Dear Earl:
You were very clear and unambiguous. Derek doubts the ability of a newly minted lawyer or accountant to land a serious woman a few years his junior, despite the figures from the U.S. Census Bureau plastered all over this blog, which suggests that this is the norm.
That’s not really the way girls work. You know that.
I am sorta curious about your standards. I’ve had a number of girls who made it clear they were very interested, but who wouldn’t fuck (or even kiss me deeply) until they got da ring. They nexted me rather quickly, and in almost every case, those girls were engaged shortly after (we’re talking weeks, in a couple of cases.)
The reason I ask is that these girls (usually) were first generation immigrants, whose parents were deeply patriarchal. About half of them were Muslims, and while many were whiteish, they generally weren’t the Western Europe descended girls.
If you are looking for an all-American Catholic girl, I think it’s still probably doable, but I honestly don’t know where you would meet one of those women. The Cats in my local area are usually married off young, and the Catholic brides seem to marry men their parents have known for years. It’s probably a pretty difficult network to penetrate, and any single Cat girls in these circles are probably substandard (ugly, prior immorality, from broken home, etc.)
Boxer
‘I am sorta curious about your standards. I.ve had a number of girls who made it clear they were very interested, but who wouldn.t fuck (or even kiss me deeply) until they got da ring. They nexted me rather quickly, and in almost every case, those girls were engaged shortly after (we.re talking weeks, in a couple of cases.)’
That type of reaction would tell me she’s serious about marriage and actively seeking. While I don’t have sex with women outside of marriage…I’m beginning to understand the errors of the ways when it came to kissing or sensual cuddling outside of marriage. You are trying to get a piece of that marital physical sensation before you commit anything. So I was shooting myself down without realizing it…and hopefully I wont make that mistake again.
The standard I want in a woman is the ones that rejected you.
Also strong in her Catholic faith and seeking to do God’s will.
‘That.s not really the way girls work. You know that.’
Yeah I know…it was a case of more selfishness and pride on my part that understanding the situation.
Exactly. The pool of available women decreases because they are having sex (w/ marriage or cad) or making themselves unavailable.
Wrong. The pool of available women for the 19-year old man is composed of all the unmarried women 18-19 in his area. The pool of available women for the 26-year old man is all the unmarried women 18-26 in his area. We can safely assume the 26-year old man has a much larger group of women from which to choose, and he also has resources, which make him more attractive to marriage-minded women in these cohorts. -Boxer
Yes. She clearly stated her intention to have children, therefore, she intended to be married. She clearly stated her intention to marry me when she agreed to my request. Prior to that it was a negotiation of a sorts. But she wanted to marry me for the same reason I wanted to marry her: we were best friends and wanted to spend our lives together. That reason has never changed.
We were married at 21, among the last of our peer group to marry. We were also among the last to have children. Time was against us if we wished to marry within our peers. However, she’s a beautiful woman and would have had no trouble finding someone else. She has attracted plenty of male attention over the years. But I suspect she would have been very unhappy with someone outside our peer group. I, on the other hand, might have been a stereotypical cucked beta had I not married her. I put all my eggs into that one basket and had no other prospects.
I basically followed the education advice that Boxer gave with the exception that I pursued marriage in parallel.
In nearly two decades I’ve only known one woman who would have even have qualified as a suitable partner. Marriageable woman are very, very hard to find. This is why I object to Boxer’s suggestion to delay marriage. It’s very risky.
Wrong again. It’s far less risky for a man to delay marrying until he can afford to support a family. The divorce rate for men who marry at 20-24 is 38.8 percent. The divorce rate for men who marry at 25-29 is 22.3 percent. Relevant figures are here:
https://v5k2c2.androsphere.net/2018/07/05/an-essay-on-the-ontology-of-the-two/
You’re advising young men to marry before they can afford to marry. When asked to back up your claims, you simply repeat the same nonsense, with no argument whatever. I’m starting to wonder if you’re feeling O.K.. -Boxer
‘Marriageable woman are very, very hard to find. This is why I object to Boxer.s suggestion to delay marriage. It.s very risky.’
I agree to not delay marriage if you’ve found a marriageable woman. However if you haven’t ever found one…then you’ll either be delayed in getting married or possibly rationalize marrying an umarriageable woman.
I completely agree. When sex before marriage is considered normal, saving kissing and cuddling for your marriage is an alien concept.
There are groups of marriage minded women, especially among the Anabaptists. But if you want a girl to be focused on marriage, don’t have sex with her, kiss her, or fondle her up. When you look at the divorce statistics that Boxer and I have posted, keep in mind that in my peer group the normal marriage age was 18-20. I got married quite late. Divorce is rare. The variables that go into divorce risk are not statistically independent, which is why Boxer’s conclusions are flawed. He’s looking at the wrong variables (i.e. education) as drivers of divorce risk. When (or if) I finish my blog post, I’ll go into this in more detail.
It’s not even really a question of which faith promotes it…it’s truth no matter who practices it.
You can’t seperate things intended to be in marriage to be outside of marriage because God created marriage and sex…or you miss the mark.
Funny part is I live in an area where I see quite a few Anabaptists…most of the ladies attitudes from what I can tell are certainly much more pleasant than the average ones. They seem to be quite joyful. That probably certainly has something to do with how they approach marriage. They are a breath of fresh air. But I’m also pretty sure since I’m not on the res…I probably wouldn’t have much of a shot marrying one of them.
I did just finish a drive of over 1000 miles over night, so yeah, I’m a bit tired. But, incidentally, that’s not the cause of our disagreement. It is statistics.
These divorce statistics do not control for dependent variables.You’re assigning causation where only correlation is warranted. I have an article on my blog dedicated to how to lower your divorce odds. In it, I suggest that you follow as many of the things in the list as possible. The reason is that they are statistically dependent, so if you don’t know the causation, you need to do as much as you can. It’s blindly applying the raw statistics to improve your outcome. Even if you do, it’s no guarantee of anything. You might, hypothetically, be a terrible person and no marriage would ever work for you specifically.
The other day on this blog we were discussing the virginity fetish and I said that virginity alone is not a good indication of a quality woman. It is necessary, but not sufficient.
It’s not necessary or sufficient. Women and men both tend toward infidelity, and we have DNA tests to prove paternity, which work far better than the traditional virgin-and-honeymoon method anyway.
This is because it is not a statistically independent variable: other factors that correlate with virginity are critically important. You can tell almost nothing about a woman just because she is a virgin.
The same thing applies to both age of marriage and education.
I can illustrate this by simply pointing out that Anabaptists marry at ridiculously young ages and have below average divorce rates. Are the statistics wrong? Not at all. The statistics merely describe, not explain. The example shows that there are more factors at play than a simplistic analysis can show.
These articles are not written for Anabaptist men. They’re not written for Mormons or Orthodox Jews, either. There are a number of outliers who sport better odds at young marriage than the mean. That’s irrelevant. This blog is written for men, and specifically, men without full-time fathers.
I’m speaking in broad generalities, and everything I say is generally true, while your advice will leave the average young man paying 16+ years of child support, beginning at age 21. This will scuttle his chance at self-sufficiency, before he even has an opportunity to begin. -Boxer
I’m not trying to be difficult here. I’m attempting to correct some mistakes in your reasoning, but you’re not getting what I’m throwing down. If you’d like, I can stop trying. I am pretty terrible at explaining myself clearly. This will be my last attempt.
You can keep going for as long as you’d like. Men are allowed to be as difficult as they want, and no apologies are necessary.
You think I’m arguing against your points, but I’m not. I’m saying your conclusions do not follow logically from the evidence you are basing it upon. In essence, you’re giving advice blindly while being completely convinced that you are not.
Your position seems to change by the hour, and I can’t see any arguments at all.
It doesn’t matter who the audience is. If Anabaptists or Mormons achieve success by tweaking certain variables that result in low divorce, you should instruct your general audience to emulate those actions because they cause the positive effects.
I should instruct my readers to go back in time, and grow up in patriarchal families, with strong father figures, and an extended support network?
I have a suspicion that this is the predominant factor in successful early marriages. This factor appears in the outlier groups I referred to before; but, it doesn’t appear (any longer) in atomized mainstream society, where something like 90 million households are headed by a skank-ho single mom, and nobody knows who his relatives are.
If instead you suggest that correlations of age and education will result in certain positive outcomes, you are misleading both yourself and them. You will cause harm and I want to prevent that from happening.
So waiting to form a family, until the day that one can afford this, is harmful? That’s what I’ve advocated, and that’s what you’re arguing against. Even if such marriages survive, who will pay the costs of the children, born to couples working crappy low wage jobs?
No! This is a fundamental mistake. Anabaptists are not outliers because that is not a data point being examined. The variables they manipulate are and they are at play in other successful marriages. These are the same variables that you attempt to tweak by giving your advice, albeit blindly and indirectly. You’re writing off as unimportant the most important variables required to achieve your goals by labeling it (incorrectly) as an outlier. Put more formally:
A particular value of dependent variable X correlates with lower divorce risk. It does so because certain values of independent variables A, B, and C are present in higher numbers in the population that has X. The Anabaptists are controlling A, B, and C to achieve the same outcome without X. But since X is a just a dependent variable, they don’t have to. Moreover, controlling X will have no affect on A, B, or C. This is my fundamental point: modifying dependent variables without also modifying the independent variables will give poor results. You might get lucky and modify them by simply giving good advice, but it’s risky. In the end, you give men the false hope and broken dreams that you think I’m doing.
The specific values of A, B, C, and the improved divorce rate are not outliers (that is, unimportant), it’s just data. The fact that data was produced by Anabaptists is irrelevant. By dismissing it as an outlier, you reject the very independent variables that your goal depends upon.
My primary goal is to point out that your advice is not generally good, but actually harmful because it’s too simplistic and based on flawed statistical analysis. My alternative advice is secondary to my purpose and should not to be taken as universal suggestions either. I’m merely trying to point out specific instances where your advice fails in order to highlight some of the structural flaws. If you want concrete evidence, I can produce many examples for why your application of statistics is flawed.
As far as defending an cogent alternative hypothesis, I have not yet drafted one up. For that I apologize.
I look forward to reading it. -Boxer