You make it sound like all the diamond mines in Canada are a sham. What is with the quotations? I find that to be a very odd stance as I've worked in one of those aforementioned "mines" and it's not a bunch of people blowing rainbows out of their ass waiting for the next plane full of conflict diamonds to land on the ice road.

I just want to say that you have given one of the best replies I have ever read on Slashdot.

Thank you.

It depends on the school.

Up here in Canada where I went to there were regulated and unregulated programs, defined by some government board. Regulated meant that they could only raise tuition a certain amount per year (2% or something like that) and unregulated meant they could pretty much charge whatever they want. I used to go to tuition forecasting that the Dean put on every year as it was a fascinating look at how the university operated. It turns out that they run a lot of the humanities / arts programs in the red because they are not allowed to raise the tuition to an amount that keeps them out of it. The solution was to charge business / engineering / law / medicine more, not just because they are more expensive, but also to subsidize the humanities / arts programs that were not able to break even due to government controls. Even within engineering, there was a huge difference between the amount of money various programs costed. Mech and electrical engineering were actually quite cheap due to the amount of students in them. Over in geological engineering (mine) it costed a lot more per student due to classes with less than 20 students in the program per year, expensive road trips (can't learn that much geology sitting inside), and a high number of faculty.

It's annoying to hear some film major bitch about his a $100 increase to his $1800 tuition when you are busy paying $8-9k/year (on the expensive side for Canada).

as a renter, I view this situation with a measure of caution.

I suspect my unit suffers from leaky-condo-syndrome, with likely a good chunk of the rest of the building. The windows let in quite a lot of water during winter storms here (west coast, so mostly rain). This pools on the windowsill and causes all sorts of water damage plus lets nasty things grow. It's extremely hard to keep on top of (aka: I don't have time to sit there and mop every crevice of every window every time it rains, which is often daily during the wintertime). I also travel for work and am away for weeks at a time. Funny how it never seems to happen when, you know, it's not raining outside.

The landlords solution? Blame me for not using the shower fan while I shower. Seriously. This isn't a cheap place either --it's a $1600/mo apartment. Meanwhile, I have a rather long email trail as well as photographs of it (often) in case he tries to stiff me for damages later (which he probably will).

Can't wait until my lease is up so I can get the hell out of there.

Revolutionary. It will be resistant to terrorists attacks because it will obviously be _guarded_ by tornadoes.

You come across a bit arrogant here that the plebs shouldn't be allowed to write code because they aren't trained to do it. These are undergrads in physics, chemistry, engineering --the majority of whom are not going to end up as programmers. They need enough to get by and anything beyond that is probably a bonus for their employer.

I am an engineer and I certainly don't use the language I learned in school (java in my first year, fortran in my third) because they aren't applicable to my problems. The majority of work I do is on commercial available packages (CAD, specialized 3D CAD, and problem/industry specific modelling software). I'm not out there writing my own finite-element tunnel stability software. I need to be able to parse a variety of different files and do something useful with the output --translate them into various scripts for different projects, drive various programs through COM, etc. Basically ugly little hack scripts or project-specific programs that deal with any of a number of odd file formats or input data the client gives us --and in mining, every client is different and it is a mess.

One piece of in-house software is written in vbscript. It's ugly as sin and I could care less --it works. It cuts out a disgusting amount of hours of work I would have to do if I had to do it by hand. At the end of the day, as an engineer and not a software developer, I need to get my work done. If I need to write programs and occasionally cobble together some in-house tools to assist me then I will, in whatever language I have on hand, regardless of the fact I've had only a "few" months training. Get off your high horse --not everyone is a software developer.

Cheers

In canada there is another option through the NSERC (natural sciences and engineering research council) scholarship.

There are two kinds, one of which I'm talking about here: The industrial partnership scholarship.

You get a company to sponsor you (and a project) for at least $6k/year, and the government more or less chips in $18k/year. You have to spend 20% of your time with the company working on things related to your thesis (there are some rules about billable time and not taking advantage of you because you (e.g. they can't charge out your time to your clients)). There are no strings attached either (nothing saying you have to work for them when you finish your degree). So you end up with a very focused, industry-relevant thesis , your foot in the door with a company, and a good chunk of change to do research with.

They are easy to get if you have a brain as they seem to be rubber stamped by the government --if you can agree to get a company to give you $12k over 2 years for research then probably aren't a tool. This is how I did my Masters and the topic I focused on and real world problem I was working on gave me very marketable skills.

Masters vary by country. I have found a Masters in North America is a very different beast than a Masters in Europe or Australia. Some places it means just a year or two of pure coursework. Some degrees are like that. Some places it means few classes, but a hell of a lot of research (thesis). It is not a well-defined term

Personally, for me, my masters got me a pay raise (compared to when I shopped for a job before I did my masters) and the pick of the litter for jobs from the companies where I live. Then again, I did a thesis and very few classes, which got me some skills that very few people with an undergrad would be able to get (some of the advanced modelling software I learned is a) expensive b) time intensive --so no job is really going to pay the money to handhold you the 6 months it takes to learn how to use it on even a basic level).

The other part of the masters is the life experience. The school and learning was fine, but the real great part was putting my life on hold for 2 years, starting over in a new city, and finding myself with a shocking amount of free time. Sometimes the masters was way more work than a regular job, sometimes there were lulls where hey, why don't I just piss off and go skiing for 2 weeks straight. Lots of fun times, lots of great people. Don't discount the social part of a masters. You're poor (science research doesn't pay well) but it was a lot of fun.

I live downtown in Vancouver, which is notorious for high prices (to own). Rent seems comparable to other major cities. No car. Decent transit system ($1200 / year for me, if work was a few blocks closer it would be $600, stupid 2 zone).

I figure the money I save by not having a car more than makes up for the amount I pay for increased rent (living downtown close to work) with the added benefit of living downtown in a major city. It's not a setup for life, but isn't a bad place to be in your twenties. Walking distance to great shops, restaurants, beach. Transit to local mountains / whistler is pretty cheap (easy to hitch a ride off of someone you know going as well).

It's actually cheaper for me to live in Vancouver, than to live in some other major cities in Canada due to placement of offices for my line work --I would need to own a car and the amount of money I save in rent is nothing compared to the price of a car + insurance + gas.

It all depends where you live though.

I wasn't coding, mostly doing inspections and updating the support design using this horrible buggy CAD software on toughbooks.

Except I'm in the (mostly) dark, breathing through an airstream helmet (with lovely huge battery to tote around all day), usually in a pool of water (underground is wet), above 500 m down. Toss in the fact that it's a uranium deposit (therefor a higher geothermal gradient) + any air that was getting pipped in was surface temperature (40C+), it got really nasty fast.

Still not as bad as the day they pumped the septic tanks in the underground mechanic bay. God, it stank for weeks underground if you got in any tunnels even remotely close to that place.

Go for the geology degree!

When I did my undergrad (in geological engineering which shared a lot of classes with the geologists) there was an older gentleman who really had his stuff together. He was an incredible lab partner, as well as the one who asked the most interesting questions during lecture.

I'm not sure what happened to him --but I'm sure he's successful somewhere.

The tough part with geology is the field work --which gets harder the older you are. Not because you're old, just that you have more responsibilities. It's easy for me to disappear 3-4 weeks to a site for some field work but it's more difficult when you have stuff tying you down in the city. Then again, that can be the appeal!

Best of luck with the geology degree --some of the geology classes were my favorite things in school. I really enjoyed geomorphology (taught by a 93 year old prof who still played on the departments hockey team) and a class on extreme value statistics (natural hazard risk assessment). 3D visualization / GIS out of the geography department was also really interesting --not for the technical knowledge but exposure to really neat urban planning / pysch / early CS papers from the late sixties.

I work in the mining industry as an engineer. On paper, I travel to exotic places --south america, australia, mongolia. Hell, even Northern Canada sounds exotic and certain times of the year (it can be quite gorgeous).

The sad reality? I pass through all those places, it's often lonely (if I'm the only english speaker on site) and stressful work. Days are 12-14 hours and field tours last 25-35 days straight. Catch a cold? Suck it up. Don't like the food? Suck it up. Only cold water in shower stalls that are growing mushrooms? Suck it up. I certainly don't see the tourist parts or laze up on a beach someplace drinking and eating good food.

That being said, some places have been neat. But they have been neat for the adventure or the thrill of seeing places that most people never get to see --off the beaten path helicopter access only type places. The weather and the other people you are stuck with can make or break the place. Northern alaska on clear nights (nightshift is a reality)? Gorgeous. Northern Alaska in -10 to 0 C rain/snow mixtures while rocking trench foot in both your feet for the past two weeks? Garbage.

I like the field/travel aspect sometimes, but lots can be said for having standard hours and a set work week. It's not like they pay you out the nose to tough it out in the field and muck up your life because you are out of town for 1/3-1/2 the year.

A necessary evil of my job. Occasionally fun, occasionally a toil.

One of my favorite things to do is still to pound the pavement at a local used bookstore. I dislike buying books online as some of the best finds I've had were just from browsing and stacks and looking what catches my eye. You can't do that with a giant internet store --it's only good if you know what you are looking for.

There are several in my area, with the main one being Pulp Fiction books. They have a "incoming" section that rotates all the new stock through and I pop my head in at least once a week. Loads of stuff I would have never read if I was buying online. Add in a helpful staff, all with various likes and dislikes and expertise, and I've gotten to have a good rapport with them. They point me to interesting stuff I may like based off my previous purchases --except the stuff they recommend is far better than the stuff that comes out of amazon's automated system. We trade books, interesting links, jokes, movie thoughts, etc.

I wouldn't trade it for the world. I happily buy 10-15 books a month from these guys. They've started up really trading a lot of used graphic novels and the collection is looking promising.

Brick and mortar shops are NOT dead and I hope mine stays around for a long time to come. I once saw William Gibson perusing the stacks in it --try that at an online store.