I am a Professor of Psychology. If an undergraduate major in psychology at my school gets a psychology-related job for pay (e.g., working as an assistant in a group home for autistic individuals), the official reaction of my Department and University would be “Good for you; glad to see you’re putting your education to productive use”.

This suggests a simple and effective solution to the problems faced by college student-athletes: make sports an official undergraduate major. If Reggie Bush could have majored in football at USC, then I don’t see why his earning money for his football skills would be any different than psychology majors earning money for their psychology skills.

Moreover, allowing undergraduate athletes to major in “Sports” offers other benefits beyond eliminating the absurdities and hypocrisies associated star athletes receiving “reimbursement” before they are supposed to. For example, we all know that the vast majority of college athletes do NOT go on to play professional sports. For all too many of them, their time in college is spent trying to make it to the Big Time, not on developing the skills necessary for establishing a lifelong career. If we had a major in “Sports”, then these student-athletes could receive formal training, not just in the actual playing of their sport, but also in the myriad ancillary aspects of professional sports: coaching, training, sports medicine, marketing and media relations, facilities management, business management, etc.

Why can’t we acknowledge the obvious: some kids go to college to become psychologists, so they major in psychology. Others go to college to become economists, so they major in economics. So why can’t kids who go to college to become athletes be able to major in their area of interest?

- Stephen Christman, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology

University of Toledo

I agree with the daughter's great reluctance to subsidize her mother's tithing for both practical and principled reasons. At the same time, the mother is free to pursue her own spiritual path, and for her, that evidently means forking over money every month to keep in her God's good graces.

So here's what they should do: figure out Mom's monthly income AFTER mortage related expenses have been removed. Then Mom tithes 10% of the "after-mortage" income to her church (after all, folks only tithe 10% of the after-tax income, don't they?). Then, daughter can remodel her own house and mother keeps a reserved seat in Heaven.

Tom Waits has a great song called "Chocolate Jesus" that would probably freak out poor Mr. Donohue even more than this statue.

The issue is here should not be framed as a choice between the job in Toronto and the relationship in Berkeley. Back in the 1980s, my then girlfriend (now wife) and I were accepted into different graduate schools, many hundreds of miles apart. It never even occurred to us to view our situation as requiring one of us to forgo their plans. The answer to us was obvious: time to do the long-distance-relationship thing for a while. If it worked out, then great, our relationship would be forged even stronger (and we get to enjoy the occasional trips to the other's city), and if it didn't work out, better to let it fade away at a comfortable distance. With the admitted benefit of hindsight, I can now attest that the three years of our long-distance separation could not have worked out better. So, have your cake and eat it too: go to Toronto, let her go to Berkeley, write lots of love letters, and try to see each other a few times a year. You'll know soon enough it is working, and if it's not, well maybe then you can contemplate moving to Berkeley.

The "next longest losing streak in baseball" is not ten years. It was the Detroit Tigers' 12 season losing streak (1994-2005) that they snapped by winning the American League pennant. How quickly a couple of good seasons can make people forget...

My bad. I realize now that King was referring to CURRENT losing streaks. Oh well. Maybe the Phillies will win out....

While I am pretty much full agreement with Cary's answer here, I would like to suggest a qualification to one particular statement. Namely, Cary said, "But in our hearts, if we are artists, we are hungry and desperate. That is utterly normal. That is our condition. That is the condition of the creative person". I would amend this final sentence to "That is the condition of the creative person who wants to make a living off their creativity". I struggled for many years back in high school and college with an intense desire to "make it" as a musician. When I finally let go of this dream to take a "normal" job and start raising a family, I did experience a two year long bout of the creative doldrums. But then one day, I said to myself, "fuck it, I don't care if my mind's blank, I'll just start writing songs about how blank my mind is using only two or three chords." What followed and developed has been a growing creative freedom that I never knew possible back when I was trying to make a living at being creative. Now that I am free from the expectations (real or imagined) of audiences and bosses, my music is pure joy. I'm not saying people should not try to make livings as artists, but they need to understand that, at it's core, creativity is the antithesis of the profit-motive. I wish the LW the best in trying to find a way to reconcile these sadly contradictory endeavors.