LW,

I think it's commendable that you want to go back to school. I too returned to school in my 40s and got my MA. I was definetely more motivated than when I was getting my BA so many years ago and I did quite well. I also, however, ended up with over $20,000 in student loans, in spite of getting a partial scholarship. I'm still paying off the loans and will probably be one of the few people on social security that also have student loans to pay off. Since you are already having financial problems, I'm not sure how it will affect you if you have this additional commitment, particularly if you don't get the job you are hoping to get. I currently work in academia, but only part time, and many of my part time colleagues have PHDs and have published articles and books. Academia is hard to break into.

I'm not suggesting that you don't follow your dream, but perhaps there are other ways of going about it. The book What Color is Your Parachute gives some useful information about getting into the field you want, without having to necessarily go back to school for several years. Perhaps a certificate in appraisal combined with your technical background could get you a job working on an auction house website for instance. Or perhaps a career counselor could help. Anyway I wish you luck.

Yes, these girls do some amazing feats, but at what cost? Ms Sey mentions the mental anguish and physical dangers these girls face, but those are just at the Olympics themselves. What must they endure between the competitions to keep their bodies so small and stunted? Many of the girls stop having their periods for long stretches and the 16 year olds look like girls of 11. What are the long term repercussions from this? What happens to them if they gain a few pounds or grow a few inches. Are they considered over the hill at the ripe old age of 17? It's as if the only way the young women can win at all is if they closely resemble children. In most sports steroids are the problem. Here it is the opposite. I find no pleasure watching something that appears to be so obviously wrong.

I find it hard to believe that anyone who calls herself "pro life" could also be a longtime member of the National Rifle Association. Doesn't it matter that this radical organization supports the right for people to own AK47 rifles, or to get guns with any or little background checks. Doesn't it matter to her that barely a week goes by when we don't hear of yet another person who cracks and kills strangers or his ex-wife, children or co-workers. Don't these lives matter also? Apparently no more than a victim or rape or incest who should not allowed to have an abortion, another stance that Palin holds. To even think that I would consider voting for someone likes that merely because she has two X chromosomes, as I do, is insulting not only to my intelligence but to my sense of right and wrong.

The "pro lifers" have no business using the word choice when they praise how Sarah Palin "chose" to give birth to a child with Down's syndrome and now how her 17 year old daughter is "choosing" to continue her pregnancy. Palin, and others with her point of view, don't believe that abortion should ever be allowed, even when the mother was raped or the victim of incest. So how can they proudly say that Palin made a choice when continuing a pregnancy was supposedly never an issue for her. Or is it only other women who should never have a choice whether or not to have a baby?

I'd ask her why,as governor, she cut funding for teen mothers, considering that she is anti abortion and believes in abstinence only education. (It wouldn't be necessary to mention her own daughter, but Sarah, the great mother that she proclaims to be, may just mention her anyway probably to say how much she values life.) But once Gibson pins her down on an answer, he should then ask her how these young women are expected to raise the children if there is little money to do so. He should mention that they don't all have their parents living with them as she does.

Then, since she's proclaiming to be a voice for special needs children, I'd ask what she specially proposes to do for them, especially since she wants to continue to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Where will the money come from to help them. But of course, she'll again proclaim that she values life and may hold up Trig as an example, evading any sort of definite answer. Gibson must "drill" her until she provides one. But he'll spend so much time on the "questions" that the RNC provides, he'll run out of time before he actually asks her anything at all. Everyone will say how poised she was under all that pressure.