Thursday, October 06, 2005

Will I use my college degree again? Vote here...



Now that I have my own sewing business I am getting calls to sew this and that. It makes me feel as if I will again start using my college degree. Is this stretching it? Sewing curtains…..Finance…..Sewing Curtains….Finance. Possibly this is a stretch. Time will tell. If my business ever went hog wild (not that I even want it to) then possibly I would need some tax help and financial statements, but that’s why I am married to a CPA, so again, this is a real stretch. And why did I just say that I don’t want my business to go hog wild? What kind of red-blooded American capitalist am I? A lazy one my internet friends.

My business does involve math, but more like measuring windows and figuring out how many panels of 54” wide fabric I will need to piece to span the size of the window. In other words, 6th grade Math is sufficient to measure a window. Not the Business Calculus or Statistics I took at BYU. In statistics we learned that the standard deviation is equal to the risk in an investment…..but when will I ever use that knowledge in making a slipcover for a chair? Help me out here because maybe I just don’t see the connection. I need to make my $10,000 in student loans very worthwhile here. (At 8% interest we paid those suckers off fast! Paul’s brother is consolidating his student loans at 1%. Boo hoo for him!)

In my final business class as a senior at BYU we had to take Business Management 499. I can’t even remember the whole purpose of this class (there was none really), except that we studied real life businesses as case studies. My teacher was Professor Money. (That’s the truth.) We would analyze the various aspects of a business’ successes or failures—marketing, finance, operations, etc. Gosh I hated that class. We studied everything from Wild Turkey alcohol to Carmike movies and the theory behind charging different prices for different tickets. (It’s called “capturing the market” and has nothing to with the fact they love Seniors and children and therefore give them cheaper tickets and everything to do with Economics.) Speaking of Economics, did you know that it is an economic fact that when you raise the minimum wage you increase unemployment? I could explain this to you on a wonderfully basic supply and demand graph. Oh how I loved Economics! But I digress….

As you can see, my head is filled with charts, graphs, and statistics that I may never use again. But that’s okay because talking about chenille, gabardine, silk, and chiffon is much more interesting for you to read about…..That is if you are still reading. I may have lost you when I said standard deviation.

3 comments:

Lorraine Courigan said...

I wouldn't have made it very far in a finance major! LOL. I would love to hear the logic of how raising minimum wage will increase unemployment if I can follow it. That's like the logic of cutting taxes to stimulate the economy I guess.

If nothing else I had to post a comment just to kudos you on paying off your student loan so fast! I borrowed $11k and still owe $9500! Many years of deferment...

BTW, Professor money? That's classic.

Unknown said...

Ummm...yeah, you did sort of lose me at deviation such and such. And the mere mention of statistics makes me squirm. Not that I can't deal with those things as you know, because I AM smart, dang it! But it is not my preferred mode of communication really. I prefer talking about feelings, and motivations, deep meaning, vulnerability, objectives, tactics, substitutions, emotional memory and connection, improvisation, expectations, and such. It's a miracle we're such good friends really.

And to Paul, just because you HAVEN'T taken the kids to a football game, doesn't mean you SHOULDN"T. I mean it is one great reason to lave fall. Especially when Dean takes them by himself. They bond, and I enjoy a fall afternoon alone :-). So, look into it. Soccer is a game for snobby whimps. (Anyone who knows me not--that is a completely facetious comment.) So, the basic message...EMBRACE FALL!

BTW, some things I haven't yet mentioned about fall...the changing leaves--GORGEOUS, Halloween--FUN, Thanksgiving--DELICIOUS, falling back--ENJOYABLE, smell of people burning wood in their fireplaces or stoves--DELIGHTFUL...

Paul said...

Let's hope that somewhere in this new enterprise your business acumen comes out and you generate a profit!

Of course, any profits will be immediately consumed just like every other any red-blooded, capitalist woman. I am not sure we ever came ahead on that whole Tupperware deal.

You have to give props to statistics...it was that Stats class and Dr. Beuss (said like the snake from Robin Hood because he extended all of his esses)that brought us together.

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