I love being from Massachusetts. We have the best hospitals, the best schools, and the best sports teams (that’s right I said it: the series is ours this year). Now, let’s look at how we can take advantage of these wonderful things.
Mass General is considered to be one of the best hospitals in the world. However, what’s the point if you don’t have insurance? That kind of health care isn’t cheap and even if you have insurance, the bills are crippling. So, unless you have good benefits, the hospitals are pretty much off-limits.
The New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox are two of the hottest tickets in sports, and their prices reflect that. If you want to a Sox game, get that spare kidney ready, because getting tickets is next to impossible. As for Pats tickets, you can forget about it. I paid $100 for tickets to a pre-season game against Carolina, and after the third quarter my nose started to bleed. So our sports are also off-limits.
Schools should be good right? We’re world-renowned for our elite higher education. Yeah, about that: it seems that you can’t access those institutions unless you’re either super brilliant (um, not I) or super rich (failed that one too). So, the private schools are people like me. But, there is an alternative: public higher education.
UMass Boston is not just a school to me, but a community where I feel at home. I can look at the person next to me and nine times out of ten they’re dealing the same crap as me. Most of us work at least one job, and deal with ugly commutes all the way to this lush campus here in Dorchester.
When I get up for school I allot myself about an hour and a half to get here. I get the sincere pleasure of paying $3 to Mass Port so I can travel over the exquisite Tobin Bridge and enter that beautiful disaster, The Big Dig. It’s lovely, really it is. I don’t know what I’d do without that time in a dirty tunnel swearing at the gentleman from Maine who doesn’t like to use his blinker. Then I get to school and pay six bucks to park, praying I miss the exposed trenches in the parking garage. Don’t take your car to go to Dunks or anything because that would be another $6.
All right, the commute sucks, and the parking sucks too. So, basically I like the teachers and the students. Everything else irritates me.
Why is my school given the shaft? Why has my tuition doubled over the course of my college career? Oh, yeah: because Massachusetts is 49th in public higher education funding.
Isn’t that sweet? We’re known for our schools, but let’s not fund those that are deemed public. Why? Because, hey buddy, we have Harvard.