The Guy I Almost Was (1998)
One of my best friends in college was in the same position as the guy at the start of this comic: he was paying for his own college so he had to work for a year (restaurant jobs) to pay for each semester of college.  When I met him I was sitting in a diner bummed that I hadn&#x27;t met any futurists at the college I just started, and I was amazed to suddenly find myself having a deep conversation about such topics with my waiter.<p>Even though I started several years later than he did, we graduated the same year.  We got computer science degrees not art degrees (though we both are equally interested in art) so we didn&#x27;t graduate into poverty like the guy in the comic. We just had to live through poverty to get our degrees.<p>But it&#x27;s such a societal waste: this guy could have gotten a PhD in the amount of time it took him to get one bachelor&#x27;s, if he hadn&#x27;t had to work low wage jobs to pay for his own school.