Pirate's Cove

Well, I guess global boiling is as good an excuse for any as to why college students are bad with money and blowing off classes, right? Instead of not being taught a proper work ethic in K-12 and being indoctrinated into all sorts of things that harm their lives

Debt, missed classes and anxiety: How climate-driven disasters hurt college students

In August 2016, Maameefua Koomson had just moved into her dorm at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Sophomore year was shaping up to be excellent. Koomson was a strong student, she was pursuing her dream of studying creative writing, and she had landed a plum job as a resident assistant, or RA, in an honors dorm.

“I was, like, I’m going to be the best RA to these freshmen,” she remembers. “I did a Sponge Bob-themed hall. I had events planned out.”

And then, just a few days before classes began, it started to rain. At first it seemed like just another rainstorm in a part of the country where heavy rain is normal. But then it turned into something else entirely. A record-shattering deluge that drowned much of the greater Baton Rouge area in multiple feet of floodwater. (snip)

And even though Koomson wasn’t living at home anymore, the disaster affected her college experience, and her broader life, in profound and lasting ways. Within a year, she had lost her RA job and changed her major. By the time she graduated, her ideas about what career opportunities were open to her had shifted dramatically, with long-term financial and personal consequences.

Well, you know, a lot of us have gone through heavy weather events in our lives. Most of us haven’t let it destroy our lives. But, this younger generation is entirely too emotional, are emotionally fragile and weak, and their elders are not only not helping them cope, they’re the ones who have been preaching doom and gloom and making them mental messes. Oh, and perhaps adults shouldn’t be having a Sponge Bob-themed hall. You know what my hall had freshman year? Nothing. We didn’t need anything. It’s where we slept and did homework. Nowhere else on campus had a child’s cartoon theme. If you brought it up you would have been laughed at.

New research suggests Koomson’s experience is common. As severe floods, wildfires and hurricanes become more frequent due to climate change, economists and sociologists are beginning to study the effects of those disasters on people who are in financially and socially formative college years. And the results are sobering.

Except, they aren’t getting worse.

Students whose families live in ZIP codes where there was a severe weather disaster get worse grades than their peers, are more likely to withdraw from difficult courses, and ultimately are more likely to default on their student loans after they graduate, according to a recent study that examined college students all over the country.

And students need not be directly affected by the disaster in order to suffer, the study found. For example, a student going to school in New York might struggle after a fire burned down their family home in California.

Or, it could be just an excuse for a slacker generation, one which is racking up massive debt while taking worthless college degrees and not having the fortitude to really do something unless it is given to them.

Anyway, it’s a long, long, long article that blames this all on you.