letting yourself be defined by a piece of paper
possibly one of the most important human inventions of all time is the advent of writing and recordkeeping. thanks to the ancient mesopotamians, you can jot down your thoughts right now so that future you can reference back to your scribbles for important information, whether it’s something as simple as a reminder to buy eggs next week, or something complex like your ponderings on the meaning of life on a random tuesday night. it’s because of writing that we’ve been able to advance as a civilization in the past several thousand years, as new people who come into existence don’t need to start at the bottom to discover fire, rather they can instead build upon their predecessors’ discoveries and use that fire to bake bread. because that’s the pinnacle of human innovation. it only took us a couple more thousands years to realize you could slice it too.
in spite of all of this, i sometimes get the feeling that we have become too reliant, and possibly complacent, with our inventions. it’s like the idea that a nuclear war will permanently bring us back to the stone age, as we will no longer have the means or knowhow to go back to manufacturing complex electronics or medicine. some theorize this to be a hypothetical “great filter” to the fermi paradox, but that’s a problem for another day and another blog post.
papers, please
let’s first start with the fact that we use documents to establish identity. it seems like a great idea, right? here’s a plastic card with my name and picture and address on it - i am who i am, trust me. it’s more complicated than that, obviously. let’s not kid ourselves, if you have been to college in the past ten years, then you know that the use of fake driver’s licenses runs rampant in college towns. it’s obviously not hard to fake a driver’s license. i’ve seen confiscated IDs at my local college bars and some of the cards look more realistic than actual IDs the states the fakes claim to be from.
the remedy to this problem is obviously to ask someone to supply multiple documents that establish identity which can be cross-referenced. if someone’s ID card say’s they’re from 123 Street Avenue, Cityville, and they also give us a water bill and a social security number, then we’re all good, right? possibly not. according to the US department of homeland security, all states are required to begin issuing something called Real ID, which should not be confused with “real ID”, when talking about whether or not a driver’s license is fake or bona fide (who came up with such a terrible name???)
imagine a plausible situation (which, from my experience, is very real, as one of my friends has dealt with it), in which you lost your wallet, which contained your driver’s license and social security card (obviously, you might say that it’s dumb to keep your social security card in your wallet, but maybe you’re actively applying for jobs or loans and need to frequently display it, and then you forgot to stash it before losing your wallet. shit happens in life, so just bear with me). the first things you’re going to do is cancel your credit and debit cards, then order a new wallet and replacement identification.
this is where all the problems surface. primarily, this newfangled thing called Real ID. for context, Real ID is a new identification system mandated by the federal government so that there exists a unified way for US citizens to enter federal facilities such as military bases and courthouses, and also to board domestic flights without a passport. according to the US department of homeland security (DHL), all US states are required to issue driver’s licenses under this new Real ID system
this becomes a big issue when you consider what is required to get Real ID: establishment of full name, establishment of birth date, establishment of social security number, and two separate documents establishing residence. obviously, since Real ID is attempting to replace passports for domestic flights, presenting a valid passport will fulfill quite a few of these requirements. the problem is that, according to the state department, only about 151 million passports are in circulation, or just a little bit over half the US population. this might sound surpising, but according to an article by forbes, a study by OnePoll finds that 40% of Americans have never left the US in their lives, and more shockingly, 11% have never left their state of origin. that means that, there’s almost a 50% chance that you’re fucked if you lose your wallet and either have an expired passport, or don’t even have one.
what if you first get a passport, then use that to get Real ID? it’s the same story. according to the state department’s list of requirements, there’s a bit of a circular dependency at play. the state department either lets you submit one “primary ID”, or two “secondary IDs” for a passport to be issued. most of the primary IDs are either a type of driver’s license, or some sort of equivalent, such as miliary ID, or government employment ID. well, if you lost your wallet, you’re most likely fucked there as well, and you will need a social security card to get either of those replaced. looking at the list of secondary IDs, we see a similar problem: out-of-state driver’s license (which, if you happened to move from another state, would still leave you fucked), social security card (fuck you lmao), etc etc.
what about replacing a social security card? the social security administration says you must prove your citizenship, age, and identity, which is commonly done by providing them with a valid driver’s license and passport. look like you’re still fucked.
clearly, this just shows how important it is not to lose your social security card and to keep your passport up to date. that might not be a tall ask, but then again, it might also be a little unreasonable to assume americans are renewing their passports if they don’t travel much.
boomers’ highway robbery (and why I hate the IRS)
aside from the subtitle, i’m not even going to talk about how social security is a system that my generation pays into, from which we will never see a penny when it’s our turn to retire. that’s also a problem for another blog post. i wanted to discuss how our reliance on using social security numbers as a way to establish identities is probably one of the worst ideas ever.
at some point in american history before i was born, some americans wanted a national, federal system of identification. obviously, there were some (very real and very valid) concerns about privacy. the idea of the central government having a database where they can easily look someone up by an ID number or full name and see what they look like sounds like a terrifying step towards a communist dystpoia. this led to no “national ID card” being adopted, and thus identification was a problem left at the state level, meaning we had fifty different forms of identification, all with varying requirements of issuance, and all with varying degrees of usefulness (technically more than fifty, if you consider native reservations, and territories such as puerto rico).
this becomes an issue in contexts, such as a national bank, who recieves loan applications from all over the country. well, we can’t rely on driver’s licenses, because some states might make it laughably easy to get one, so, in the interest of standardization and fraud prevention, the bank will want a form of identification that everyone has. the next best option is then, obviously, those damn social security numbers. everyone gets a unique number at birth/naturalization, which then must mean someone with an SSN be a US citizen
why is this such a big problem, then? it’s because social security numbers by nature are not (ironically) not secure at all. the first three digits in an SSN are based on your ZIP code, either of birth, or of application. the next two are your “group number”. this is not a special number at all. if the person in your area born right before you had the number XXX-01-9999, you’ll be XXX-02-0000. it’s the same deal with the last four digits. they go up incrementally. this means that, if you derement your social security’s last digit by one, you most likely have just guess the SSN of the person who was born in the hospital right next to the room you were born in. this also means that you can make an educated guess at the SSN of someone born in a certain area within a certain year, which reasonable accuracy.
no one could ever possibly get away with faking an SSN, right? wrong again. and this is from my personal experience. in 2021, i didn’t have a job. it was my first year of college, and i didn’t have any appreciable skills to earn a summer internship, and i wanted to relax for a summer instead of working in retail or at a restaurant. the next year, i did work an internship, and had several thousands of dollars withheld from my paycheck, which is how w-2 jobs work. then, in 2023, i filed my form 1040 with the IRS for the fiscal year 2022 to get my tax refund, which was almost all of my federal income tax withholding, because i made just over the standard deduction for 2022. after two or three months of waiting with no direct deposit, i was confused, and waiting like an hour in the IRS phone hold queue to ask what was up.
apprently, they had a form 1040 on file for the year 2021 (the year i didn’t have a job), so they refused to process the 1040 that i myself filed for 2022. i did work for doordash that year, but i made less than the threshold that required people to report their earnings to the IRS, but i decided to ask him anyway. he said he didn’t file anything, so i looked up what was going on online. turns out, a very common reason why this problem happens is that illegal immagrants who don’t have an SSN, but need one to get a job, will give employers someone else’s SSN, and then also file a tax return to get their tax refund back. because of how easy it is to guess an SSN for someone who’s young and might not have a job, this is entirely plausbile. queue an entire week of getting up at 6am to try an get to the front of the IRS hotline hold queue and then politely arguing with IRS agents so i can prove to them that i’m me. since my SSN was compromised, this was a huge ordeal because the number that the IRS relies on as a means of identification was not longer reliable for my situation.
obviously, more people are filing than taxes than collecting social security checks, so it would be reasonable to assume that the IRS makes use of the SSN numbering system the most, yet they clearly suck at verifying the validity of these numbers. who is letting mishaps like this happen, and why? it shouldn’t be that hard to let the IRS have access to the social security administration’s databases to check verify numbers against names. THERE IS LITERALLY A BOX ON THE IRS FORM 1040 TAX RETURN ASKING IF YOU HAVE RECIEVED SOCIAL SECURITY CHECKS. fix your shit, irs. being pissed off at the irs and tax law is an old man’s pastime, yet here i am. maybe that explains the couple strands of gray hair i saw on the side of my head in the mirror.
my student *IS+ defined by their test score
if you ever took a world history test, then you probably remember the imperial bureaucracy test that was used in much of chinese history. being a meritocracy, this is how the imperial government decided your aptitude in consideration of various government jobs. this was obviously a big deal, as any self-respecting man in chinese society would want a government job to feed his family. modern china has a similar aptitude test, called the gaokao, which high schoolers all across china take, which determines their chances at getting into a good college, which determines their job prospects. basically, your future hangs in the balance with this exam. chinese parents spend wheelbarrows of money on making sure their kid succeeds. there are plenty of pictures online of kids slaving away in cram schools specifically for this exam if you don’t believe me.
good thing we don’t have anything like that, right…?
lol, no. in comes college board, with their godforsaken SAT test. before covid, the SAT was a big deal when it came to college admissions. it was almost like an IQ test for college-hopefuls, with top schools like MIT and Harvard unwilling to even consider someone with less than a 1500 out of 1600. obviously, they aren’t going to admit that, but let’s be honest here. if you look up MIT SAT distributions on google, you get a prepscholar page saying that the SAT score of your average MIT admit is 1535.
reliance on the SAT in lieu of GPA is the same story of why people started using social security numbers instead of driver’s licenses in the late 20th century - its standards are quite clear-cut, and everyone takes the SAT just like how everyone gets an SSN. i don’t think it needs to be stated how BS the SAT is. if you’ve taken the SAT, then you know that the questions are ordered in no particular progression of topics, almost as if it’s supposed to confuse you. your SAT score clearly only measures how good you are at taking the SAT, and not how good you are at math and/or English. rarely in real life will you ever need to use arcsine to find the angle of a right triangle, and then turn around and immediately figure out the solution to a system of equations. im sure you know a person who you you expected to ace the SAT who then got a score much lower than you expected, or possibly the other way around. my parents personally expected me to get at least a 1500 and i beat myself up over earning a 1450, which, in hindsight, is still an outstanding score
it can even be argued that the SAT is a form of systemic oppression. one of my friends from a rural area told me that her school, unlike mine, didn’t even tell students that the SAT was a thing. and, of course, there are the SAT prep schools that parents will enroll their kids in. i personally tutor high school students in SAT math prep. those parents are willing to pay top dollar for the most important yet most bullshit exam in their kid’s life. why does an exam, which attempts to measure aptitude in subjects already taught in school, have an observable trend for which prep school/tutoring students perform significantly better? this is a difficult question to tackle - i spent several weeks in an econometrics course analyzing models regarding how various factors affect educational and career performance. this is very much a chance that higher earning parents raised their kids with an emphasis on the importance of education, but also had the resources to enroll them in SAT prep school. according to my econ professor, this is a problem that’s remained unsolved for many decades, and until a research project comes along with the funds to pay for a control group of many kids raised by working class parents to go to SAT prep school, we may never know.
after the first year of covid, many universities across america realized that exams like the SAT and GRE were kind of bullshit and stopped accepting them in the admissions process. this was probablty a combination of the fact that schools were no longer offering SATs, and also the fact that the SAT was offered completely online in 2020, which obviously opens it up to academic dishonesty. as far as i know, james madison university, one of the schools i applied to during the covid school year of 2020, stopped accepting SAT scores in their application process, and stil does not. i gave them a course transcript from my high school, and their application portal told me i was all set - not even an essay. the next day, one of my friends said “i guess you only need a pulse to apply to JMU”. in my research process for grad school programs, i have noticed a non-insignificant number if programs who specifically state that they dont want applications to submit GRE scores
forsaking the SAT in the college admissions process might seem like a great idea - it is a flawed system, but i cannot imagine how colleges determine how good of a candidate a student is now. as they fall back onto transcripts, which are subject to grade inflation, and resumes/extracurriculars, which are also susceptible to embellishment or straight-up lying, it must be impossibly difficult for admissions officers to objectively quantify students’ abilities. this isn’t even considering how misrepresentative a high school transcript is of a student - a B+ average student might be balancing a job and taking care of their sick mother, versus an A+ student who spends their time going to SAT prep school and running a school club they’re the president of. i suppose, that might be the goal, after all: students are people, and people can’t be described by one number. that’s why collehe essays are a thing - for applicants to didply their personality in a way that describes them better than a test score and a report card. either way, it’s not a problem for me, as i’ve already made it into the school i wanted to go to, but i do wonder how the college admissions grinder will treat my kids thirty years into the future.
“when i discover your formula for krabby patties, i’ll run you out of business. I WENT TO COLLEGE!”
it is insane when you realize everything in your early life builds up to walking across a stage and earning a piece of paper that says you know a decent amount in the field of study printed on it in big letters. anyone reading this who has spent some amount of time in the workforce post-graduation knows that this is not true at all.
i’m a computer science student, and i got the opportunity to intern at a fortune 500 finance company, half of whose personnel are dedicated to IT infrastructure/services and software development. years of learning how to develop multithreaded code, how a kernel works, how to perform big-oh analysis on algorithms, how a computer is structured at the transistor and wire level, did not prepare me for the fact that my degree program did not teach me how to be a real life software developer. i think i had one class in the UVA CS program that was useful, and that was a course specfically dedicated to educating us on how software development is in the real world. so then what was up with learning to code a linked list and an AVL tree in C++ in undergrad?
yes, obviously you need to know the basics before getting real-world experience. you’ll be oh so pleased to find out that the real world, at least the software development world, loves industry certifications. software engineering, unlike civil engineering or accounting, is a white-collar field that doesn’t require a single certification or license to be earned before working (yes, scary, i know). despite this, we really seem to love certifications as a form of signaling to employers (more on that later). that includes certifications for AWS offered by Amazon, Java certs by Oracle, as well as the ScrumMaster certification from ScrumAlliance (scrum/agile isn’t even a technology!!).
I have taken the Amazon Web Services Cloud Practitioner exam. I hold the certification for passing that exam. supposedly, it represents having the knowledge base to understand a majority of AWS services, as well as about six months of experience with AWS. these are noted by Amazon as not being hard requirements. that’s quite obvious, since i spent maybe one week studying for that exam and zero weeks getting practical experience with it. i only got acquainted with AWS in the weeks in my internship following my certification when i actually had to develop software and deploy it on AWS. do you know how embarassing it is to take the exam on friday afternoon, then come back on monday telling your team you passed the exam, then later that afternoon telling your teammate that you don’t know how to upload code to a lambda function? (not only did i need to “reminded” of how to do this, i then uploaded code to the wrong function, which quite nearly broke the entire dev environment :skull:)
the idea of earning a piece of paper that says you know your stuff was corroborated with a computer science professor i was in talks with this summer. over the summer, i had a very life-or-death decision to make: should i stay double majoring in computer science and economics and minoring in astronomy, or should i double major in comptuer science and astronomy and minor in economics??? obviously if i drop my economics major, then i close myself off from all of the opportunities that an economics major would have out of college, right? apparently not. professor’s response: “either way, you will have a dual major and a minor, chill the hell out” (he worded it much more nicely). according to this professor, employers mainly care that you have a degree in the first place, and the combination of majors and minors doesn’t really mean much, because all a degree program is telling, is that its holder managed to complete a regimen of courses that’s been constructed by a board of “experts”, who by virtue of them being employed by an accredited institution, are simplying trusted by the US government and the industry to know what they’re doing.
what does this mean? you have people majoring in statistics, or physics, both of which are majors that involve a lot of programming but require no knowledge of what a transistor is, or what big-oh notation is, working in the software development field, earning the same salary as holders of computer science degrees. hell, there are tons of programmers in the software development industry without a degree, instead opting to self-teach programming, and earning certificates and coding up some really impressive code portfolios. the CTO at the company i interned at was a music major coming out of college. i still have no clue that ended up happening, but clearly it can happen and you can actually go quite far without the traditional credentials. the idea that employers look just for the ability to graduate from college is what we call “signalling” in economics - it proves that you have the intellectual aptitude and time management skills (haha) to get through a rigorous educational program (and could afford it); all skills you actually need for the job you can learn in your onboarding process. a great example of signalling is how the US military requires you to simply have a bachelor’s degree to become a comissioned officer. that’s right, someone with a BA in English Literature is just as qualified at someone with a BS in Aerospace Engineering to pilot a $75 million F-35 fighter jet. i’m only strawman-ing a little bit.
how, then, does your college major have a bearing on your career prospects? just like how simply holding a bachelor’s signals to employers that you are a functioning adult, you major performs another signalling function: it tells a story about you. it tells a story about your interests and your skills. that seems like a very small and nitpicky difference, but there is a difference nonetheless. if the same job requires skills that are held by a CS degree holder, a statistics degree holder, or a programming bootcamp graduate, then to employers, its not the type of program, rather the completion itself of a program that matters. thus, the difference in these different programs is what each candidate can bring to the table, based on the story they tell via their college transcript, their resme, and their interview responses. the UVA statistics program obviously has looser standards on programming principles such as unit testing or spatial locality compared to computer science, putting a greater emphasis on data analysis techniques. on the other side of the coin, the UVA CS program doesn’t necessarily require students to be great at analyzing data, and one could even graduate with a BS in Computer Science from UVA without takinga single statistics class. so then, if you’re a project lead who is in charge of a product that deals with a great deal of data, but you also have a budget constraint on compute resources, and you are considering a UVA statistics major versus a UVA computer science major, you’re now going to have to choose which problem you want to prioritize solving.
clearly, this doesnt mean that you can walk up to amazon demanding a job with an english degree in your hand, but it almost means that it is very much possible for you get that job with a degree that isnt computer science. probably one of the only situations where a life-defining piece of paper that you worked years to earn doesnt have as much bearing on your life as you thought or hoped
conclusion
this post and what my professor told me sort of brings us back to the same theme in the last post i made: everything ties back to the human aspect of things, and the story that we tell. i suppose this is a lesson that i still find myself learning and re-learning on a daily basis. as a kid, i always paid the most attention in my STEM classes, and then breezed through my english and history classes without really thinking about them twice. even in my astronomy classes, where we study huge celestial bodies with galaxies and black holes, we always find ourselves coming back to the important of the human story. even in STEM, it becomes quite apparent that we do not isolate the human story from our studies. computer science is the study of the design of programs and computing machines, both of which very much are human constructs. engineering as a whole is a study of how we as humans propagate, control, and even halt the spread of material, information, and even humans. chemistry and physics are not a study of the world around us, but a study of how we understand the world, which is why we’ve created so many models for the atom, only for a new one to prove it wrong and replace it. STEM, then, is not a field of cold, hard numbers, that many people in and outside of STEM see it, rather it is a humanity, just like English or history, that provides insight into the human state of mind, disguised in a veil of numbers and datasets, complete with a matching dress of postulates and theories.
this was the longest post i have ever written on this blog. if you are still reading, i would love if you reached out to offer your thoughts or feedback. i think i’ll pictures at some point.