What’s the meaning behind my blog name, Philosophical Meanderings? I had big plans for this blog. That haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t materialized, and they are not going to materialize. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m okay with that.<\/p>\n
When I entered the Air Force, the only educational assistance program available when you left the Air Force was called VEAP (Veteran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Educational Assistance Program). It was truly awful, and I chose not to participate. Around 1983, the military did away with the program, but they offered everyone an opportunity to put in $25 to create an account, which they could contribute the maximum amount to later if they wanted their benefits. I contributed $25 just to keep my options open.<\/p>\n
Around 1998, the New GI Bill program opened up to prior VEAP participants \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I think they wanted to cut the administrative overhead of maintaining two programs, and I was eligible to participate. I already had my masters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 degree by then, but I went ahead and contributed my $1200 (and got my $25 from VEAP back).<\/p>\n
When I retired, I applied for a PhD program at Texas A&M University. I applied twice to the philosophy department. The first year, I was wait-listed for their Master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s program but didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get picked up (I understood this \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never taken a philosophy class in my life; I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the top candidate from their perspective). The second year, the results of the bad economy hit, and applicants flooded the school. I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even close.<\/p>\n
I thought history might be a good way to go, but I needed undergraduate upper division history credits, which I could have gotten in one full-time semester. I applied as a non-degree-seeking undergraduate student to get the credits, and since I already had a degree, they turned me down.<\/p>\n
I got tired of spending money for nothing, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve abandoned PhD aspirations for now and have chosen to embark on self-study in history, leadership, and ethics.<\/p>\n
I intended to explore various philosophical subjects via this blog. I have done a little of that, but not too much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What’s the meaning behind my blog name, Philosophical Meanderings? I had big plans for this blog. That haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t materialized, and they are not going to materialize. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m okay with that. When I entered the Air Force, the only educational assistance program available when you left the Air Force was called …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-30-days-of-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}