Yup. When I was an undergraduate, the art professors were tearing down about $9000 a year -- big bux back then, or so it looked to someone "tearing down" $1.65 an hour standing behind a letterpress while smoking in my old man's print shop. I inquired about graduate school over at the University of South Florida in Tampa, which at the time was pretty much the premier art university in Florida. Had a meeting with my department chair at UCF, who advised me to stay in school as long as I could, but confided that he considered himself lucky to be making a living at art. Well, between that and a hankerin' to get married, I got married. Could've waited, gotten hitched, and still gone to graduate school, but passed. Always wondered if I'd made a mistake, but for the life of me, I can't complain. Got into graphic design, worked at a couple of ad agencies, worked freelance, then got a hankerin' for the older, hands-on "mechanical" allure of something like screenprinting. So much for the big bucks. But content, and that's priceless. As my Dad said, "you can't drag it into the hole behind you."
