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http://100rsns.blogspot.com/REASON 63: 63. Your friends pass you by. For graduate students, nothing drives home the fact that graduate school delays adulthood (see Reason 12) more clearly than observing friends who choose a different path. You may enter graduate school with the belief that an extra degree or two will give you an advantage in life, but while you are concentrating on gaining an advantage, your friends are concentrating on life. They may never turn into millionaires—though that is far more likely in the real world than in the academic one—but they probably will pass you by. While you sit in a cramped living space working on your dissertation year after year, your friends will be working hard, too, but they will be earning salaries. They will also be buying cars and houses, getting married, and having children (see Reason 15). They may even take an expensive vacation or two. It can be hard to relate to old friends who live in a world increasingly different from your own, and even harder to make new ones (see Reason 50). This is about more than keeping up with the Joneses—or counting on catching up with them after you finish your education. The lives of your friends are reminders of the true costs of graduate school, which can be much higher than you anticipate. More than a quarter of women in their early forties with graduate or professional degrees are childless. After years of graduate school, will what you have gained be worth what you have missed?
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 was apparently this nutcase with duct tape around his ankles and a tool box taped to his butt stepping out of the balloon and jumping from what technically is space. His name is Col. Joe Kittinger. When I reached 75,000 feet I was supposed to jump out, but I couldn’t stand up because this water bottle that had expanded and trapped me in the seat. I finally jerked myself out of the seat. When I did so I started a timer going that shouldn’t have been pulled until I jumped. When I jumped from the capsule, instead of falling for 17 seconds before the small drogue chute came out, I only fell two and a half seconds. The chute came out and wrapped around my neck. It was not deployed. I knew right away I was going to be free-falling the way the dummies had, with out any stabilization and I knew it was going to be a very exciting free fall because I was up there to demonstrate the way to properly do it, and the way to properly do it was with a drogue chute deployed.
I started free-falling and I did pretty good. I turned to look to the left and I stopped the rotation, and I turned to the right and I stopped the rotation. I was doing good, I was in a good body control. Then all of a sudden I had a violent spin to the right and I stopped that. Then I had a violent spin to the left and I couldn’t pull my arms in, the centripetal force was so great. I lost consciousness, and I came to with my emergency parachute open. I was relieved that I was still alive, but I was disappointed that we had a procedural problem getting out of the capsule and that it almost proved fatal to me. I wanted to go back and do it immediately, as soon as we found out what had caused the problem, because I wanted to demonstrate that we had a good system.
.....
Then after that came the 103,000 ft one.
Right. Now I always felt that if the pressure suit failed or the helmet failed on the first two jumps that I had a chance to live. But here I knew that if something failed on my pressure suit, or my regulators, that I was going to die very quickly. Psychologically there was a difference between the 75,000 foot jump and the 100,000 foot high jump, because of the added danger of the low pressure. But, everything went pretty much on schedule and when it came time to go I stood up, I looked out at the earth, 20 miles bellow me, and I could see for 450 miles. I had confidence in my team, my equipment, myself, and I was ready to go because I was heading back down into a friendly environment. So I said a silent prayer; I said “Lord, take care of me now.” Then I hit the camera button and jumped. That was the beginning of four and a half minutes of free fall. The more I fell the happier I was because I was getting back down to a friendly environment.
What was the feeling of that first step?
It was just a step. I was there to do exactly what I had done. As I said, I had worked a year and a half for that. It was the quickest way down.
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