I have a degree in history, and I consider it one of the main focal mistakes of my life.

Yep, pragmatically a waste of ones time. Interesting though.

But then again, I don't have a history degree from Yale.

I'm a firm believer in utility. History is equally useless from X university as from Y. I can't use anything I've learned to actually DO anything. ...Except write and speak intelligently and read analytically. Which is all very well. But I'd sooner have the knowledge to CREATE a computer program or build a bridge than write a soon-to-be-worthless research paper.

If you're not planning on working anyway, it really doesn't matter what your professional training is, does it?

Too true, too true. My mother doesn't like the idea that I have succeeded in worming myself out of the grasp of the academic/working world. She sees it as a betrayal of the natural order or something. "You didn't have to go to yale to become a landlord," she says, or she'll bring up the cost as being ultimately futile.

To which, I reply that it took the relentless onslaught of yale intellectual barbarity to knock me on the ground, off of my horse. Now, I see that I can simply and quickly dig underneath the ivy wall to get to the other side, rather than spending the next 40+ years struggling to climb over it and never reaching the promised land.

Why did the chicken cross the road?