Chad Aaron Hall

More than a decade later, Fash manages the department for which he was once an intern. Almost all the town’s departments, including Public Works, Community Development, Assessing, and Police and Fire, rely on the system to better serve residents.

The GIS database includes points and layers for all town infrastructure, tax maps for all properties,... See more

Part of the answer lies in expanding training schools, apprenticeships, and non-college pathways. A four-year degree is valuable in many fields, but it shouldn’t be a prerequisite for every form of success. Students should feel free to choose the path that brings them closer to their goals—without being saddled with crippling debt.

When you realize that you – the good, noble, well-meaning, even-tempered, fact-driven person that you are – have views of how the world works that are sure to be incomplete if not completely wrong, you should have empathy for others whose deluded beliefs are obvious to you.