" Other people's children went off to college, which for years Ronald had interpreted as a positive thing. Lately, though, he wasn't so sure. The children who went off to college hardly ever came back. It was as though the hard work of getting that college degree bent them out of shape, focused them too much on their own personal achievement. Once you got that degree, it was all about getting ahead in that monetized struggle, and they forgot the community that raised them. Ooh, live in the Lower Nine; not me. Ooh, do a day's work with your hands; I won't touch that. The neighborhood gained something when one of its children went off to become a doctor or an engineer, but it lost something, too. "

― Dan Baum , Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans