American property law question. If someone leaves a ball on my property, does this ball belong to me?

Even though I'm British, i'm confident that the answer to your question is still no. The best analogy I can give is imagine if your dog wandered onto someones property, would you expect them to own that? Property is a right that is transferred through willing exchange, not through location of said property.

Possession is a big part of ownership

Although the expression goes "Possession is nine tenths of the law" that really is talking about the enforcing of property for which you have very little proof that you are the legal owner of the it. Therefore, it is right to say that the ball is presumed to be yours, if it is on the property which you own, unless it can be proven to belong to someone else. However, his question was one of legal ownership, not legal loopholes.

The ball doesn't belong to you, but if you want to be a dick and believe that the others cannot prove it doesn't, you can by all means try to keep it.

That sounds awful. I can't wait for school to be over.

a 30 year old freshman in a regular undergrad program seems very weird

there was a guy who was 26 in my fraternity pledge class, but he gets a pass because he spent a few years "studying abroad" merking terrorists in afghanistan

Yeah same, counting down the days.

the real world of working is about 10x as hard as uni and way way less fun. Enjoy university while you can seriously.

Having to get a real job in 4 years or so scares me.

Does GPA at community college mean anything?

well if you have one it means you went to a community college

This. School is easy and most people are poor so it is no big deal if you are as well. After graduation you lose so much of your time to work that unless you make good money your quality of life is going to go down dramatically. Further, the bar is set higher so even if you stay the same relative to social expectations you'll be going backwards.

If you plan on transferring to a 4 year university, it will at least matter. The standards might not be super high but if you have a 2.0 you're pretty much f*****

I was able to get an internship at an awesome sports magazine and I got it soley based on the reference of a relative peer ( editor at school paper). She gave me the contact info and put in a good word, all I had to do was show up and I got it. The internship is unpaid.

I want to buy this girl something nice to pay her back. I have a GF and she has a BF so nothing romantic or even close. She likes sports, specifically hockey. I don't really know anything else about her.

What would be something good to get her?

For guys it is easy -- a bottle of some kind of top shelf alcohol. For a girl much harder -- hockey tickets seem like a possible option although they would need to be good tickets so might be more than you are looking to spend.

Yeah +1 to hockey tickets. If you can swing a box or glass seats you're golden

The thing is she is interning there now and she gets to sit in the press box and watch hockey games fairly frequently.

If she has that kind of access than tickets are out.

My old standard gift when I don't want to think about it has traditionally been a GC for a day at the spa but that might be too personal.

GC to a nice restaurant for her and BF
Nice bottle of wine
We Vibe III

you're pretty sly you know that.

Ya I think GC at nice restaurant might work out nicely. Bottle of win is good too. Thanks.

Probably career field dependent. I was a poor engineering student and worked under a lot of pressure in school. Now I still do basically the same interesting work, but deadlines are not nearly as urgent, I drive nice cars,and I get paid to go to nice places and take vacations.

If you dont me asking, what discipline of engineering did you study and what field do you work in now?

Yeah thats the thing, being relatively poor sucks. I don't have a super hard major nor do I plan to but having to work a s***** retail job while going to school isn't that fun.

Working 40ish hours a week and maybe having weekends off just makes life a bit easier imo

Obviously if you're baller or your parents pay for everything while in school, school is the easy choice.

Obviously it depends on what you want but I don't really know anyone that works a 40 hour week and makes even close enough to afford a non-boring life. Obviously there is some variance and your interests as well as the cost of living as a ratio of average income for an area will play a big factor but outside of a few professions the only people I know who have a shot at making decent money are entrepreneurs who while they do have a lot of flexibility in when they work nevertheless average way more than 60 hours a week -- at least for a few years and usually longer.

I can't speak for finance because being in finance in Canada compare to the US is lol in all respects but with law everyone I know who went into big law was working 70+ hours. In tech there was a huge variance but the people who have made it and now make good money all put in 50-60+ hours. I know nothing about doctors. Business owners it depends on the business but again typically 60-80+ a week.

While I agree that being poor sucks it is less bad being poor as a student than being poor as a young employed person since the expectations go up faster than your income and while in school 70-95% of the population was in the same boat in the real world you start to segment more with some people making it and others not and you are pretty much limited to socializing with your own kind.

I have a master's in industrial engineering/operations research and I basically work in a IE/OR department for a large company. Optimization, simulation, statistics and now data mining applies to basically any industry and I pretty much look forward to go to work every day.