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Letters: Student Loan Debt And Stay-At-Home Dads

NEAL CONAN, host: It's Tuesday and time to read from your comments. When we talked about decisions affected by student loan debt, many of you shared your thoughts on how to get out from under. Savanna McCauley(ph) in Jacksonville told us she owe just $2,000 when she got her English degree because she attended a public university and worked 35 hours a week. I was able to obtain a wonderful job, she wrote, which I love, but is certainly not in my field of study, before I even graduated school. I think you can go to a university, major in liberal arts and graduate with little debt so long as you give up your ideas of going to Ivy League or private schools and realize you may need to take a job in a field different than what you imagine.

And Michael Hamanan(ph) emailed: When I was an undergrad, almost every institution mentioned most people will spend more than the usual four years in school. Graduating people in four years or less seems like a great way to save money and alleviate debt.

Wendy Brown(ph) heard our conversation with New Yorker cartoonist and stay-at-home dad, Pat Byrnes, and wrote: I can sympathize with your dilemma of helping your daughters through their periods. I'm a single mom with a son, so it fell on my shoulders to teach my son how to shave and how to pee standing up. By the way, he's only left the toilet seat up once in his life. Finally, a clarification from our conversation on how schools teach sex ed, Nora Gelperin, one of our guests, complained that some programs perpetuate misinformation that gay or bisexual people have higher rates of HIV.

After that show, our other guest, Dr. Diane Foley, challenged that assertion. Nora Gelperin told us that she had tried to draw a distinction between sexual behavior. CDC data tell us that men who have sex with men are, in fact, more likely to contract HIV and sexual orientation which does not necessarily equate with riskier sexual behavior.

If you have a correction, comment or questions for us, the best way to reach us is by email. The address is talk@npr.org. Please let us know where you're writing from and give us some help on how to pronounce your name. If you're on Twitter, you can follow us there, @totn, or follow me @nealconan, all one word. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.