That does sound aggravating. But that sounds like a possible outcome of a liberal arts education (and meeting the wrong people) and I’m not sure that’s the situation the OP finds herself in since we don’t know what degrees she has or what she was trying to do with them.
EDIT: I think I got the wrong gender for Diamonds02 (50/50 shot), and I found a post where she says she has a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in education.
Where’d you learn to read and write then? Or did you dictate that OP to your assistant?
I have a feeling the OP was referring to high school, to be honest.
Education for the sake of education is generally a waste. But aspects of education, as Dr. Drake points out, is important to personal and career goals.
I can relate to the OP. If I’m forced to study a subject I have no interest in, I don’t retain anything I learn about it. I retain a lasting irrational hostility towards knowing anything about that subject. I honestly suspect I was more intelligent before I went to university.
Very much this. Certainly I apply things I learned in college and graduate school regularly in my job since I studied Computer Science and I work as a programmer. But all that really taught me how to do was how to solve problems specifically related to what we were studying. I feel like the best things I learned were in drawing the connections between what I was learning and other aspects of life, learning how to learn and think. In fact, the class I would say I learned the most in was my design class where the professor took a holistic approach about communication, designing the problem, even designing how we design, and I apply those lessons pretty much every day, not just at work, but in my personal life with relationships, philosophies, all sorts of things.
Really, that’s why the old cliche that you only get out of your education what you put into it, as corny as it sounds, is actually completely true. If you only got an education to get the piece of paper and put it on your resume, even if you got really good grades, but you didn’t really try to pull as much out of the class and the experience as a whole as you could, I could very easily see that being disastrous. It’s not unlike how I constantly meet people with certifications in technology but they crammed or went to a bootcamp to get the certification and now they’re regarded as experts, but they end up constantly defering to people who may or may not have certifications but actually know the technology.
Either way, you sure as hell aren’t a victim because you and you alone have control over how much you did or didn’t get out of it. Short of a truly horrendous program completely lacking in competence and resources, you have no one to blame but yourself if the results aren’t there.
To be fair, I have a BA and an MA, and I can assure you that the MA, at least, is pretty fucking worthless. Then again, I knew that going into the program. (Long story.) That said, I don’t think the educational system as a whole is responsible for Diamond’s problems, at least based on posting history.
You do realize that there are liberal arts degrees that aren’t English Literature.
I kinda agree with the OP,
My degree is in engineering (chemical), so it’s not like all the chemistry and engineering stuff I learned was false and wrong. I still use it.
But the absolute most valuable thing I got from my education was an 8-month internship (Junior year) at a large manufacturing company. I was a fresh-faced n00b with no experience whatsoever in actual industry - even in my family, my dad is a white-collar CPA, so no exposure for me to manufacturing whatsoever.
I learned so much from this - how actual manufacturing sites work, interacting with a wide variety of people (from blue-collar entry level operators up to the COs), and most importantly, how to build networks in a company so you can get things done - technical, regulatory, management, manufacturing, sales. Get a friend (or better several friends) in each and you become 200% more productive and become invaluable to the company.
I was a dismal failure in my internship, but it was hard learning well worth it. When I got my first job, building those networks at my new company was something I worked hard at. And it has paid off.
I got a damned good education and I still feel kind of scammed by it. I think because I projected into it all of these things that really had to do with my own insecurities. Like I absolutely had to go to the best schools, and I had to be an excellent student, and looking back it seems kind of arbitrary. I’m also a gazillion dollars in debt, spent the first ten months post-graduation unemployed, and feel completely unfulfilled in my current job. Shit, I could have achieved that without graduate school.
On the other hand, I learned a lot of cool stuff, and I’m making more money than I ever have before.
And yes, a lot of it is elitist bullshit.
I went to some very prestigious schools but I ended up doing something unrelated that pays quite well and I am good at. I had full scholarships for all my education though. I don’t think it would have made sense economically for me to pay for them myself. The schools that I went to still help me get jobs in my career whenever I want and I am proud to have them on my resume even if it is only peripherally related.
I feel bad for the younger generation however, especially those in not so high paying fields. I have no idea how 20 somethings are expected to make it these days. I got in during the tech boom when jobs could be had just by answering any one of never-ending phone calls. I gave myself raises at every single jump. I surfed that wave longer than most after the pretenders got fired or dropped out. The tech industry is still hurting for qualified people and the pay can be really high but it takes hard skills and not just soft ones that take years to learn.
I encourage all younger people to go into something that you can tolerate but is not easily replaceable. ‘Do what you love and the money will follow’ is the dumbest piece of advise for the vast majority of people that exists. This isn’t the 60’s anymore.
For the love of god, if you are at the graduate level and you are not sure what you are getting out of education, you are doing it wrong. A graduate education is a tool- it’s often not much more than a means for getting you access to the many wonderful resources (databases, researchers, up and coming leaders, industry connections to internships and jobs, events) that universities have to offer. If all you do in grad school is show up to classes, yeah, you aren’t going to get much out of it. Nothing that comes easy is worth much. But if you have it in you to become a leader, graduate school can be a powerful tool in helping you get there.
I honestly do not recognize the mindset that graduate school is useless. Graduate school is a chance for someone to focus on the aspects of life/career/academia/a single job that really matter, that capture one’s interest, that spark passion and desire. If you’re in graduate school and you’re bored, DROP OUT. It’s the wrong place for you.
In terms of undergraduate - yea, I worked non-related jobs in the first several years after college. But that entire time, I had the desire, the drive, the spark, to find a job or career in at LEAST a related field. And when those jobs came along, at shit wages, I took them, because they were in the field, and that’s what I liked.
In my opinion, college isn’t supposed to be job training. You’re supposed to go to college not just to take courses in your “chosen” field - you’re supposed to explore a lot of different things, either by choice or by requirement, that will either create an interest in you for something you’ve never explored or that will guide you further into a field you already knew you loved. My chosen field, psychology? I never was interested. Until I reluctantly signed up for PSY 100 to fulfill a requirement, and fell in love with a field.
College isn’t supposed to be just career training. It’s supposed to be a broadening of perspectives and horizons, an introduction to possibilities, AS WELL AS starting people off on their future careers.
If you don’t enjoy learning for its own sake, you should never have gone to school beyond high school – or, I suppose, you should have gotten just a bachelor’s degree (or other post-secondary formal training)in whatever practical field you enjoy WORKING in, just long enough to get the certification to land a steady job in.
ETA: But I bet you DO enjoy learning for its own sake, so deep down you don’t really regret your college and (especially) grad school time, effort, and money spent. You’re just having a moment of doubt. Understandable, especially in today’s shaky economy, and moreso if you’ve recently committed to a new real-world responsibility, like a spouse or a child.
depends on the degree?
I know for the medical fields, it is a combo of education plus work experience.
I recall even the times the professors made me feel so bad for not knowing something, in the end, I can still recall the drug information because of the events that led up to it, being called out for not knowing it. It made it stand out!
Work experience: there were things that school really could not offer. My first job out of college, I was directed not to rely on the mouse when I did computer work as everything went faster on hot keys. I only lasted a few months there, but my next jobs, I was the fastest employee as I was now dominant using hot keys instead of the mouse.
OR, just applying real-life scenarios. There was no training on how to deal with patients who couldn’t afford medications, I had to learn on the job on how to negotiate/work with clients for the best solution. That was never taught in school.
Education don’t fix stupid.
That’s a wonderful idea, and I agree in the ideal world that’s what it should be about. But we don’t live in an ideal world. This hallowed notion is how you get unemployed kids with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. The idea of getting an education for its own sake is increasingly becoming the prerogative of the privileged. People of my generation were taught that when it comes to school, money is no object - student loan debt is ‘‘good’’ debt. As a result, we’re creating a class of disillusioned working professionals who are extremely limited financially. That extra income essentially means nothing if you’re shelling out a thousand dollars a month in student loans for the next twenty years.
Nothing does.
Degrees will open a lot of doors for you, this is true, but you still have to engage of some combination of being smart, working hard, having connections (school should take care of some of this for you) and kissing ass. For anyone curious about the OP’s ability to pull some or all of these off, please do yourself a favor and search all threads started by Diamonds02.
I’m not buying it.
An English degree + masters in education and you can’t even spell? Seriously?
Please, please, please tell us what school you went to. If only so we can avoid wasting our money on such an inadequate education.
You should go get a refund. Just show them your posts on this board, that ought to do it.
Based on the tone of your post I think your issues with success and happiness in life have relatively little to to with your education and far more to do with your personal attitudes.
Your post makes you sound like a whiny and entitled sad sack with relatively little common sense. Education is important, but in the real workaday world it is only a part (in many cases a relatively minor part) of what enables people to be successful and effective in their jobs and lives.
What exactly did you expect “education” to deliver to you?