Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (1988-1997). Yeah, took 9 years to graduate from Cal Poly, but I also spent 4 years at a Community College beforehand. Putting yourself through school by working full time two quarters out of three will do that to ya.
Not yet, but I’ve been playing with the idea of getting teaching credentials. Not that I’d be allowed to teach young’n.
Very much so. The school I went to encouraged hands-on experimentation, and the group of people I hung out with were extremly bright, social, and curious. That combination made my years at Cal Poly some of the best of my life, and could have contributed to my being there so long.
BA, Linfield College in Oregon. Go Wildcats. Yay.
MA Indiana @ Bloomington. Go. . um. . Hoosiers?
Still working on PhD at UCSB (Yay… Gauchos?! Go ultimate frisbee Gauchos, go!(?)) after a stint at U of Oregon (woo-hoo, Ducks.), which was a bit of a fluke.
Art History. Northern Renaissance/ Early Modern painting, prints.
School feels less and less like school as it progresses. Undergrad school was swell-- lots of liquor and study abroad. I like grad school very much-- I’m one of THOSE kind. Glad I chose UCSB instead of another more prestigious option I had-- I am pretty compatible with this place and it’s been a good lifestyle choice.
What’s the highest level of education you’ve completed?
M.A., English (Writing)
If you went to college, where did you go/where do you want to go for undergrad?
Union College, Schenectady, NY
If you went to grad school, where did you go/where do you want to go?
State University of New York at Albany.
Did you enjoy your experience there? Why/why not?
Union – very much.
SUNY – the teachers were great, but the staff was a bunch of morons. They’d tell you one thing one day, and something else the next. They were horribly uninformed (I once had to ask them which month their summer session began and their registrar’s office couldn’t tell me), and positively arrogant in their ignorance. Some examples:
I once spent days trying to nail down the requirements for my degree. The departmental secretary kept saying one thing (even telling the professor), and I kept telling her she was wrong. I demanded to talk to the Deparment Head who, after I left several messages, proceeded to tell me that the requirements were exactly what I’d been telling the secretary for days. It did lead to the wonderful exchange – on my fifth call of the day I asked if she was giving the message. She said, sarcastically, “No, I’m throwing it out the window.” And, without a pause, I replied, “I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Finally, I got my degree. No diploma. I wait about a month and call the college. “Oh,” they say, “it’s right here. Do you want us to mail it to you?” So they wouldn’t have mailed it if I hadn’t asked.
The Dickinson School is (was) the oldest independent law school in the United States. Founded in 1834 by Hon. John Reed, author of the Pennsylvania Blackstone, it took its name from John Dickinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who hailed from Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Although the school shares its name with Dickinson College and first met in leased space in some of its buildings, the
Dickinson School of Law does not and has not ever had a connection with the kiddie college across the street.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do about grad school. I was all set to apply to UNH’s masters in education program when it occured to me…I don’t know what level I want to teach. Two years later I still don’t have an answer. I’ve enjoyed working with 3-6 year olds over the past two years, but I might still want to teach English someday; just not soon. When I get my mind made up (if ever) I’ll probably go to UNH again.
We have a dog that went to Bradford…he didn’t take a degree, though. We got him from the shelter after the college kids he lived with moved on without him.
What’s the highest level of education you’ve completed?
Bachelor’s Degree - Computer Science and Engineering - 1987
If you went to college, where did you go/where do you want to go for undergrad?
University of Illinois at Chicago
If you went to grad school, where did you go/where do you want to go?
I started grad school at same right after I got my Bachelor’s, but decided I had been going to school for too many years and quit.
Did you enjoy your experience there? Why/why not?
For the most part, yes. It was an odd place in that it is in the city and I was commuting (as were most people), so the social life was not what it would have been had I gone away. But it has a good engineering college, and it was affordable. I learned a lot, and I met my two oldest friends there, so from a social aspect it was worth going just for that.
Jeez-- make me feel old. My 25th reunion is coming this summer. (25TH! Quarter of Century! Doesn’t feel anywhere NEAR that long ago!)
I liked MIT at the time, too, not just in retrospect. I don’t know what caused the differene – time or circumstances or course or whatever. Certainly a lot of people complain about MIT. (IHTFP, indeed!), but I always thought most of 'em were joking about it.
My HS advisor said Actuarial Science (points if you can identify this) would be a good place for me. Only about a half-dozen schools offer it, so I went to the closest - Georgia State University in Atlanta. A commuter school just a couple blocks from 5 Points (the center of the universe). Since it had no dorms of its own, I lived in a privately run dorm just off the Ga. Tech campus. Roomed with Techies. Fortunately, my home state (Fla) and Ga. had a deal where if one offered a major the other didn’t, the home state would pay the out-of-state fees. Yea. Unfortunately, Actuarial Science and I didn’t get along. So, in my junior year, I transferred to a brand new upper division (junior and senior years only) school in my home town - University of North Florida in Jacksonville. Cool academic advisor, he counted my APL course (extra points if you know what that is) as a “foreign language.” Another commuter school, but I could live at home. Got my degree as listed above. UNF how has dorms, all 4 undergrad years, and several grad schools.
Started grad school in Master of Public Adminstration, but quit after a year - married life, building a house, and all that.
GSU and Atlanta were fun (too much?). One fond memory (besides the Varsity, which was 2 blocks from the dorm) was Grafitti 101 - a pedestrian tunnel beneath I-75/85 that we would cover with intellectually stimulating grafitti - kinda like a pre-internet SDMB.
I now have a daughter in her freshman year at Jacksonville University, on an almost full academic scholarship.
same … but moved across country before I finished / Perhaps GA Tech next.
ENJOY?? That’s an understatement! It was absolutely the best time ever … though I fear I spent more time in the beer bar than the library… is that a bad thing???
**What’s the highest level of education you’ve completed? **
BSEE.
**If you went to college, where did you go/where do you want to go for undergrad? **
University of Cincinnati, School of Engineering.
**If you went to grad school, where did you go/where do you want to go? **
I’m currently getting my MSEE at the University of Dayton, taking one class at a time. At the rate I’m going, I’ll graduate in 2040.
**Did you enjoy your experience there? Why/why not? **
I was supposed to enjoy it?
I went to MIT also, undergraduate in chemistry. Ph.D. in chemistry as well, from Berkeley.
When I was at the Institute, I bitched about it as much as anyone else, it was just the cool thing to do, but I guess I always felt pretty gratified to be there as well. Those were some awfully damn smart people, it was an honor to be chosen. I had the misfortune to be there in the early 80s, during its most spectactular rise in tuition ever – a 50% rise in 4 years, ouch. I had real difficulties paying for school, and there was some doubt there would be enough in the end, so perhaps I felt more grateful than others that I got a chance to go.
One thing that impressed me about grad school was how much ahead of the game my MIT education put me, though. Stuff other people strangled on in the first few years was easy for me because I’d strangled on it already in 10-250 and 26-100.
Berkeley was all right, but I think as a graduate student you really identify with your department, not the school as a whole, so it’s hard to say more. Like the other poster, I loved the Bay Area.
I read the other day that the average salary of MIT graduates is approximately 85% of my salary now, 16 years post graduation. Damn. Must have made a wrong turn somewhere.
I loved it. I made a lot of friends who are still friends 15 years later. But, as Rasa said, if I could do it again I’d work harder and play harder than I did.
University of Arizona, Tucson. No, it’s not ASU. ASU got its start as “University of Arizona at Tempe.” It galls them no end, but it’s true!
BS Pharmacy, 1985. A very appropriately named degree, since everybody now has the six-year Pharm.D. (“doctor of pharmacy,” not to be confused with a PhD in Pharmacy which is totally different)
I could theoretically go back for an add-on Pharm.D., which, along with the huge pay raise I would get, and an additional 75 cents, would buy me a cup of coffee. So, no.
Yeah, I had a GREAT time! Made lots of friends, hung out as a resident goddess of the Science Fiction club with about 2 other chicks and 50 guys, and got to know the whole physics department. Unfortunately, the pharmacy folks were kinda boring…
Either way, I definitely recommend U of A, especially in the sciences. And no trudging to class through snow, as an added bonus!
By the way, Crafter_Man, my husband got his engineering degree from UD in 1986. Go…ummm…you guys have a team?
Just finished my fourth year of a combined Bachelor of Laws/Bachelor of Commerce degree. Commerce degree (double major in Accounting and Finance) completed this time last year. Leaving just one more year of Law School…
Ye olde University of Western Australia. Bet you’ve never heard of it, but it’s world-renowned… in my little city that is
Hmmm… things are a little different here. Law can be studied (but only as part of a combined degree) straight out of high school (I was 17 when I began at UWA). However, it’s quite hard to get in this way; more than half of the students at my School have completed a degree in another field and are now studying law post-graduate. More complicated is that I can do Honours in Law concurrently with my final year of my Bachelor of Laws. I rather doubt that I will be doing a Masters any time soon.
I love it. Used to hate uni a couple of year ago, but now I’m thrilled to be here - probably because of the social side of being a student. Of course the whole student poverty thing is becoming a drag after four years, but hey, it beats working for a living ;). A little hijack: I noticed another poster said they couldn’t afford to go to college. How common is this in the US? Do people not go on to tertiary education because of the cost of tuition? Or is it the fact that as in Australia, students find it difficult to earn enough to live and/or while studying full-time?
Bit o’ background: we have what’s called the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). Essentially, the cost of my university education is treated as an interest-free (although indexed to inflation) loan. When (if) I begin to earn income over a certain level (ie, after graduation), a percentage of this income is deducted to pay off my HECS debt, similar to income tax is. In my case, this debt will be something like $A30,000 after five years of studying.
So essentially, the main monetary struggle for Australian university students is to support themselves while they are studying. The actual cost of tuition is a minor factor when deciding whether to go on to university or not. However, I have the impression that overseas the situation is somewhat different.
What’s the highest level of education you’ve completed?
“ABD”–it actually gets “recognized” in the state I am currently living in.
If you went to college, where did you go/where do you want to go for undergrad?
George Washington Univ., Univ of Maine-Orono, BA
If you went to grad school, where did you go/where do you want to go?
Columbia Univ, MA and (moving downwardly)-- U-W Madison, “ABD” ha!
Did you enjoy your experience there? Why/why not?
Very much so–15 years as a professional student was pretty good. Took classes, seminars, TA’d for the history big guns at Columbia and U-W Madison.
But it’s all over now, baby blue. And it hurts so much to actually have to get up and *go to work *.
