I don’t understand this at all. Is an “Industrial Technology” major relatively new? I have never heard of this major. If you go into an engineering college you spend little time on humanities, certainly not 2 to 3 years. And the title certainly suggests engineering. I haven’t heard of “Industrial Technology” being a liberal arts major. Frankly it sounds like one of many cross-disciplinary majors (like Black Studies or Women’s Studies…) which usually isn’t very helpful in getting a job.
I learned many wonderful things in college, and I learned that the world will not always be our friend. I also learned to use adult vocabulary in my writing and save the cursing for when I stub my toe.
I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve learned that it’s best in life to pursue only what interests or benefits you, and shrug off the rest.
All commissioned officers are required to have at least a BA, yes. But commissioning as an officer is highly competitive in the army, and probably the other branches too. It’s not as easy as simply getting a Bachelors and walking in as an officer.
As for the “well-rounded” arguments… you were in school for 13 years (k-12) prior to being in college. Was that not enough time to become “well-rounded?”
It’s a lesson that many people do not learn, or do not learn until they’ve buried themselves in commitments and obligations and debts that aren’t reflections of what they want or care about.
I did it too. I wen’t to college with all the forethought that a seventh grader devotes to whether or not to go to eighth grade. It’s “what comes next”, duh. Blithely planted myself in a dorm room and woke up a couple months later going “WTF am I doing here?!??”
I haven’t always made the best decisions since then but they’ve mostly been my decisions and not autopilot defaults kicking in.
I dunno. I was in college for 13 years ( only 5 full-time though ) and, gut aside, I figure I could always do with some more rounding ;).
As others have noted to some extent college is what you make of it. I enjoyed it as more of a hobby than anything else, which I could afford to do because state schools were cheap back in my day and after year five I was also working full-time. When I retire I might just poke my head back in again and finish off a degree or two.
It’s unfortunate that as JcWoman noted that it has become more of a trade school experience than it used to be. But I understand the realties of today’s costs and it was probably an inevitable progression as a highly educated work force has became that much more necessary in a more technological society.
Anyway I get your frustration now, but it could well be that some day you’ll look back on those days with more balance. I doubt your experience did any damage that was irreparable at your age.
Having done a little googling, I’m still not sure what exactly it is. (The list of possible occupations looks to me almost random.)
No, actually, never has ever… the high school has very long been the basic education.
so it was a kind of technical, not the university
yes instead of adopting the technical schools in a more clear fashion, you seem to have a kind of confused mix.
Well, it depends. If you think you’d be fine with a tedious dead-end job where you’re just following a script or regimented work plan all day long, then you probably can get away with not being all that “well-rounded”.
But most people don’t go to college thinking a regimented work plan will be waiting for them post-graduation. They go to college so that they will have a variety of interesting career options. And this necessitates being exposed to multiple subject areas.
I’m wondering why you would study medieval Chinese poetry and marketing if they were so loathsome to you. Were they course requirements or did you voluntarily sign up for them? Either way, you weren’t obligated to take them. You could have chosen different electives or you could have found a school that offered a curriculum better suited to your interests. Tons of students transfer to another school after their first or second year when they realize they made a bad choice.
Told this before:
Why did you hire me?
You have a degree.
In anthropology, not engineering.
Showed you could stick to it and succeed.
I know you picked “medieval Chinese poetry” because it sounds ludicrously impractical, but the semester I spent studying the literature of the late T’ang dynasty – with an excellent professor and only four other kids who were interested in the subject – was one of the most pleasurable and rewarding classes I ever had. Sucks to be you, I guess.
Then you learned the wrong lesson, and Life will be nothing but pain, suffering and boredom for you. Sucks, but you did it to yourself.
You don’t need to go back in time. Do that right now, starting this very second.
I’m echoing Ukulele Ike’s comment. The most “useless” college class I took was fencing. And I took both levels. Utterly irrelevant to my chosen major and not at all required for my degree. But college afforded me that opportunity. I have never needed the skills I learned there but just the exposure to something so exotic (for me at the time) was what college was all about. College was also the best social experience of my life.
You went to college for all the wrong reasons and expected some miracle outcome.
this. Second semester, senior year, looked at buds intro to marketing and said, I wasted four years trying to learn something?
I use a great deal of that useless knowledge from liberal arts general requirements at my enjoyable job.
I agree wholeheartedly that
[ol]
[li]way too much emphasis is put on 4-year degrees[/li][li]our economy desperately needs educational systems with more technical training of 2 years or less[/li][li]there is indeed a conspiracy, of sorts–not to infantilize people–just to inflate the cost of 4 year degrees.[/li][/ol]
But that said, if you actually completed a 4-year degree, and you
[ul]
[li]“didn’t learn shit” during that all that time[/li][li]didn’t meet a single worthwhile person during all that time[/li][li]didn’t have a single worthwhile experience during all that time[/li][li]and, moreover, couldn’t figure out a way to market that degree into a job afterwards, [/li][/ul]then the problem probably is you yourself, (not college per se), and it doesn’t matter what you did during those fives years, the result would be the same. It sounds like you’ve always just wanted someone to tell you what to do (so it makes sense that you’re in the military now), and society hasn’t been infantilizing you–you have been infantilizing yourself.
Perhaps the problem was myself. I stayed in college long after I realized I was getting nothing out of it, expecting things would just kinda “work themselves out” in the end.
And I joined the military not because I need to be told what to do, but because it was the quickest route available to get out of my parents house and start making my own life.