Not that this is a particularly insightful point, but I keep wondering, why does it never come up in these discussions that college is FUN? Regardless of its financial value or lack thereof, it really is an experience like no other.
College was my biggest mistake
71–80 of 192 posts
Re: College was my biggest mistake
#72Most articles and comments about higher education commit the gravest sin of thought: they assume what is right for one person (namely, the author) must be right for everyone. I'm enrolled in a public institution pursuing a double major, working two jobs because I'm also middle class. I have a good -- not great -- GPA, and I get to do amazing and interesting things every day; I got into programming after volunteering…
I'm glad this has been said -- this is very true. I have two comments: >> "College was my biggest mistake?" ...it sure as hell isn't mine. How do you know it's not yours? Or rather, how can you be so sure? Firstly, opportunity cost is an impossible thing to calculate with certainty, especially when dealing with something so incredibly costly both in terms of time and money. If you find yourself reasonably discerning,…
The job lead I got from my college advisor alone was worth the opportunity cost. And the humanities classes opened my mind up in ways wikipedia just can't dream of.
Re: College was my biggest mistake
#73"I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class."
This is either outright bullshit, or your college was complete crap. Most likely the former.
Don't do this. You think you're gaining respect or credibility, but in actuality you're losing it.
Re: College was my biggest mistake
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example, most people who didn't go to college can't write a blog post like yours. I'm fairly certain this has more to do with the average type of person that doesn't go to college rather than any causal link between Freshman Composition and good writing skills.
Do you really believe that a collegiate level composition class doesn't improve writing skills at least a little bit?
I dunno. I tested out of it based on what I learned in high school, so it seems likely it merely reinforced the same techniques.
Re: College was my biggest mistake
#75The real moral of the story: make most of the NOW.
You didn't do that in college, and failed.
You did that afterwards, and succeeded.
Re: College was my biggest mistake
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think even great programmers who get solid on-the-job training doing a startup job will have major gaps as they progress. There is something to be said for learning fundamentals.
Is there anything we can't learn from Internet? Give a kid access to computer and Internet, and he will find his way out. This was experimented with kids in Indian slums, who never went to school and can not even read/write. http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/thestory.htm...
Oh poppycock. This was Carnegie's line, only it was about libraries. Without the Internet, libraries were there for everyone to use. How are kids that can't read going ... Oh come on, can we stop with this "The Internet solves all of our education problems" nonsense?
I know it is, because this well educated populace doesn't exist and yet the Internet does.
I submit to you that there is very little you need to use the Internet to learn and I also submit that by your reasoning about how easy it is for people to learn then if if they were to purchase physical books, all they would need would be the "canon" of Penguin Press books. But yet people have never done this en masse or even in any significant other than ... wait for it .. outliers. :)
So, basically, the whole view is just one big unproven naked assertion.
Re: College was my biggest mistake
#77I feel like everything I read nowadays on this topic has had the tone of "don't go to college it's a waste of time" etc etc. While I agree it's definitely not for everybody, I don't agree with it being a waste of time or that nobody should go to school (even if you're not pursue a career a law/medicine/etc). I have self-taught myself everything I've learned in software engineering, beginning in middle school when I p…
I believe that going to college is worth it if you're being selectively taught by the top 1%. The rest of the 99%? Forget about it-- you can learn more with an internet connection.
I'm glad you are motivated enough to give yourself a complete college education with an internet connection, and smart enough to parse all that information in a vacuum without advisors/peers to help.
Not all of us are as fortunate as you are.
Re: College was my biggest mistake
#78Oh come on. I just feel like this is another in a series of "let's indict education" posts. I take issue with everything in here.
$44,000 a year for tuition, why? Why did you choose that school if you had no intention of studying? You can teach yourself more in an afternoon than in a 10-week class? Really, let's prove it. I want to see it.
You made basically all Fs but yet you can teach yourself more in an afternoon ... because you're better than others or something?
You happen to have chosen a field in which it is very easy to make a modest income, $60K, without actually having very much knowledge (not saying you didn't have x knowledge).
I mean, sure anyone that is not slobbering on themselves can probably follow a RoR YouTube and make a blog engine and then know enough to convince someone to pay them >$50K. I don't know how long this is going to last though. But this is not much a real recipe for success in my opinion.
The idea that everyone can just teach themselves everything and that no one is actually learning any content in college, at best they are just learning "life skills" is just completely ridiculous.
I don't know, not to make another anecdote and I don't have hard data, but I have probably "self-taught" a lot more subjects than most that claim actually have and I wouldn't say I didn't learn any content from CS in college, not even close. In fact, I don't know any PhDs that would say they didn't learn any content (not just this life skills stuff) in college; I think it is just a fanciful notion and probably makes people feel better about themselves: "I'm Srinivasa Ramanujan, I don't need college to teach me anything."
Re: College was my biggest mistake
#79"I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class." This is either outright bullshit, or your college was complete crap. Most likely the former. Don't do this. You think you're gaining respect or credibility, but in actuality you're losing it.
> This is either outright bullshit, or your college was complete crap. Most likely the former.
He says it was RIT or Rochester Institute of Technology. I went there (although it was a much better value for me, since I was in NTID, the deaf sub-college, so I basically got half off tuition); and now that I check, we actually overlapped.
It's a pretty good school for tech, but the quarter system is/was brutal for people who weren't very conscientious because you get very little chance for recovery once you screw up. The Rochester winter probably didn't help. Retention rates weren't too good, and people like him demonstrate why.
Re: College was my biggest mistake
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad this has been said -- this is very true. I have two comments: >> "College was my biggest mistake?" ...it sure as hell isn't mine. How do you know it's not yours? Or rather, how can you be so sure? Firstly, opportunity cost is an impossible thing to calculate with certainty, especially when dealing with something so incredibly costly both in terms of time and money. If you find yourself reasonably discerning,…
The job lead I got from my college advisor alone was worth the opportunity cost. And the humanities classes opened my mind up in ways wikipedia just can't dream of.
Yeah that's exactly the part that is so hard to quantify -- the liberal arts component. The purpose of all gen eds is basically to "open your mind", ie. to refine you as a human being. But what high school student goes to college for this purpose? Or a better question, what high school student truly knows that, or understands what that means? The only thing ever discussed seems to be how job-ready you are at graduation time.