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I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

theguardian.com

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Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#31

Post by codva »

As the parent of a sophomore history major, this is something that I think about a lot. However, my son has a deep, deep passion for history. Advising him to get a CS degree just for job purposes seemed stupid, and considering how much help he needed from his high school sister to get through his Python class last year.... Although I am happy that his liberal arts college requires everybody to take 2 CS classes, I am also mystified why non-CS majors take one python and one C++ class. Wouldn't continuing with Python make more sense?

However, if you are going to major in history, or English, or something like that you really do need to have a plan from freshman year about how you are going to turn it into a job when you graduate.

Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#32

Post by JonnieCache »

adekok wrote: post #27

FTA: > My teachers recommended that I study economics and statistics as my A-level subjects, but I had my mind set on a life fulfilled by the arts. And in the next paragraph: > Without realising it, I was a victim of a gender stereotype reinforced since birth, that men do science and maths and women do arts or languages. Society was encouraging her to go into the sciences. Or was it that she was trapped by a "gender…

A 5 minute interview with the careers advisor is definitely not where society's gender stereotypes stem from or play themselves out, especially at 16. Part of their role, at least now, is actually to offset preconceptions.

>"I just had a romantic notion"

This is just where the socialisation manifests itself. Social conditioning is just that, undetectable (by definition) changes in your own perceptions, rather than coercion from authority.

Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#33

Post by morgante »

angersock wrote: post #14

The liberal arts are invaluable as a means of cultivating the potential within oneself. That said, you need food to feed a garden while it is being cultivated, and nothing puts bread on the table quite as robustly as engineering degrees.

This author completely misses the value in the liberal arts, which I'm saying as a computer science major. Definitely my best decision was to study CS as part of a liberal arts curriculum (where 1/2 of my courses have nothing to do with CS). This is really how it should be done.

Sadly, the liberal arts are dying out (or, in the case of the UK, don't exist at the university level). In such a system, I'd actually encourage people to study the arts, not engineering. It's easy enough to simultaneously learn to code and put bread on the table from that. (Most useful technical skills are learned outside the classroom.)

Until the non-classroom resources for learning the liberal arts rival those for learning CS, in an either-or situation (like the author's) one should definitely study the arts.

Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#34

Post by sampo »

adekok wrote: post #27

FTA: > My teachers recommended that I study economics and statistics as my A-level subjects, but I had my mind set on a life fulfilled by the arts. And in the next paragraph: > Without realising it, I was a victim of a gender stereotype reinforced since birth, that men do science and maths and women do arts or languages. Society was encouraging her to go into the sciences. Or was it that she was trapped by a "gender…

She also wrote:

"Computer science, technology and physics just did not figure in my teenage world view. Nobody popular in my school chose to study those subjects."

She gave more weight to the peer pressure from other teenage girls, especially from the popular girls, than she gave to the word of her teacher. Not very uncommon.

Peer pressure on what is considered "cool" vs. "lame" is a strong force in teenagers. I don't know if it's fair to say that every teenager who is not immune to that is not accepting personal responsibility.

Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#35

Post by marknutter »

jpswade wrote: post #11

In his 2005 Stanford commencement lecture, Apple Computer founder and college dropout Steve Jobs credited a Reed College calligraphy class for his focus on choosing quality typefaces for the Macintosh. He seems to do alright.

I believe Jobs didn't actually take the course but just showed up without being an enrolled student. This is an important point because he got his "liberal arts" fix without the high price tag.

Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#36

Post by timje1 »

bobbbinsIII wrote: post #20
timje1 wrote: post #6

My friend has this exact same degree (spanish and french), she wandered off to get a masters in International Development and then went on to create various programs around north-east Africa and Central America. Who says it's a worthless degree? It just sounds like this author didn't manage to do anything with it. Also good writing (taught by these 'useless' BA degrees) is a damned handy thing to have. I know people…

Your friend's career path is not that usual. in practice, most people with this sort of degree will not get the opportunity to make much use of it in the future. None of your listed jobs specifically require a humanities degree, nor is it true that you need to study such a degree to develop good writing skills.

You don't need to study CS to get good technical skills either. I didn't say a humanities degree is the only way to get good writing skills, only that a humanities degree develops your writing skills. I propose that gaining good reading, comprehension and written communication skills would come in handy in a wide variety of careers, including software development.

Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#37

Post by mathattack »

There's a gender bias question here, and a value of language learning question.

My take on the languages side - they are enormously valuable if you bring something else to the table. If all you can do is speak 4 languages, it's novel but doesn't open doors. If you can program Python, price a derivative, or design a bridge - then the language becomes invaluable. Who should we send to talk to the client in Spain? Jane speaks Spanish. Who should set up the support team in Prague? Bill is good with that language and culture stuff.

As for the gender issue, it's much tougher. It's easy to say, "Let's encourage our kids" and a lot starts there. It's hard to change society, but you can always start with the local schools.

Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#38

Post by acdha »

adekok wrote: post #27

FTA: > My teachers recommended that I study economics and statistics as my A-level subjects, but I had my mind set on a life fulfilled by the arts. And in the next paragraph: > Without realising it, I was a victim of a gender stereotype reinforced since birth, that men do science and maths and women do arts or languages. Society was encouraging her to go into the sciences. Or was it that she was trapped by a "gender…

> Society was encouraging her to go into the sciences. Or was it that she was trapped by a "gender stereotype"? … > But for it's shameless bigotry, and total denial of personal responsibility.

Your privilege is showing: if you are born male, it's easy to forget that for every teacher pushing a STEM career there are many more people – often close relatives, family friends, respected community members, etc. – who encourage traditional gender roles in their choice of toys, activities, and interaction with adults. This isn't usually an overt process but it's a constant background tide: if you have a young female relative, watch how many times toys are oriented towards looking good vs. doing anything constructive or what happens if she asks too many questions. It's quite disturbing once you're actually paying attention.

You can blame every individual for not recognizing this and correcting it early but the only denial I see is yours. It's particularly galling to see your repeated whine about admitting mistakes when someone reading for comprehension would have realized that the entire article was an extended version of “I should have listened to my teachers rather than the people who convinced me science wasn't for women”.

Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#39

Post by JonnieCache »

codva wrote: post #31

As the parent of a sophomore history major, this is something that I think about a lot. However, my son has a deep, deep passion for history. Advising him to get a CS degree just for job purposes seemed stupid, and considering how much help he needed from his high school sister to get through his Python class last year.... Although I am happy that his liberal arts college requires everybody to take 2 CS classes, I am…

Maybe watch this with him, it's George Dyson (Freeman's son) recounting the story of the development of the computer at the IAS. It links CS to that fulcrum of the 20th century, the invention of the nuclear bomb. It's also highly entertaining, a very story told through coffee and ink stained punch cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg5gJxXBh8s

Thinking about it perhaps your son is more into knights, emperors and prophecies than cold war paranoia. It's a great video anyway.

Re: I wasted four years of my life – don't make the same mistake

#40

Post by kaidajekri »

Being able to communicate information is often as important as knowing the information in the first place. Otherwise the knowledge would die out with the person who discovered it.

A civilisation dies if it has no culture, nothing is created. We'd become Borg-esque.

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