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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

#51

Post by ImprovedSilence »

bane wrote: post #50

Go to school for your job, study what you love for a lifetime. Get that degree that will pay the bills, but then once you start work, make it your hobby to study music or 17th century French Lit or whatever. If you like the group study dynamic, join a book club or audit some classes at the local community college or state school. Most of the higher level lit classes have very few students anyways and they'll welcome…

I couldn't agree more. I studied engineering because I had no idea how you could make money unless you were making things... (I grew up kinda isolated from/ignorant of business degree types and the financial world..) But I still managed to study art and language (I even spent a semester in Italy), read up all the classics, made discussion with English majors to seek out books worth reading, get involved in philanthropic activities, and kept myself immersed in culture. All this on top of spending way to much time in the library studying 7 days a week.

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

#52

Post by angersock »

morgante wrote: post #33
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 encou…

"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."

There are millenia of materials and practice in the liberal arts available for consumption; there is only perhaps half a century of resources for CS. I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that self-schooling liberal arts is possible.

One does wonder why the teaching of liberal arts is dying out--there may well be some systemic issue that is causing worse teaching or relevance. The issue may well lie with the current practice of liberal arts.

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

#53

Post by kaidajekri »

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.

Many places will ask for a graduate with excellent communication skills. Some places won't take you if you don't have a degree, whatever subject it is in. They may not ask for the specific subject on the bit of paper, but the transferable skills gained whilst studying e.g.: Critical thinking, researching, communication skills, the ability to collate a lot of evidence in a more succinct manner.

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

#54

Post by AznHisoka »

nekgrim wrote: post #5

"I'm hoping that my daughter will embrace her inner geek and want to change the world." And what if she don't have an inner geek...? You didn't waste time. You lived. And now you are judging the younger yourself, and saying "I made mistakes", but you can't know what life would have been if you studied maths. Maybe this article would have the same title, and end with "Don't make mistakes like I do, follow your heart a…

Also, embracing your inner geek doesn't necessarily mean changing the world. A lot of very smart people are in the business of making people click on ads more, or buy virtual cow and candies.

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

#55

Post by izztmzzt »

Do what you love, not what you think is going to get you the big salary.

If you love languages or art, there are certainly ways to support yourself and do them.

I think it's pretty outrageous to say anyone not studying STEM is wasting their time.

Sure, STEM enables our modern infrastructure, but the arts provide the things that just make life better -- movies, stories, music, etc... World would be pretty boring without.

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

#56

Post by wads »

acdha wrote: post #38
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 encou…

I am not OP but since I agree with him 100% and your comment personally offends me:

"Your privilege is showing: if you are born male" - This pisses me beyond anything. What "privilege"? "Privilege" of having to admit my own mistakes and take personal responsibility for every step I take? So what if there are people "who encourage traditional gender roles"? (IMPLYING that gender roles are bad) Whose fault is it that you got "scammed" by these people and lost 4 years? Be happy that you figured out "scam" and take responsibility for falling for it.

What is more, this "privilege" offends me personally. I am male from poor country and poor family. I had "privilege" of getting education without any money (Did being man helped me to survive on 4sausages and 2 slices of bread a day? No.), I had "privilege" of going against peer pressure and choosing field everyone deemed 'uncool'(Yah, maybe "having balls" do help when it comes to surviving peer pressure). Hell I had "privilege" of getting lower grades in university because I wasn't woman... I just can't stand white handed feminists and white knights saying "check your privilege".

“I should have listened to my teachers rather than the people who convinced me science wasn't for women". No. It's not about that. Article is about "I should have listened to my teachers rather than the people who convinced me science wasn't for women. But I didn't, and I blame men instead of myself."

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

#57

Post by izztmzzt »

izztmzzt wrote: post #55

Do what you love, not what you think is going to get you the big salary. If you love languages or art, there are certainly ways to support yourself and do them. I think it's pretty outrageous to say anyone not studying STEM is wasting their time. Sure, STEM enables our modern infrastructure, but the arts provide the things that just make life better -- movies, stories, music, etc... World would be pretty boring witho…

I'm reminded of HN's own Paul Graham and his essay "How to do what you love"

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

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

#58

Post by bobbbinsIII »

izztmzzt wrote: post #55

Do what you love, not what you think is going to get you the big salary. If you love languages or art, there are certainly ways to support yourself and do them. I think it's pretty outrageous to say anyone not studying STEM is wasting their time. Sure, STEM enables our modern infrastructure, but the arts provide the things that just make life better -- movies, stories, music, etc... World would be pretty boring witho…

the vast majority of people studying humanities degrees do not LOVE the subject. they just choose a certain path after high school that seems interesting. the production of culture has very little to do with what people study at university...

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

#59

Post by bobbbinsIII »

timje1 wrote: post #36
bobbbinsIII wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it's much more likely that a technical student has developed good communication skills than the other way round. in the real world, people are not required to write in depth literary analysis: most people have all the core reading and written communications skills they need after high school.

it's also important to point out that your friend's example is a special case. when looking at the value of a particular degree, it's important to consider the full distribution of outcomes.

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

#60

Post by rsanders »

bane wrote: post #50

Go to school for your job, study what you love for a lifetime. Get that degree that will pay the bills, but then once you start work, make it your hobby to study music or 17th century French Lit or whatever. If you like the group study dynamic, join a book club or audit some classes at the local community college or state school. Most of the higher level lit classes have very few students anyways and they'll welcome…

That's great if you only want it to be a hobby. How many people here would think it a good idea to take a lucrative job in waste management or accounting and do a little hacking on the side?
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