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College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

americandreaming.substack.com

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Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#181

Post by saalweachter »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #73
brk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dropped out of college in the early 90s when many of the CS programs were teaching dated material. It was the best decision of my life, no way I'd be where I am if I had waited to graduate before getting started into a career. IMO, college is one of many possible options to success. They all have trade offs, and there is no universal answer that fits all of the addressable market. If you do not go to college, you h…

Alas, the modern CS curriculum is still pretty dated. It's not that the courses are bad, they're just not that helpful. For instance, I like understanding how compilers work, but I'm never going to be on a compiler-building team. Nor will many of us because everyone just uses LLVM. But it's a big part of the curriculum. And the theory stuff is intriguing, but the modern machine doesn't behave like a Turing Machine an…

The value of compilers/OS classes to a generic software developer isn't because you're going to spend a lot of time writing compilers or operating systems, it's because they help you understand what actually happens when your program executes.

Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#182

Post by michaelt »

platz wrote: post #169
michaelt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some creative fields you can just jump straight into doing it. For example, if your creative aspirations lie in youtube, or twitch, or instagram, or tiktok - mostly they just start doing it, self-educating about things like lighting and lenses.

I think people going to college for filmmaking is different from being a streamer.

Ah, but you didn't say film makers - you said "people attempting to make a go of it at creative arts" which includes a great many streamers, youtubers and suchlike.

Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#183

Post by ncmncm »

coldpie wrote: post #25
ncmncm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn O(f(n)) notation and caches, and you're good to go. Judging by interviews, they don't teach the caches part in CS.

Turns out DFAs and Turing machines don't have caches. Wow, what incredibly useful models to spend several semesters examining /s

Computer Science has "science" right there in the name: it isn't meant to be useful. But caches are DFAs. So, sometimes it is, by accident.

Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#184

Post by AnimalMuppet »

qiskit wrote: post #119
RappingBoomer wrote: post #5

if you read around on the internet, in various and sundry forums, there is a rising acknowledgement among people that maybe their friends who accidentally got their girlfriend pregnant in high school and then got married and started working right away were the lucky ones... at the time it seemed as if those friends had messed up royally, but in hindsight, looking back over time and it seems as if the ones who got a g…

That would be true if they got married, got a job, stayed married and stayed employed. But isn't that more of a fairy tale than the norm. It takes immense amount of maturity, courage, discipline, etc. Things that are not taught or encouraged anymore in this country. I'm guessing the norm is a dead-beat dad/single-mom situation, welfare, section 8 housing, poverty, etc.

I think you're a bit too pessimistic. I think it's about a wash currently - half the people get married and stay married, and half either don't get married or marry and then divorce.

I don't have statistics handy, so that's just my feel...

Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#185

Post by gruez »

coldpie wrote: post #91
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nuke student loan debt Do people who paid theirs off, get their money back?

So did I. No, we don't, but it will still benefit you. When your peers are less beholden to their jobs because of their debt shackles, they can ask more of their employers, which will also raise your working conditions. Sometimes life isn't 100% fair, and that sucks and I'm sorry. But looking at it objectively, it's still an improvement for you. (And, "I suffered, so others must suffer, too" isn't a great way to set…

So you'd agree with the federal government bailing out every mortgage holder out there, from people who own a shoebox apartment to someone in a 10 bd mansion? After all,

>it will still benefit you. When your peers are less beholden to their jobs because of their debt shackles, they can ask more of their employers, which will also raise your working conditions. Sometimes life isn't 100% fair, and that sucks and I'm sorry. But looking at it objectively, it's still an improvement for you. (And, "I suffered, so others must suffer, too" isn't a great way to set policy regardless.)

Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#186

Post by HKH2 »

omarhaneef wrote: post #9

One point of view arguing for a non-stem degree is that it teaches you to read, write and think. And there is some logic to that thought. Even if you spend 4 years just learning about, say, Sociology, you have to read up on a debate, summarize the background, have an opinion, be challenged and so forth. And you are on your way to 10k hours. Now film school might have a component of that, or maybe it is teaching you h…

From my experience, the best way to get good marks in a non-STEM degree is to repeat back to your professors/tutors what they say. Trying to expound your own ideas is often a fool's errand.

Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#187

Post by cosmotic »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #16

I'll offer one anecdote of counter-college hate. I went to a local state school, graduated in three years with winter and summer classes, commuted for the second and third, worked the whole time, and came out with a very small amount of debt (maybe 5-10k, been a while now and I don't remember). I made friends in college, I was able to get into a great job via an internship that I got from the school job fair, and got…

I think the argument is less that the experience was of no value and more that the opportunity cost is high.

Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#188

Post by coldpie »

gruez wrote: post #185
coldpie wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So did I. No, we don't, but it will still benefit you. When your peers are less beholden to their jobs because of their debt shackles, they can ask more of their employers, which will also raise your working conditions. Sometimes life isn't 100% fair, and that sucks and I'm sorry. But looking at it objectively, it's still an improvement for you. (And, "I suffered, so others must suffer, too" isn't a great way to set…

So you'd agree with the federal government bailing out every mortgage holder out there, from people who own a shoebox apartment to someone in a 10 bd mansion? After all, >it will still benefit you. When your peers are less beholden to their jobs because of their debt shackles, they can ask more of their employers, which will also raise your working conditions. Sometimes life isn't 100% fair, and that sucks and I'm so…

I'd want to see the specific proposal, but yeah, I'm definitely open to some idea like that.

Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#189

Post by whywhywhywhy »

coldpie wrote: post #91
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nuke student loan debt Do people who paid theirs off, get their money back?

So did I. No, we don't, but it will still benefit you. When your peers are less beholden to their jobs because of their debt shackles, they can ask more of their employers, which will also raise your working conditions. Sometimes life isn't 100% fair, and that sucks and I'm sorry. But looking at it objectively, it's still an improvement for you. (And, "I suffered, so others must suffer, too" isn't a great way to set…

Seems extremely selfish that the functional members of society should be the ones to pick up the burden of your poor decisions and I don't really see a benefit of society if we did, I mean you don't have the skill or talent to pay it off now, are we really going to see your full potential when we bail you out of the only responsibility you actually do have?

Re: College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life

#190

Post by whywhywhywhy »

SantalBlush wrote: post #78
beej71 wrote: post #8

I went to college in the early 90s when it was 5x cheaper, inflation -adjusted. It was the best decision of my life. No way I'd be where I am without it. But times and technology has changed. The antique system that is education needs to be completely upended. And, in the process, be made affordable again.

>education needs to be completely upended The idea that we should pay out of pocket for our own training before even knowing we'll break into a field is pretty absurd, if one takes a moment to think about it. Sure, that's the traditional approach for a few highly specialized fields, but by and large it's obviously going to cause a huge misallocation of resources, along with enormous debt.

Interns exist, it's just the middle class has become completely obsessed with the idea of college as a right of passage.
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