next »

[higherandhigher]

You can make anything a challenge if you want.
You can go beyond the course requirements.
Ask your professors for recommend additional readings. Go beyond the minimum required for papers. Stretch yourself. Believe me, professors will notice and appreciate a student who writes a term paper that goes beyond what is required for completion of the course.
You can also pick courses differently. Obviously, this depends on the school, but not all courses are created equal.
You can learn from your fellow students. You can learn from your professors. You can learn from yourself. But you need to be open to learning--and open to expand the horizon of what learning is.

[bcantaire]

I could try to get more involved with my campus. I haven't really ever had the "real" college experience, whatever that is. I probably would find some people who are interested in having intelligent conversations.
That part is true. Maybe I should have attended a big college right out of high school and gotten really involved. Perhaps it would have been better.

Graduate school does seem to be the place to have interesting discussions with your teachers. It is also the place where you teach yourself the most, work for peanuts and/or pay the school... only to, again, teach yourself.
I have tried to engage my professors in discussions during office hours. I have been successful on occasion, but as I have already stated, my teachers don't seem to have a lot of spare time. None of you addressed that issue. In reading these boards, I never got the impression that many of you had much extra time, either.

It is also true that experiences are often what you make of them. It is just that after 16 years of being in this system, I am starting to feel a bit jaded. I do agree that I am being a bit harsh on the system, but I guess I am also not that surprised that everyone is so quick to defend it. After all, many of you have spent years and years in order to get a job in the system and to be a part of it. I think you have to believe in it or risk feeling like you wasted your time.

What is the purpose of higher education for all of you? What makes you really believe in it and support it, even as it is right now?
I think that is the real question. You want to defend it with all its flaws and tell me that I either need to spend more time in English class or just stay away from college altogether, but you haven't explained to me why formal education is actually worth supporting as it is now.  It is ridiculous to try and justify it all just because a teacher might be able to help me improve my grammar. As I have already said, a book could do that and I wouldn't have to pay anyone. (Ah, but who wrote that book? Probably a specialist with a college degree.)

I still think we need specialists, and I would never want a medical doctor who didn't have a degree, but I think formal education could do a much better (and more efficient) job of producing those specialists. Spending over 20 years in school to become a specialist is not what I would call efficient. In fact, you probably lose a lot of potential students in the process and society is not the better for it.

[kedves]

Do you usually find that when you begin by insulting someone (the thread title and original post), then show by the way you argue that your description of a situation is not as you think it is, that the person takes you seriously?  Do you create many mutually productive conversations that way?  Your not valuing the research databases you have access to now, and won't when you graduate, is only one example of the gap between what you know and what you think you know.

I think that college gives people an opportunity to have a better life--to live more comfortably, with a wider range of choices, and with a better understanding of the world and their place in it.  But that is not why I'm in the business.  I'm here because it is the only career I've tried that encourages me to be curious and creative, that allows me to play with ideas, that values the discovery and communication of knowledge, and that does so in a community of people interested, more or less, in the same things. 

It's a well that is there for you when you are thirsty, but if you aren't thirsty, there's no need to linger.  If you are sour on the whole enterprise, definitely don't consider graduate school.

[higherandhigher]

It is also true that experiences are often what you make of them. It is just that after 16 years of being in this system, I am starting to feel a bit jaded. I do agree that I am being a bit harsh on the system, but I guess I am also not that surprised that everyone is so quick to defend it.

Do you mean you've been pursuing undergraduate education (even off and on) for 16 years?

That would explain why you aren't getting much out of it.

[bcantaire]

Do you usually find that when you begin by insulting someone (the thread title and original post), then show by the way you argue that your description of a situation is not as you think it is, that the person takes you seriously?  Do you create many mutually productive conversations that way?  Your not valuing the research databases you have access to now, and won't when you graduate, is only one example of the gap between what you know and what you think you know.

I think that college gives people an opportunity to have a better life--to live more comfortably, with a wider range of choices, and with a better understanding of the world and their place in it.  But that is not why I'm in the business.  I'm here because it is the only career I've tried that encourages me to be curious and creative, that allows me to play with ideas, that values the discovery and communication of knowledge, and that does so in a community of people interested, more or less, in the same things. 

It's a well that is there for you when you are thirsty, but if you aren't thirsty, there's no need to linger.  If you are sour on the whole enterprise, definitely don't consider graduate school.

I don't know why you are saying I don't value the research databases I have access to. I use them regularly to investigate things I am interested in. Once I get out of college, I will have to rely on google scholar, and I won't always have access to full versions of the material, unless I want to pay for it. I suppose I might miss that one thing.
I am glad you have found all of those things you mentioned in your current career. I think that it probably does provide that for some, but certainly not always for the lower level students.

It is also true that experiences are often what you make of them. It is just that after 16 years of being in this system, I am starting to feel a bit jaded. I do agree that I am being a bit harsh on the system, but I guess I am also not that surprised that everyone is so quick to defend it.

Do you mean you've been pursuing undergraduate education (even off and on) for 16 years?

That would explain why you aren't getting much out of it.

No. I am referring to the 13 years of toil that is K-12 and then the additional 3 years I have spent in college. I am a Junior right now.

[higherandhigher]

I don't know why you are saying I don't value the research databases I have access to. I use them regularly to investigate things I am interested in.

And where do you think that content comes from? It doesn't write itself.

No. I am referring to the 13 years of toil that is K-12 and then the additional 3 years I have spent in college. I am a Junior right now.

I think you have a strange approach to viewing education. K-12 as thirteen "years of toil"?
If you hate it so much, drop out and get a job or open a business.

[bcantaire]

I don't know why you are saying I don't value the research databases I have access to. I use them regularly to investigate things I am interested in.

And where do you think that content comes from? It doesn't write itself.

No. I am referring to the 13 years of toil that is K-12 and then the additional 3 years I have spent in college. I am a Junior right now.

I think you have a strange approach to viewing education. K-12 as thirteen "years of toil"?
If you hate it so much, drop out and get a job or open a business.

Yes, I know that it doesn't write itself. That is why I realize we still need specialists. I just don't think our current way of creating them is very efficient.

I spent all the years between age 5 and 18 in a school setting for 8 hours a day.  All day long we would do busy work. The teacher would teach everything in a painfully slow manner and fill our time with endless work sheets and boring useless activities. Most years we would not even get to the end of a textbook. I realize now that that was unnecessary. In college, we can easily get through an entire textbook in less than 20 weeks. A typical school year for K-12 is 36-40 weeks and yet they can't even complete one book. I also realize that instead of trying to split everything up into artificial "subjects", they probably could have combined things a bit better to teach more than one thing at a time. They did a terrible job of that.
Every year we were granted a very tiny amount of free time and vacation. For all those years, I'd come home from school and only have a few hours to myself to do yet more busy work (homework) and then go to sleep in order to get up the next day and do it all over again. What the heck kind of childhood is that? I wasn't even learning that many practical skills for living life.
I guarantee you that the tutors of old were much more efficient in the teaching their pupils. Of course, the average person couldn't afford to tutor their children, so at least today's children have the chance to learn to read and write, among other things.

But... for all of those years spent in school, I don't think today's high school graduates have very much to show for it. Most have mastered math up to at least basic Algebra, they can read and write the things they need to read and write in life, and they might be somewhat proficient at some type of musical instrument and possibly have a basic grasp of beginning Spanish or French.

That is it? For 13 years? What a waste of time! Homeschooling will likely be more efficient for my kids.


Aside from that, I am dropping out and I have already started my own business while still in college.
I am extremely close to graduating, so it is possible that I might CLEP some business courses and then finish out as a business major sometime in the future. It can't hurt to teach myself about accounting and such.

[mystictechgal]

Education does not begin or end inside the walls of a classroom.  One purpose of higher education, imo, is to build the skills necessary to foster one's ability to continue the process of learning as one proceeds through life.  In other words, a good part of the experience is to teach one how to teach him / herself.   You seem to believe that your K-12 experience was wasted effort, based upon "busy work".  On the contrary, if your early education taught you to teach yourself, as you say you are doing, I would argue that it served you very well, indeed.

As you already seem to have learned (according to you) what I believe to be one of the most important skills one can gain from higher education, I would suggest you put those skills to work and apply yourself to a second area of importance: the exposure to different disciplines which, ideally, helps one to develop an ongoing and diverse curiosity and an intrinsic love of learning for the sake of knowledge.  Get out of your comfort area and take some classes outside of your discipline, simply for the sake of learning something new.  If you come across something in your research that is interesting yet tangenital to the paper you are writing for credit, continue researching that area for your own knowledge after you've completed the paper.  Not everything must be graded to be of value.

Drop the attitude and recognize that your education is your responsibility, not your professors.  If you need their help and guidance they are there to provide it; if not, it doesn't mean that what you are doing isn't educational--unless you don't want it to be.  Education, at any level, is what the student makes of it. 

If you can teach yourself then you are well on your way to a good education--at least in terms of amassing knowledge.  Wisdom is another thing, altogether.  It is also something that must be acquired for oneself.  I'd say that you've shown that you still have quite a bit of territory to cover there.

[barred_owl]

Every year we were granted a very tiny amount of free time and vacation. For all those years, I'd come home from school and only have a few hours to myself to do yet more busy work (homework) and then go to sleep in order to get up the next day and do it all over again. What the heck kind of childhood is that? I wasn't even learning that many practical skills for living life.

I have a very genuine question--What do you think adulthood is like?  Even if your K-12 experience wasn't everything you think it should have been, you have experienced at least one practical thing that applies to adulthood.  Whether you run your own business or work for someone else (or even just decide to raise a family), you will be spending most of your waking hours going to work, working, going home, thinking about or doing more work, going to sleep, and getting up the next day to do it all over again.  And you have many, many more than 13 years of that experience ahead of you.

 

[prof_smartypants]

Every year we were granted a very tiny amount of free time and vacation. For all those years, I'd come home from school and only have a few hours to myself to do yet more busy work (homework) and then go to sleep in order to get up the next day and do it all over again. What the heck kind of childhood is that? I wasn't even learning that many practical skills for living life.to teach myself about accounting and such.

It's been awhile, but aren't most public schools in session 180 days? And isn't the school day 8-2? And doesn't that include lunch?

It sounds to me like you have very little respect for teachers or professors, for their knowledge, and what you could learn from them. You sound like you are too immature to succeed in college right now. Maybe after a few years off from all the "toil" you will understand that education is an opportunity, and that it's your responsibility to take advantage of it.

[normative_]

What's wrong is that we have too many students like you who come but don't want to be there, who spend their time whingeing instead of getting on with life. Apparently you can't, or you would have had a degree by now. Fortunately, the large majority can pull their s*** together and show the world they're made of something. Those who find it too easy rake in the A-s, get themselves unsurpassed letters of reference and then go and make us proud by being successes in life.

Good luck with quitting school just before you graduate after 16 years, starting up your business and home schooling your children all at once. You'll need it. Because apparently you don't have enough customers to keep you off this fora.

I pity your children. You can be the best home schooler in the world, but never deny your children the social mobility that comes with a recognised diploma. Or you'd better hope your business is such a success you can retire and hand it on to them.

Don't stay in touch.

[polly_mer]

Bcantaire, you asked why people would go into formal education as a profession since it's all just busy work and worthless.  I, personally, took the job I have because I believe that the system can be changed.

Like you, I spent a lot of time in classrooms doing things that were far below my abilities.  I spent most of my K-12 time as the smartest kid in the room by far so that anything geared toward the average of the rest of the class was mind-numbingly dull.  In college, I also wondered quite a bit about why it took two weeks of lecture to go over something that required roughly an hour with the book to get the hang of.

However, apparently unlike you, I also had some fantastic teachers and involved parents who knew that what was good for the average student was not good for me.  After I completed the boring work, I was encouraged (i.e., forced because the rest of the class was going to spend a lot more time on something I had already finished so letting me twiddle my thumbs for hours on end was not going to work) to pick projects that let me advance at my own pace.  I got to explore other possibilities for interesting activities to bring back to the class and tutor other students.  I was given special privileges to the library so that I could get materials appropriate for my developmental level, not my age.  Sometimes, the very brightest kids from a range of classes were taken to do special activities that did challenge us because it was clear that a handful of the three hundred kids in the school were not being served by sitting all day in the classroom that proceed at the pace appropriate for the average student.  Eventually, although too late for me, the school district implemented formal programs for those who clearly did not belong in the average classroom so that those students had better experiences.

On the other hand, because I was not released from doing the boring parts, I have the ability to do what has to be done before going on to the good parts.  That has worked to my advantage in jobs I have held outside of academia and for jobs inside academia.  That is how I got through college and graduate school when people who are even brighter than I am fell by the wayside.  At some point, you have to put in the work instead of coasting along with an easy A or B.  Most things in life worth doing have a good chunk of repetitive, less-than-thrilling parts.  Successful people, with or without a lot of formal education, have learned to cope with those parts.  I know far too many very bright people who took forever to learn that being bright is not enough; at some point, the stakes are high enough and the work difficult enough that you have to do the tedious parts of learning rather than relying on your quick mind.  Maybe that point occurs in third grade, maybe it occurs the second year of graduate school, and maybe it occurs on the first job that uses that doctorate, but at some point, just being scary brilliant is not enough.  People who are less brilliant tend to have a harder time coming to grips with the idea that being smart is good, but someone who is a little less smart, but works much harder will run rings around them.  College is often the place where that becomes evident.

In addition, while I have spent a lot of time at the top of my class, I have also had the experience of being unable to grasp what those around me appear to have picked up with ease.  Having someone who will go through the low-level bits again at a slow pace is a precious gift.  Getting to see the same material multiple times and a lot of repetition helps tremendously at that point.  Having people dismiss students with, "Well, it's easy and I explained it once so you are just stupid", is a far worse crime in my book than having to bear with the group as it catches up to your level.  If you have never had that experience, then you haven't tried enough things because no one is perfect on the first try in all areas of learning.

Another thing occurs to me as a result of having spent some time as the teacher.  Often the students who proclaim the loudest that the class is too easy and they are not learning anything from the busy work either don't understand as well as they claim or they are content with a very superficial "I memorized some stuff" learning instead of something that will serve them in later life.  I was somewhat dismayed to find out how much of my own learning in some areas was primarily a result of having an excellent memory with access to good materials when the time came to use that material several years after I left the class.  As others have mentioned, learning how to learn is also very important.  Because I had more experiences to draw on than simply binging and purging for the test, even my memorized materials had laid an excellent foundation on which I could build.  But students who have good short-term memories without making an effort to put the material into long-term memory tend to end up with transcripts that do not reflect their abilities.  Employers are notorious about firing people like that.

A third related thing that occurs to me is the difference between a pain and a joy to have as a student.  A joy does all the assigned work and then seeks other work to expand knowledge in that area or further discussions relating the material to the rest of the world.  A pain refuses to do the assigned work to A level and then whines about not being challenged while begging for a special project that would better demonstrate the capabilities of the student.  In most cases, that pain student shows up in office hours to ramble about random things, hoping for extra credit or something, and expects to get a pat on the head for being special instead of the deserved kick in the pants for not putting enough effort into the class itself.  If you are having trouble getting professors to engage with you during office hours, take a good long look at whether you have already done exceptionally well in the class and merit more time or whether you are insulting the professor's expertise about necessary pedagogical activities to learn the material.

One other thing to consider is that school exists for those who wish to learn certain things in group settings.  If you are not that kind of person, then school will always feel wrong to you.  If the things are not the things that you want to know enough to put in the effort, then you are better served by going off to do other things.  You are right that many people are in college who should not be and they are wasting everyone's time and energy by failing to acquire an education.  Those people should be encouraged to go do other things with their time.  If, after a few years, they decide that the education acquired in college is now something they need, then they can reenroll and we will be thrilled to have them as engaged, active learners with a purpose.  If they find that they have no further need of formal education in a classroom because other methods of acquiring an education are adequate, then we hope they will go into high school classrooms to inform people about the good options for life after high school.  I think all of us would prefer that fewer people for whom college at 18 years old is a poor choice enroll in college and waste everyone's time.

In short, at your age and experience, you don't know what you will need in later life or what you are missing in terms of the big picture.  Go ahead and leave college now if you are unwilling to put in the effort to get the benefit.  That's fine.  Many wonderful and successful people have done so.  However, leave with joy ready to try new things and experience the world instead of carrying bitterness about "the system" that just didn't happen to be what you wanted at one particular point in your life.  The system is imperfect with plenty of room for improvement, but it's not the unrelenting evil that you make it out to be.

[mystictechgal]

Polly, in my opinion, what you have written here is definitely HOF material and worthy of consideration outside the bounds of this particular thread; consider it done.  And, thank you.  Very well said.

[colette_capricious]

Polly, in my opinion, what you have written here is definitely HOF material and worthy of consideration outside the bounds of this particular thread; consider it done.  And, thank you.  Very well said.

Without any sarcasm, I think it's right up there with Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. I think you nailed it.  This part is my favorite. I remember when it happened to me about twenty years ago when I realized everyone who was at that school at that point in time was top in their HS class and I was so not the smartest of the group anymore. I've come to grips with it now but it was quite the smackdown.

I know far too many very bright people who took forever to learn that being bright is not enough; at some point, the stakes are high enough and the work difficult enough that you have to do the tedious parts of learning rather than relying on your quick mind.  Maybe that point occurs in third grade, maybe it occurs the second year of graduate school, and maybe it occurs on the first job that uses that doctorate, but at some point, just being scary brilliant is not enough.  People who are less brilliant tend to have a harder time coming to grips with the idea that being smart is good, but someone who is a little less smart, but works much harder will run rings around them.  College is often the place where that becomes evident.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

First of all, let me step in and say that I've participated in other threads which the OP started, and I think she is not here just to be irritating.

bcantaire, I am 99% sure I know what school you go to, and while I didn't want to say this on the other threads I will say it now: it is not a very serious school, even though it advertises itself as such, and through this advertising (and absorption some years back of a serious though mediocre school)  has confused by many people in the town where you live into thinking it is serious.  However, it is mainly a business.  The only serious school in your area is the land grant university, and before you dismiss all higher education as empty you should take a class there.  While it is possible to have a horrible experience at such an institution as well, it is also possible to find fascinating classes with dedicated faculty and engaged students. - DvF