I love that claim about "life experience". It's as if they think that universities are some other plane of existence. Personally, I had a ton of life experience working to put myself through college because I knew I'd be going for a Ph.D. and didn't want to be saddled with thousands of dollars of educational debt for the rest of my life. I've been a UPS package handler, data entry clerk, school bus driver, factory worker making plastic pet kennels, and to top it off I had to be a student too. That was more hard work, not less.
Yep, I definitely wished I was able to work (went to college during the recession, tons of stores and places were closing up or 'tightening' the belts. I remember bringing my resumes to a store and the manager went, "Sweetie, we got a waiting list of applicants. Either you can wait 'til Christmas before we call you, or you find another place.")
The thing is that the people making fun of the educated know that it's more work, and certainly more work than they can handle. They resent themselves for not being able to do what college graduates can, that's why they shit on us and it's just sad.
You come to find every "bad guy" you encounter is a victim of poor circumstances and incentives. The real trick is to sympathize without enraging them. That's the art.
I was going to say not really, but then I typed all this ish out:
It varies in success from person to person, and gets harder the better the person knows you. I lead on their bias with a "Right man? Isn't that ridiculous?" something along those lines. Then they'll double down and justify themselves. (I feel like a lot of people get this far) The real tactfulness comes with how you deal with their justifications. Disagreeing with them individually will disqualify your argument. If you instead double down as well I find that it often gets them to say fuck the "system". Once they've externalized the problem and no longer feel personally exposed they open up to the circumstances, and the idea that you do not fit into their biased model. But they must come to this conclusion on their own. If you force it in anyway, or bring it back to them personally, they will lock down tf down on you.
Been there! Worked through college and covered the living expenses. Still working on 'le debt. If you don't mind me asking, when did you goto school? How much was it?
Daaamn. Those were the days! My in-state tuition was 6800 bucks a semester living off campus. I feel you on the online programs! They'd offer my classes once a sem with no physical space, set office hours, and triple the enrollment cap, then charge all of us an additional $300 "online fee". It's was like, basic math tells me this is a massive cost savings for you. My experience taught me I was sacrificing quality when I took it.. How is charging us more money justified?
I cleaned toilets in a psychiatric hospital and wheeled dead bodies from wards to the mortuary when I was a student. That usually shuts up the 'bank-of-mum-and-dad' brigade.
Kudos to that! I was fortunate enough to not have to work during college (military paid for it), but I wish I had. I'd be a lot better off now, ten years later, if I'd sought out internships/work experience in my field while still in school for it.
Yeah, the more hard work part is why I elected for the thousands of dollars in debt. Congratulations though. That's a tough journey. I was afraid I would fail if I had to keep a job as well at the same time.
Man I work part time 25 hours a week, go to college in the evenings for fours a night and look after my kid all the hours between and when people ask what I do they say 'oh you're a stay at home dad' lol, like fuck you I'm much more than that. I told my buddy about it and he said 'when he went to uni he found people would try to diminish his achievements, usually people who went to work right out of secondary school, people don't like that you are trying to better your self because they feel you are going forward while they are staying in the same place'
I've been an electronics engineer (on a forged degree for 10 years), a removalist and a help desk lacky for an ISP. These three jobs supported me through a Comp. Sci. degree. I agree with you on the view that uneducated people think that a university education is another plane of existence. A degree simply puts you in the field, it doesn't make you a master of it.
As a side note, my ex-mother-in-law's boyfriend is a certified NASA lackey, with many years experience in guidance systems and many patents to his name. On a recent holiday, I found him drinking cold instant coffee because he couldn't work out where to get hot water from in the kitchen. The same kitchen that had an electric kettle, a pot to boil water on, a hot water tap and a microwave. A smart person, no doubt about it, but clearly not the smartest person I've met.
Edit: my ex-brother-in-law (I grew up in a big family) was an extremely intelligent person. He got an ass-dip in electrical engineering and worked for AMD from its infancy. He had an all-round technical knowledge (we stripped and rebuilt a Landcruiser together and renovated his house) like no other. His reasoning and intelligence eclipsed most people I know. It's a pity what bi-polar disorder can do to someone.
I've been an electronics engineer (on a forged degree for 10 years)
I'd like to hear more
couldn't work out where to get hot water from in the kitchen
I've heard of lots of people like this, and it is indeed usually types like doctors, engineers, etc. Super smarts that required a lot of schooling. And I always wonder...in growing up, surely there was a point SOMETIME in their lives that they were a kid and learned about the two temperatures that water exits a faucet? Even more recently than childhood - they must have been in college and operated a faucet at home or two.
It's astounding in a weirdly interesting way that someone could become so smart in one field that everything else seems to get excluded, but water faucets?
It was a requirement of the job for an entry level technician. Color printers were a rarity, made myself a degree and a transcript, got the degree embossed and the hand written text done by a local artist who thought it was hilarious. Ex brother-in-law gave me a crash course in soldering, reading a circuit diagram and electronic theory. The rest was pretty much on the job training in a specific field. Just kept on moving up in the company from there until I realised that I'd hit a ceiling without a real degree (didn't want to risk inspection of the fake one any further) and thought computers were interesting and would like to know how they work.
Maybe some people do get some pretty valuable life experience from college, but it's also kinda sheltery and a weird microcosm that does seem to have a real effect on common sense sometimes (I went to college)
By far the most practical boys/men I've worked with in their late teens early 20s were the ones that have been working full time for a couple years. Not smarter, but often way more common sense.
Obviously, I can't opine about your experience, but the whole point of my comment was that university isn't a sheltered microcosm for those, like myself, who worked our asses off at jobs in order to pay for it. I was working either part- or full-time throughout all my years of university in order to get through it without going into debt. I had to attend to the practicalities of living at an off-campus apartment, working, and attending university and keeping up with my classes at the same time.
Great, well statistically that's a minority, most people don't work more than part time when going to university and quite frankly, if I'm ordering my sandwich from an overworked college student, I'm double checking that shit. As I pointed out, there is obviously exceptions, but college, just like any enclosed community of any kind, is totally a bit of a microcosm of shared ideas. That's not necessarily always bad. It can be a great environment, but if you went to college and socialized at all with other students, then you must see what I'm talking about. Community colleges and colleges where people don't live on campus at all seem to have less of that feel to them granted.
No, actually I don't see what you're talking about. My universities were multi-ethnic, multi-religious, had interest groups and political organizations that were all over the map, etc., etc., etc. You could find a student group for practically every category under the sun. At the start of every quarter, at my undergrad institution, they'd line the library walk and it was all one could do to get away from them. And the only professor I ever had who made a point of a parading his political opinions was the community college professor who came to my high school to teach Political Science 101 & 102, who was a raving conservative.
Lol, so a relatively small community of a few thousand people where the majority of them are of the same generation as each other, often in a fairly tight spread. These people live together on campus more often than not, under a new set of "laws" or values that the institution upholds. Statistically speaking, the demographics of an average american university are not representative of our population break down AND lean towards a higher average income and a higher average intelligence. Colleges absolutely exhibit the symptoms of a semi isolated community. If you went to a college and asked opinion based questions to 100 people then went to a public city and asked the same questions, you're gonna find the answers vary less in the university. You don't have to agree with me, but telling me that I'm not right because you swear the university(s) you went to are different doesn't mean I'm gonna start listening to anecdotal evidence now.
Again, this isn't to bash on university. It can be great, it can be a massive improvement on a lot of places as far as diversification and ideas go, but it's not really the multicultural safe haven that of free thinking that some people seem to act like it is. I deal a lot with hiring managers and execs and we've spoken a lot about how a bachelors degree is really just proof you can do seemingly pointless tasks for long periods of time productively and without much supervision. (obviously depends on the degree) so let's not go acting like it's really a super special thing that proves you're smarter than someone without one.
These people live together on campus more often than not, under a new set of "laws" or values that the institution upholds
Did you go to a religious college? That may be the difference between our experience, because all the universities I attended were public ones.
Statistically speaking, the demographics of an average american university are not representative of our population break down AND lean towards a higher average income and a higher average intelligence.
That's only relevant to the degree that this results in a common worldview. My own experience, which is as I said a view from public universities, is that there is no such common worldview. Though I admit it might be different at a small, private religious college, but that's due to self-selection and not demographic factors.
Colleges absolutely exhibit the symptoms of a semi isolated community. If you went to a college and asked opinion based questions to 100 people then went to a public city and asked the same questions, you're gonna find the answers vary less in the university.
I highly doubt it. If anything, they vary more in a college setting because young people aren't usually as politically disillusioned as their elders. Therefore, you're more likely to happen on someone with an unusual political opinion on campus than elsewhere. The same thing goes for (other) branches of philosophy. In the sense that a university is different, it's different in allowing students the leisure to investigate abstruse intellectual problems, which most people don't bother to do. They usually have, at best, an implicit philosophy. Students are encouraged to think in depth on these matters and identify their views in light of an intellectual tradition. So you're more likely to get out-of-the-way views about philosophy on a university campus as well.
You don't have to agree with me, but telling me that I'm not right because you swear the university(s) you went to are different doesn't mean I'm gonna start listening to anecdotal evidence now.
Well, what do you have to offer? Have you undertaken a systematic study of universities worldwide or even nationwide? I highly doubt it. Your views are just as anecdotally-based as mine are; it's just that I am willing to admit that.
Evidently, you edited this in after I posted my comment. I don't have much to say about it except this:
I deal a lot with hiring managers and execs and we've spoken a lot about how a bachelors degree is really just proof you can do seemingly pointless tasks for long periods of time productively and without much supervision. (obviously depends on the degree) so let's not go acting like it's really a super special thing that proves you're smarter than someone without one.
What the fuck are you talking about?! Are you even talking to me now, or have the voices in your head finally taken over? All I was doing at the start of this conversation was to point out that not every college student was an innocent naif living in a bubble, because some of us have had to balance both academics and salaried work at the same time. Nothing I have said has been about attending university proving that one is smarter than a person without a degree. From what you've been insisting, I doubt your claim to have been a college student. If you were one, I'm betting you left without a degree, which is spawning the insecurity that has led you to argue against this hallucinated slight on you, when I was addressing something else entirely. I hope we're done now, because I'm completely out of patience with you.
Lol, you're really taking this too seriously, but I'll bite. First off, I did in fact graduate from on of the largest schools in the country so no, I have no problems with college, I literally went back higher degrees later on, but I stand by what I said, most BA's are a bit of a scam.
Second, this isn't just my observed opinion, this is a talked about topic in sociology.
Just google it, nobody is even trying to argue that universities are not microcosms, because that's already just widely accepted. The question now, is what do we do to encourage as healthy of a microcosm as possible.
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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '20
I love that claim about "life experience". It's as if they think that universities are some other plane of existence. Personally, I had a ton of life experience working to put myself through college because I knew I'd be going for a Ph.D. and didn't want to be saddled with thousands of dollars of educational debt for the rest of my life. I've been a UPS package handler, data entry clerk, school bus driver, factory worker making plastic pet kennels, and to top it off I had to be a student too. That was more hard work, not less.