No, I’m not smart, or a genius. The reason I was able to go to school at 16 is because I dropped out earlier that year and got a GED. And since I have a September birthday, I was 16 years old by the time I entered college. I went to community college, which doesn’t (or at least at that time I went) have an 18 year old requirement. Of course I dropped out of high school because I was socially inept, and could never get along with anyone in high school. But I actually still made good grades, so getting the GED was actually cake.
September birthdays make you start stuff early. I actually started elementary at 4 due to my September birthday. So that meant I started school a year earlier than other people my age.
So you are still in the Airforce, keep up the good work man. Sergio had asked about you but I told him I had no clue what became of ya.
My bro went the military, not sure for what but it was army reserve. Whenever he wasn’t deployed he would always find a job with the quickness, no matter what it was. That military background is strong as hell.
i hope you don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying degrees are useless. My personal opinion is that if you really want to do something, you’ll find a way to get into it, degree or not. I mean some professions obviously are more bereaucratic than others (like the medical field). But IT is very informal, and the people there are too (even those in high places). So oftentimes, the need for a degree is overlooked for someone who can “actually do it”. I think in management, your degree may actually be more useful. If you get to director or VP status, I don’t think you can even qualify without a degree. But then again, I’ve seen both VPs and Director level people without one.
I’d say go for the connections with high-standing people. I knew a guy getting paid bank just because he was hired by his uncle that worked in the same company.
Obviously having a good education helps, but I believe we all know it’s about good networking skills as well.
I think either you are an extremely convincing interviewer or you lucked out massively. I also think your experience may have made getting each successive job easier. But to get that first break, to convince employers that you are worthy of the position they are offering and the money they are paying, you need to have proper credentials. What’s a more powerful credential than a relevant degree? I think it’s absolutely vital to complete college degree programs if you want to survive and beat competition in this cut-throat job market!
It always depends on the type of work you want to do.
First off, there’s an older thread here and at TZ where I posted lots of links to very useful data for prospective university students, or perhaps for recent graduates lamenting a lack of income.
There are very specific career fields where the return on investment for a university degree are worthwhile. For instance, accounting, nursing, various engineering, and many more. There are also degrees where the averaged income is very low, such as business. So I would always specifically look at what I want to do, or am doing, at university to ensure it will pay me back in time.
Another side is a university degree should make you a more intelligent person. With a saturation of students in universities due to guaranteed student loans, there is little incentive for any university to turn people away. The money is always there. This saturation of students lowers the average quality of education to the point that many degrees at university of [insert state] do NOT produce smarter people. I know a Literature or Linguistics degree may not appear to be worth much to the average graduate, but if you are smarter because of it, I would say at least the university helped make you a better person. I’ll throw out the business degree again as the bad example because I read a study taking into account several university programs in Indiana and states around it. It was showing the average time spent by business degree students was ridiculously low, e.g. 3~5 hours a week, including lecture time. Not going to be learning anything by jacking it.
I’m the other side of things. I required a four year BS and a two year MS to get the kind of job I find intellectually satisfying, in ‘research engineering.’ On top of that, I could be making more money at a less intellectually satisfying job. But the type of work I’m doing requires it. BS == Computer Science and MS == Computer Engineering with a “Robotics & Control Emphasis.”
There are jobs that you need degrees for and jobs you don’t need degrees for.
If all you care about is $$ then you can definitely find a job where you don’t particularly need a degree. I tell all my friends who are pre-med who seem like they’re only in it for the money that they should seriously go into business cause you can’t make a lot more money faster. More often than not, the jobs that you go into because you have a passion for it requires a degree.
It’s a bit ironic. Statistically pre-med students tend to be fairly dimwitted, but extremely hard workers. People think folks in the medical profession are geniuses, but usually they do worse in tests related to their field of study than damn near every other major.
No no, you misunderstand. Pre med students who take the MCAT and PCAT and other tests do worse on the test even in the bio section than everyone. Even physicists, mathematicians, and engineers do better in bio than they do. Have you ever been around a large group of pre med students? They’re pretty much a bunch of worker bee drones that don’t give a shit about having to think, or producing a higher thought. Just what can they memorize, and how can they get a good grade.
It’s because pre-health students have to learn a LOTTTTT of shit that they will NEVER use again for the rest of their life. Not sure if that’s the case with other fields.
After my boards, I will probably forget everything I have learned from the first year of dental school.
I want to work in technical writing or publication after my degree, and the best thing about being in college is the opportunities. The degree is nice and all, but the only thing it is doing is preparing me for graduate school. It’s all the connections and extra-curricular stuff that’s helping me better myself and my resume. I think college degrees aren’t necessary, but if you can afford to get yourself there, I’d make a effort to get one. I also love Academia though, so there’s that too.
Of course everyone learns tons of stuff they will never use. But the intense aversion to immerse themselves in the material (or deep thought in general), insistence on brute force memorization, and taking any and all shorts to an end puts the pre-med students, on the whole, into a special class of monkeymen
it’s weird