<p>I used to think that a college degree wasn’t particularly valuable as I did quite well
without one for a time but I got to a level where HR departments wouldn’t look at
me because I didn’t have the piece of paper. So I finished my degree and I had my
piece of paper and could now go for those other jobs. Then I got another degree and
learned about mathematics and computer science topics that I didn’t understand
before. Before the degree, I wouldn’t know what other engineers were talking about
in many discussions.</p>
<p>So I didn’t know that I didn’t know until I knew it and then I knew that I didn’t know
it before.</p>
<p>Good quality educations can be had in the non-elite schools too - it depends on what
the student wants and how she goes about getting her education.</p>
<p>I am somewhat curious as to how you developed your views.</p>
<p>Oh now I’ve read your prior threads and understand where you are coming from. You see yourself as brilliant, but because you couldn’t cut it grade-wise at your top school, everyone else but you- the bureaucratic system and the bad professors and the ‘suck up’ students who did better than you- are to blame. This has made you really angry because you see the system as bogus and unfair to brilliant people like yourself who aren’t willing to play the game. Correct me if I’m wrong here though.</p>
<p>I think you have some serious stuff to work out. It would be really hard to hide all of this and be gainfully and successfully employed. I’m sure you are not deep down the kind of person you sound like in your posts (which I will attribute to defense mechanisms in trying to cope with the reality of your situation…this protects your ego from the pain of it all). But I would strongly encourage you to seek some professional help to work through what has really happened, to get passed your anger and in honest touch with the reality of the situation you find yourself in. Only then can you learn from your mistakes and figure out how to proceed and understand what is and is not in your control. I say this because it is one thing to not have a degree, but quite another to not have a degree and come across as a narcissistic jerk (which again I don’t think you are…but if you are walking around this wounded, I think it will be a serious detriment to your goals).</p>
<p>Well I wouldn’t put it so harshly but yes, that’s basically it. I don’t see anything where I contradicted myself…I was at an engineering school that produces bureaucrats…and only the bureaucrats who get through the system get to get the degree. But if I decide to leave the bureaucrat factory and join the ranks of the elites, I am suddenly not allowed. Where is there any contradiction?</p>
<p>Sithra, take some time away from school and see what’s available out there. Maybe take a class or two when you don’t feel so tired of it all. Find a job, make some money, get a life to enjoy. What’s great in this country, is that you can get your degree later if you find it is what you want to do… Until you feel that way, it can be a tiresome, tedious process. And maybe you’ll be just fine and happy without further education or just taking courses you like with no thought for a degree. You can change your mind, or not, and either way is fine.</p>
<p>My son has been complaining about his professors lately and I’ve just told him that his school has gone through several rounds of budget cuts while his department has to serve more students. The professors have more students to teach and they have to get their research done and teaching and time with students suffers. I just told him to get through his classes despite the difficulties. Yes, professors may not be good at teaching (they’re hired to do research) or they may be unfair in grading from your perspective but a lot about life is like that. If you think college is tough, wait until you start looking for jobs.</p>
<p>If you are as brilliant as you think you are, start your own company. Or take an idea and make something of it that someone else will want to pay you for. The entry costs to creating things has come down considerably and the amount of knowledge out there that is freely available is greater than at any time in history.</p>
<p>In another thread, you looked down on the job of a MacDonald’s Manager. Those jobs can pay very, very well. And they can be just as challenging as engineering jobs. Managing people can be very, very tough.</p>
<p>I’m an engineer and work with a large number of other engineers. My boss is an engineer. Is he a bureaucrat? Well, he has to take care of a number of routine managerial duties like a bureaucrat. But he’s also a person that cares about the people that work for him. In any large organization, you have to have some amount of process. Hopefully it doesn’t get in the way of whatever you are making or producing. In business, if it does, it results in bad earnings and eventual change.</p>
<p>Perhaps engineering isn’t for you. There are lots of other things to do in the world out there.</p>
<p>“Here’s the deal. I can’t stand bureaucrats. That is really the heart of the issue and why I kind of made the thread. I wholeheartedly believe college is excellent at training bureaucrats and feel like all that textbook learning will prepare them for their by-the-manual bureaucrat jobs. What if I don’t want to become a bureaucrat? Aren’t there any other options for me? What if I want to get into something like corporate strategy? Then again I guess there is a manual for corporate strategy. <strong>So what is a career or something where there is no manual and requires thinking on your feet?</strong>”</p>
<p>The answer to your question is engineering. The role of an engineer is to creatively solve problems using mathematical and scientific tools. The first 2 years of an engineering curriculum may seem rote and boring, as you are building up the baseline knowledge needed to meaningfully solve interesting problems. Upper level classes along with a senior design or capstone project will give you the opportunity to learn to ‘think on your feet’ to solve a problem that has no textbook solution. </p>
<p>I would advise you to stick with it as you might just start to like it. You may also want to seek out research opportunities on campus where you can work on ‘real world’ problems that are more interesting to you than classwork.</p>
<p>Slithra, twice you seem to suggest that someone is saying you are contradicting yourself. I didn’t say that nor imply it. </p>
<p>I think you have an overly simplistic and possibly incorrect interpretation of the situation. Maybe they are ‘bureaucrats’, or maybe not. Maybe all your profs were bad, maybe they were not. Maybe all the other students are only more successful because they mindlessly follow rules, or maybe they are more intelligent. Maybe you are were always just bored, or maybe you were depressed (it often feels like boredom, and for men at least, it often comes out in anger rather than sadness). All I can tell is that you sound angry, ripped off, and it would be very hard for anyone in your situation to be objective. And unless you get at the reality, rather than your biased interpretation of reality, you aren’t going to help yourself very much. </p>
<p>At the most basic level, you have painted yourself into a corner with your current beliefs. If from your narrow personal experience of one major at one school, you’ve decided that this is how ALL colleges, professors, majors, and students operate…you haven’t left yourself many options. Likewise, if you look down upon ‘lesser colleges’ or ‘lesser jobs’ you just closed a whole bunch of options right there as well. </p>
<p>I see your biggest barrier to your future is your steadfast beliefs and assumptions about how the world operates, beliefs and assumptions that are not shared by most people so you just might be incorrect in your beliefs. Something you might want to explore with a professional, because having beliefs that put up so many barriers for you is not good for you (especially if they can be refuted).</p>
<p>I’ve seen quite a few psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, career counselors, and a few deans of students. With regard to “being open” I’ve already been down that path.</p>
<p>With regards to engineering, I forget where I got this but I thought it was accurate: “Engineering is a low-variance-paying field, in a sense that the good and mediocre engineers (worker, not business owners) gets paid more or less the same…”</p>
<p>And that is why I do not want to be an engineer, at least I think. There IS a possibility that after I got through all the dreadful math and physics I would start to enjoy the later courses, but I just can’t see myself enjoying it. I seriously do not want to calculate the viscuosity or calibrated diffraction of an electron off a metal cathode of steel. I think engineering is just too boring for me. Aren’t most jobs like that, similar to the “routineness” of engineering?</p>
<p>So you saw all these professionals recently? And none were helpful? What did you learn about yourself or your options from the information you acquired meeting with them? </p>
<p>It sounds like engineering is probably not for you. You find it boring and don’t excel in it because its boring. It sure would not have been the degree for me. I would have personally hated it, and I know for a fact that despite my cognitive abilities, I would have gotten terrible grades if I had to learn stuff that bored me to tears (in contrast, studying what I loved was so easy and fun…and led to a great career). Its why people emphasize so much following what you are interested in; its hard to be good at anything you aren’t really into (whether its mastering a musical instrument, learning a trade, or acquiring a knowledge base). </p>
<p>So maybe your problem is finding an education that interests you, without being so darn pragmatic about it. Perhaps that is where you’ve gone wrong (you blame others for hoop jumping and being bureaucratic but it sounds like you have approached education in strictly instrumental terms, as in salary and title…rather than what you are inherently interested in). You don’t have to see the entire connection of dots and plan your whole life in front of you. People change majors a lot; most eventually work in areas unrelated to their major; many people change careers. </p>
<p>Only engineers on here can tell you if engineering school stays this way, or is going to be different at another school, or will be boring and routine as a career. But I don’t believe most professional occupations are boring and routine, except perhaps at the entry level.</p>
<p>Perhaps that is true (it doesn’t seem to be true in software engineering
but I don’t have any expertise with other fields). But the living isn’t
a bad living and many, many people are happy as engineers.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>In the engineering forum, high-school students routinely come in and
ask which engineering major pays the best. The response is usually of
the form: pick something that you love - if you don’t love it, then
you won’t survive the major.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>My son absolutely loved all of those “dreadful” math and physics
courses that he had to take. He took more than what was required.
If you don’t like your courses, how do you think you are going to
do compared to your classmates that really enjoy those courses?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Engineering can be routine but it doesn’t have to be. It depends on
what the company does. My company has relatively long project life
cycles so things are fairly predictable. When you’re raising a family,
this can be quite a benefit.</p>
<p>Some jobs require you to move from place to place or fly out to
different cities every week or work in a variety of assignments.</p>
<p>On your thread of earlier this month, which I looked for, because it seemed there was some reason behind beginning a thread questioning college on a board where most have already agreed that it is valuable for themselves or their children. & look- there was!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So to respond to your thread regarding your difficulties in college- I would recommend going to a community college and becoming successful there, before transferring. It could be that you attempted too much too fast and instead of now deciding that the whole plan of action was worthless, just step back a little and go slower.</p>
<p>People who are successful without college, are not generally the sorts of people who tried college and struggled, then blamed those struggles on outside influences, but people who have a strong inner motivation and drive that spurs them to achieve with or without college.</p>
<p>For most people a degree shows you have put the time & effort into a deliberate academic path & depending how much the employer/HR person knows about your field of study/college, that can tell them a great deal about your knowledge base.
Without that " piece of paper", outside of giving you extensive testing or interviews, there isn’t an easy way to gauge what your base of knowledge is.</p>
<p>I guess I’ve made up my mind college is a worthless elitist piece of paper that costs tens of thousands of dollars and requires four years of drudgery, conformity, and boredom.</p>
<p>So what do you suggest I do to find something that interests me? I think that I would be interested in marketing since it’s not as routine yet in order to get a job related to that I still have to jump through a bunch of hoops first to get admitted to another college and then sitting through all those boring classes and completing it. It’s hard to not be pragmatic about it when the world revolves around money and GPAs and test scores and rankings. If I weren’t going to be pragmatic about it I’d simply not go to college at all.</p>
<p>I enjoyed most of my school subjects, but I’m guessing most people do not. Engineering can be pretty brutal if you don’t like it, moreso than your typical liberal arts major. Many people who love math and science and even some people who like the engineering profession don’t like the engineering classes. There is a lot of rote learning of methods. So college may not be quite as boring in a different major. </p>
<p>I suggest one of two options:
(1) find a job/internship in an area you think you might be interested in to get a feel for whether you really would want that as a career (e.g., marketing). This may be hard due to your GPA, but if you have some connections you may get it. Most probably, you will still need to go back to school eventually (the company may want you to in order to hire you full time), but then you might have a better idea of what to major in. </p>
<p>(2) Just suffer through 2-3 more years of school. Think about it. You’ve been in school for 15 years. What is 2 more years? Then you will be done with it forever.</p>
<p>My guess is that you should major in something practical like business or marketing, because you don’t seem to be intellectually curious about the humanities or the natural world. It may seem less like busywork because you will be learning something you are interested in.</p>
<p>Sithra - I must admit that your thread is disturbing to me. And, while I’m not an overly religious person, I said a prayer for you. The chip on your shoulder is so big and until you learn to accept the fact that it is actually ok to fail you are never going to shake this. Failure is how we learn who we are and who we are not and who we want to be. I’ve failed so many times in my life but each time I’ve learned and adjusted my life accordingly. There have even been times when I’ve blamed other people for what “they’ve done” to me. But true maturity comes when you recognize that you cannot control other people or the “system.” You can only control how you react to the situation.</p>
<p>What scares me is that your ideas sound so much like those of a guy friend of mine from high school. I went on to college and he did not. Then after 15 years we finally reconnected. He was no longer idealistic about bucking the system, instead he had become the most bitter and hateful individual I had ever encountered. It was so incredibly sad.</p>
<p>I believe true happiness and success comes with being at peace with who you are – flaws and talents alike.</p>
<p>I’m an entrepreneur. Truthfully, I could probably be doing what I do without a degree but I never would have been exposed to all of the things I’m doing now without my college experience. Nor would I have had the confidence that I gained at school.</p>
<p>Sithra, at this point I’m hoping you are only a ■■■■■. Throw out some outlandish statements on a first post (but post it in lots of spots so you don’t seem like a first time poster), just to get a reaction. </p>
<p>Lots of well-intentioned people are asking you questions on here to understand your situation, offering you advice, trying to push you toward problem solving, and you really aren’t into responding as if this is real…you just keep falling back on your feelings and loose deadend claims. Not much anyone can do with that, and not a good use of people’s time. There are kids out there will real problems…and adults with better things to do than be strung along by a bored teenager. </p>
<p>Supposedly you’ve seen all these professionals (though no idea what they’ve done for you since you’ve not provided any additional insights when asked)…if they haven’t helped, no one else will here either. Then again, you don’t really want or need help if you are just ■■■■■■■■.</p>
<p>I have run into this type of student in real life before (friend of my son) who had been going to college for six or seven years, sometimes working to save up money for courses. I do think that he eventually got his degree because he was very close to meeting requirements that last time we chatted. He had some of the same issues, blaming the department for his slow progress, complaining about bureaucracy at the school and having to take care of a lot of details unrelated to learning, etc. His major was physics and I told him that he had accomplished a lot by almost earning a very tough degree at the time.</p>
<p>There are folks that get ground up in the system and don’t see a good way out. For many of these folks, better guidance in selecting a major and college probably would have helped. Better guidance along the way probably would have helped too. I do know some students that couldn’t hack engineering that moved to other majors and succeeded - they realized that what they were doing wouldn’t work out and looked for alternatives.</p>