Can someone explain college to me, please?

Principessa

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One of my degrees is in the arts, and I felt the classes I took for it were generally much less about teaching me facts and much more about teaching me how to think, while the science courses were much more like a very long list of facts, and that I didn't learn how to really think about science until I started working in a lab.

Or did you interpret my use of the words "vague" and "subjective" as being a knock against the arts? Because they aren't. I wouldn't have bothered with getting a BA if I thought it wasn't worthwhile.

Yes, I took that as an insult; especially when you added nebulous to the mix. :redface:
 

JustAsking

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henry,
People go to college for a number of different reasons. Vocational training is one of them, but it is not necessarily the most important reason to go.

One reason is that in a democracy we want an informed electorate.

Another reason is to be exposed to fields and disciplines that you had no idea existed. (e.g. how many people in high school did you know who wanted to be geologist for a career?)

Your particular confusion might be that you haven't figured out what you are really interested in. Often people just take "general studies" for a while and one of the different elective courses during their first few years sparks an interest and they go into that field.

I think college is extremely valuable whether you end up working in your field of major later on or not. I don't regret majoring in Physics even though I never worked as a Physicist. On the other hand, I benefit from it every day in all the other jobs I have worked in, including those that didn't require a knowledge of Physics.

Also, NJ, what's the deal with all those degrees? You must be one heck of an interesting person. How do you get from museum management to plastics engineering?
 

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I think parents have a big influence on this. Some of them explain what degrees they need to get whatever jobs and they get the kids into planning out their schooling and career. This can be good or bad. It's bad for the kids that take a career just to make their parents happy (doctor, lawyer, etc.). I mean it's bad that maybe they won't be as happy as they could have been in another career. Some people measure their happiness by their career and what others think of them.

The ones that are very worried about what classes they are talking are probably the ones that are already planning to get more schooling after the undergraduate degree, like graduate school, law school or medical school.
 

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Im so antisocial, not regimented and hate to conform- which is why i have spontaneous seizures when i get anywhere near a college campus. Plus i dont like beer. It's a good thing im self employed. Id get passed up all the damn time by all those educated college degreed folks. College just wasnt for me.

I did have aspirations to go to medschool and be an ob/gyn. I still kick myself in the ass every now and again for not doing it. But, im truly happy in life now and i dont have like a quarter million in student loans to pay off and old people bitching at me about their gout among other things.

Let me work alone with my ipod and im one happy gal.
 

Principessa

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Also, NJ, what's the deal with all those degrees? You must be one heck of an interesting person. How do you get from museum management to plastics engineering?
I like to think I am interesting, not sure everyone would agree.:smile: I obtained them off and on over a 9 year period. It's kind of a long story and one a few people have asked about. Hmmm, maybe I should blog about it. :cool:
 

B_henry miller

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Thanks, everyone.

Getting these responses has made me realize what my problem is.

I've realized that people, including teachers, counselors, etc., take a look at me and my GPA which, as I noted, is high, and sort of assume that I'd know everything about college administration.

I suppose one thing I'm realizing about college, which was probably present in high school as well but I didn't pay attention, is that there is a caste system here. Having a 3.70 GPA put me in something of the "elite" caste on campus. For example, in one of my classes, a difficult Art class, I was one of maybe two As in the entire class. I remember getting my mid-term back and someone seeing the A on the front of the paper, and most others had Cs, and I saw the look on the girl's face; I felt really bad. Later, students who had been friendly with me started acting almost subservient to me, almost ashamed to be in my presence. I just didn't understand this, and I didn't like it.

The reason this puts me out of step is because I'm not impressed by this. I was never impressed by anyone on the Honor Roll in high school, and I'm not impressed now that I'M on it. I actually felt a bit insulted when I received the letter. The reward for doing well in classes, in my opinion, is that I learn the subjects I'm interested in -- not that I get some patronizing letter.

I suppose overall it seems that college is very simple, and yet it's full of people trying to make it more complicated than it really is. THAT'S what confuses me. Why make things more complicated than they should be?

In many ways it feels like college is actually really about teaching people how to be snooty. And I don't understand the point in that.
 

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College is somewhat a waste of time . I got master degree in economics and I never used it. I think that to spend 6-7 years in a field and then ending doing something unrelated from your mayor is somewhat a waste of time and money .
 

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Higher education is a must in order for people to secure fiscal goals they desire. Sure, many do not end up working in their respective fields, however, the degree allows them the opportunity to explore, navigate and gain entrance into positions they would not be able to access without a degree. It is a must.

One thing that is important to note is that your experiences in college are more global and broader than what has been discussed here. The collegiate experience allows you the opportunity to gain more indepence, it allows you to appreciate things/aspects of life in a different vein, it gives you the opportunity to hone in on socialization skills. Further, the experience allows you the opportunity to network and connect with people who can potentially assist you in securing the goals you have for yourself.

Your learning in the college classroom is primarily theory. Moreover, it is a chance for professors to share knowledge with you that ordinarily you would not be exposed to. That is not to say you have to agree with those perspectives. That is the fun thing about college. If you can articulate your thoughts and provide a direction that is logical to the debate, you can have interesting dialogue with the experts (your professors) in the field as well as your classmates. That, my friend, is our mission. A successful professor will have linked your thoughts with more ease and would have helped your thought patterns become more complex over time. The gem of it all, however, is when you get into the field and then put application with the theory. It then becomes revelant and makes sense.

You seem like a bright young man - well articulated, witty and one who seems to be open to thought, dialogue and expression. Continue to persue your degree and then engage it fully in your respective discipline.

On a side bar, counselors are not explicitly trained to guide any student in all respective fields. Their knowledge base is limited primarily to their "theories" they've learned in school and how to put them to access. Simply put, they do not know everything about everything. Some have a limited base to help guide a prospective into certain areas. If that area is not in their field, naturally they are not going to be able to provide you with all the "pertinent" answers to teh questions you might have. Again, that is what college is about. Initiative. :) (Now I digress...)

Good luck, Henry!
 

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NOW we're getting somewhere.... This is the irony of it all. Most people end up doing things completely unrelated to their degrees, which makes me wonder what the point of HAVING a degree is.

I suppose it goes back to what was mentioned above, that college is largely just a rite of passage. People think that if you have a degree, any degree, that means you're an upstanding member of society. Kind of phoney if you ask me.

That is the thing. You are almost pressured to make your "Life's Career Decision" right out of High School. I don't know of anyone who said they wanted to really do whatthey are diong out of High School. My degree was in Business Administration (in the 80's, it was the degree to have), within a year of graduating, businesses stopped wanting people with MBAs. They wanted people who minored in BA and mastered in Liberal Arts.

My brother is the prime example of how the pressure to go to a good college and make a snap career decision can backfire.

My brother knew he was a journalist. He is gifted as a writer, moreso than I am with 4 seperate novels on the shelf unfinished. Anyway, he gets a full ride scholarship to Harvard and my parents push him to go. Now Mizzou offered a great journalism program, was in our state, and near home. Harvard offered no journalism, and was far away, but one of the top university's in the nation. My brother finally went to Harvard, studied Political Sciences, failed sophmore year and lost his scholarship. My parents were pissed at how much they were now having to pay for college. "Who the fuck had the bright idea to send him to Harvard anyway? It isn't all that magnificent a college." says my father. Enter the blunt younger sibling (AKA me):

"You did dad. He wanted to go to Mizzou, but because you are so tight fisted with your precious wallet you sent him to Harvard so you wouldn't have to pay. And for the record, the fact you are now pissed at Harvard means we don't have to hear you drone on about how proud you are of your kid getting into Harvard. We are all tired of hearing it."

My father wanted to kill me until mom backed up everything I said. Pops hated when "Team Mom" would get him.

At any rate, my brother, now 50, is following his journalism dream, but it isn't his career, he works for a university.

Stiff upper lip Henry. When you figure out your life, I am sure you will land in whatever it is you want to do and do exceedingly well in it, regardless of the piece of paper that declares you "Above Flipping Burgers". :wink:
 

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Getting these responses has made me realize what my problem is.

I've realized that people, including teachers, counselors, etc., take a look at me and my GPA which, as I noted, is high, and sort of assume that I'd know everything about college administration.

Either that or they assumed you're smart enough to figure it out yourself, without holding your hand or dictating it to you; learning *independence* is a large part of what college is all about.

It's this transition from the coddling of primary education to the self-reliance of secondary education that puts many people off college, gives them the impression that it's "impersonal." It seems they would rather have a guide through the murky waters of academia. I may have misunderstood your posts, but it seems this was what you were asking.

Most colleges have a 'General Catalogue' that describes the degrees they offer and lists the kind of credits one can earn from a given class. In general, a Bachelors degree will require about 120 credit-hours which must be composed of specific courses required for the major, elective courses related to the major and general studies courses that are taken by all majors. For example, a BS in Biology will require 80 hours of biology courses, 20 hours of Chemistry courses and 20 hours of English, Math, Foreign Language and what-have-you. Guidance counselors can provide you with a list of required courses, but it's still on the student to pick a schedule and electives that qualify for credit within their chosen major.

Ultimately, the message is "the student is responsible for themself;" the information is out there, and acquiring it and synthesizing it creatively to solve your unique problem is part of your job as a student. That's been my experience, anyway.

I suppose one thing I'm realizing about college, which was probably present in high school as well but I didn't pay attention, is that there is a caste system here. Having a 3.70 GPA put me in something of the "elite" caste on campus. For example, in one of my classes, a difficult Art class, I was one of maybe two As in the entire class. I remember getting my mid-term back and someone seeing the A on the front of the paper, and most others had Cs, and I saw the look on the girl's face; I felt really bad. Later, students who had been friendly with me started acting almost subservient to me, almost ashamed to be in my presence. I just didn't understand this, and I didn't like it.

Where you attend college is a factor in this experience, too; I'd guess you'll likely see more of this at smaller, private schools as opposed to the larger state universities. My only advice is: be yourself, and don't worry too much about how others perceive you.

I suppose overall it seems that college is very simple, and yet it's full of people trying to make it more complicated than it really is. THAT'S what confuses me. Why make things more complicated than they should be?

You said this about sports too, and, as then, I am not sure I agree. That may be too idealistic or reductionist...

The process of seeking a degree is quite open-ended; from where to go to school, to what degree to seek and then just how you do so....it's a complicated process filled with many decisions. It doesn't help that people put a lot of pressure on those decisions, adding to the anxiety of getting a degree and 'needing' a degree to 'succeed,' etc. There doesn't seem to be a clear path or easy answer...

In many ways it feels like college is actually really about teaching people how to be snooty. And I don't understand the point in that.

Well, again, I guess it depends on where you're attending college and with whom. But to me, college is about "learning how to learn" (as someone here already said), more for building learning skills than knowledge, and equiping one for integration and self-dependence within a society.

Oh, and for getting drunk and way laid. :wink:
 

ClaireTalon

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Do it as I did, and stick with the recommended curriculum of your subject, major or whatever. I had a list of required and recommended courses for all four years of my studies (BSc in Aerospacial Engineering) and stuck strictly with that, except for some special interest courses that turned out helpful now and then. And if the others chew the fat like you describe it, just work subtly towards a different subject for the conversation. I never liked talk about classes, grades and that stuff either.
 

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NOW we're getting somewhere.... This is the irony of it all. Most people end up doing things completely unrelated to their degrees, which makes me wonder what the point of HAVING a degree is.

I suppose it goes back to what was mentioned above, that college is largely just a rite of passage. People think that if you have a degree, any degree, that means you're an upstanding member of society. Kind of phoney if you ask me.


A degree of sense might be more worthy of respect
Maybe people too often confuse schooling with education let alone learning.
 

Damian Johnson

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Hilarious way to put it, lol. :biggrin1:

Seriously, though. I'm in college and I don't "get" it. Don't get me wrong. I'm on the honor roll. I have nearly a 4.00. I enjoy classes. But I'm lost on the overall structure of it all.

I mean, there are students who rattle on about all their knowledge about BAs and BSs and MAs, etc. I mean, some students are really in to it. "I need this and that class for this and this ... and then I'm going to take this and that..." I get overwhelmed by the whole apparatus of it.

Once I get in to class and actually get down to the studying of it all, I'm fine. But the rest of it, I'm lost. Can someone explain something to me? ANYTHING you know (and this is a serious question, by the way) will be helpful. It seems that guidance counselors get irritated by me because they assume someone with a high GPA should understand everything else. It seems like people get a bit uptight about it.


Dude - college is what you do if you are not out working. Following on from that dude, the difference between college and work is very simple
Both can be good at times, both can be bad at times - but you only get paid to do one of them and it aint college :biggrin1:
 

B_henry miller

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Actually, college is a place for being taught to be dependent all the while learning the illusion of impressing upon others the idea that you are independent.

This whole idea of "independence" is bullshit. If society really wanted independent people then they wouldn't require them to go to college before they hired them.

College teaches you to follow orders without asking questions that may point to how faulty the whole situation is. The main example of this having been discussed several times already: most people who go to college get degrees they never use.

It's a subtle dance. We are being taught dependence, all the while being taught to hold up the idea that it is independence that we are being taught. We aren't supposed to ask too directly how the system really works, because if we do we may see that it ultimately doesn't.

What we are actually being taught is isolation from one another. It's not "independent" to ask others how the system works. You are supposed to learn it on your own. We are all supposed to be sterile pegs that don't communicate with one another but fall in to the slots of corporate America.

And if this sounds like sour grapes from a "bad" student, remember, I have a 3.70 GPA and am on the Honor Roll.

Thanks for listening.... :cool:

Either that or they assumed you're smart enough to figure it out yourself, without holding your hand or dictating it to you; learning *independence* is a large part of what college is all about.
 

B_henry miller

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This paragraph is sort of hitting on what my issue with college is. It seems to me that college is more about learning to navigate the structure of the institutions rather than learning the damned subject. You know, you can go to a bookstore or library and read a subject to learn about it. But taking a class on that subject in school, and getting a good grade in the class, will not be dependent upon learning the subject. What gets you the grade is knowing how to navigate a class.

In other words, it is possible to do your assignments correctly, turn them in on time, etc., all the while not really understanding anything. Likewise, you can turn in assignments late, do them incorrectly, do bad on tests, and still learn the subject.

It's really a cruel game. Most people don't realize that how well you do in school has little to nothing to do with how much you learn. It has to do with learning how to navigate the system. I've studied obsessively about how to get good grades, which is why I am on the Honor Roll.

It's this transition from the coddling of primary education to the self-reliance of secondary education that puts many people off college, gives them the impression that it's "impersonal." It seems they would rather have a guide through the murky waters of academia. I may have misunderstood your posts, but it seems this was what you were asking.
 

B_henry miller

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Actually, with all the grants and scholarships I'm getting, I AM actually getting paid to go to college. :cool:

Dude - college is what you do if you are not out working. Following on from that dude, the difference between college and work is very simple
Both can be good at times, both can be bad at times - but you only get paid to do one of them and it aint college :biggrin1:
 

B_henry miller

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Oops. Sorry, I didn't mean to be a thread killer here.

I appreciate all the posts. They have jogged my mind and made me decipher some of the things that are concerning me. One of the main things concerning me is that I can't figure out what is concerning me.

I think I'm hitting upon something, though. Thanks to the comments by someone earlier who said that college teaches you to be independent, I've come to realize the odd situation I'm in....

Okay, I am already proficient in the profession I am working to get a degree in, a branch of art. The reason I'm working to get a degree in it is that I have had to accept that merely having a degree in this topic will open more opportunities for me.

About the "non-personal" aspect of college ... I was taught the trade I'm studying prior to college. I am better at this trade than most in college. And those who taught me this trade treated me in a very personalized way.

It's odd that I'm doing better in my college classes than most people, and I'm doing better because I had personlized attention from experienced artists ... and yet in college they want you to be impersonal.

Does this make any sense to anyone???

In other words, it's all counter intuitive. I am better than the other college students because I was taught the opposite of what they were taught, to be personal in approach. If they really want these students to be good at this, why teach them to be impersonal?

In other words, I really don't think art can be taught on an assembly line. College is an assembly line. It's odd for me to "go through the motions" of being on an assembly line, all the while knowing consciously now unnecessary it is.