Go To College or Not?

Off Topic
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[quote]skaz05 wrote:

Marketing and management classes. GOD what a fucking waste of time. “Can we segment the market for toilet paper? And how do we target those markets?” FUCK YOU! It’s fucking toilet paper you fat bitch! You wipe your ass with it! No one is thinking to themselves: “Hmmmmmmmm… This toilet paper is scented and has cute little bunnies on it, I will purchase this over the unscented with quilts and a baby on the front!” Marketing is for assholes that suck at math.
[/quote]

lol… I hated marketing, but Management is useful, you just have to work in an office for a few years, and THEN take those classes to really get them.

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[quote]Professor X wrote:
zooropa1150 wrote:
I think most of these responses are bs. There’s very few people out there that know what they want to do coming out of highschool. If your one of them, and you like being a tradesman, then it’s a pretty obvious choice. However, I had no clue what I wanted to be at 18. Hell, I’m 21 now, and I still have no idea.

I got into a good pharmacy program in RI , and i’ll be done in a couple years(hopefully) but I look at my future career as a means to an end. Although I might dislike my major, I can’t help but say college has been a good experience.

No, this response is BS. I’m a dentist. Do you really think I grew up thinking this is what I wanted to do? I originally wanted to be a lawyer when I was in junior high. I was even in the Young Lawyers Association. However, I went to a high school that had the goal of taking kids with above average skills and getting them involved in the health field at an early age so that at least changed my overall focus to something in medicine.

NONE of us really knew what we wanted…so I went through life taking hints from everything happening around me. I tend to believe you are exactly where you need to be right now…and where you go from there is entirely up to you but you should learn from your current experiences. I guess believing in faith and destiny helps but it doesn’t mean anyone else here was handed a road map to figuring out life.

I applied to Dental school because a girl I respected (amazing person but that’s another story) applied…so I applied too…and I got in…so I went. I didn’t know this was what I was good at or that this is what I would like doing…until I was on the job getting paid for it in the military.

In life you take risks. those afraid to take any will be stuck exactly where they are…waiting on someone to take their hand and tell them what to do.

That person is never going to come.

Grow some balls and do SOMETHING. That is all the rest of us did.[/quote]

Your right. But I think you totally misinterpreted my post. I am not saying to the op that he should know what to do. The point was to do things, take risks and be ready to fail. I was just pointing out how many posters kept telling him to figure out what he wants to do. That’s fine, but I don’t believe happen in 1 or 2 days. Hell, just because I’m studying pharmacy now , doesn’t mean in 10 years, I’ll be doing something different. I’m certainly not waiting for someone to stick their hand out and point in the direction I should go. I might be lost at the moment, but I’m finding my own way through life.

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hey op i say go for whatever works for ya. If you want to get into the trades and have time to take some cc courses and possibly get an associates i think that would be a great idea then you at least have something to fall back on. I went away to college did it for a year and proceeded to leave because i just felt the money i was paying wasnt worth it at the time. I came home took cc courses and one day it hit me that i wanted to be a fire fighter. im finishing that up now, im still a full time student and got a job working concrete. manual labor but it pays well and is something that can be done even while im a ff. what im saying is that i think one day its just gonna slap ya in the face and until that day comes just play your cards as they lay.

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[quote]james28 wrote:
Thanks, for all the replies. With that said I think I may have caused some confusion. I always used college and university interchangeably. I have been in college for 2 semesters and was thinking ahead to whether transferring was what I really wanted. At the moment I am a psychology major. I never had a dream job I always figured that whatever career I ended up with was just a way to earn income. I have looked at most job choices with a psychology degree and it seems that unless I go on to get a masters or PHD salaries top off at around 60k.

Here are some figures I found for apprenticships-journeymen in Burbank, CA:(BWP)
Electrician $28.00 - $45.16/hour
Line Mechanic $32.82 - $51.04/hour
Pipefitter $19.32 - $32.79/hour
Power Plant Maintenance $26.73 - $40.50/hour
Power Plant Operator $31.43 - $47.63/hour
Test Technician $28.76 - $46.39/hour

I have not made a decision , it just seems that a big difference is whether you want to be behind a desk or not because salary wise with a liberal arts degree it seems the pay is the same if not less.
I guess I just feel a bit nervous of not eventually getting a degree because it has been drilled into me from a young age (school/parents) that it is the way it is.

[/quote]

James, the other awesome benefit when you learn a trade is the entrepreneurial opportunities. I know an electrician who handles all of the electrical work at a bunch of apartment complexes here in Detroit. He does some of the work, normally the really difficult stuff, but hires maintenance men and teaches them the electrician work and then uses them as employees, paying them something like 12-14 an hour, and the guy is loaded(2 houses, luxury cars etc). Because he was an excellent electrician but also a shrewd business man.

Trade work is highly underrated, mostly because the American mind has lost it’s entrepeunerial spirit. They forget that you can offer your services DIRECTLY to people, and you can apply time tested methods that have been used by all of the great businessmen in the past and out compete the competition. And today the wealth of information out there on starting and running a good business is amazing.

As other people mentioned, a college degree is going to open up certain jobs for you, but now days the college degree is being rapidly depreciated as Prof X has noted. And all students, across the country, are either getting crappy labor jobs or going to college. They aren’t flocking to the trade schools.

Which means to me that the trade schools are where it’s at.

K, now bro, watch this video by Mike Rowe on work. It’s an awesome video that is encouraging to those of us who do trades.

Remember, scarcity determines value. If the market gets flooded with PhD’s, then a PhD no longer means as much. One of the benefits of the higher degrees is that they will always be scarce because only a very narrow percentage of the population actually have the discipline and circumstances necessary to attain one of these higher degrees.

However, one thing people aren’t mentioning is how the college you depend changes everything. If you graduate from Stanford with a BA you will be valued a lot more by the market than a graduate from a 2nd tier college, say Wayne State or Central Michigan. If you choose to go the college route, make sure you get into a good college bro. It sets a different path for your life. Get a near perfect score on the SAT’s, take 3-4 SAT II’s and get excellent scores on them, write an awesome essay and say you’re hispanic/black on your application sheet, and you should be able to get into one of the top 20 schools in the country, regardless of your GPA or extracurricular involvement(btw they can’t penalize you for saying you are hispanic/black on your application).

45

Sorry to hijack the thread but is University and college the same thing in the US? Where I live there is 5 years high school (instead of 6 in the US I think) then 2 years at a college (pre-university) or 3 years (for a technique). Then you at university it take 3 years for a bachelor, 5 year for a master and 7-8 for to be a doctor.

Now that I am in my last year of college pre-university, what would be the equivalent in the US?

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[quote]nobodyreal wrote:

However, one thing people aren’t mentioning is how the college you depend changes everything. If you graduate from Stanford with a BA you will be valued a lot more by the market than a graduate from a 2nd tier college,

[/quote]

This is true, especially in larger organizations. Most multinationals are going to recruit at big schools.

But a lot of us smaller sweat shops are looking to state schools more and more. No offense to anyone, but the rich over privileged kids coming out of the big schools fucking suck. No work ethic anymore. The kids that busted their nuts get a BA through a state school, because that is all they can afford are more likely to shut up and work. When the kids that come from rich parents will bitch and moan if they work past 9pm.

I’m generalizing here too. No need for panties to get bunched up.

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[quote]countingbeans wrote:

But a lot of us smaller sweat shops are looking to state schools more and more. No offense to anyone, but the rich over privileged kids coming out of the big schools fucking suck. No work ethic anymore. The kids that busted their nuts get a BA through a state school, because that is all they can afford are more likely to shut up and work. When the kids that come from rich parents will bitch and moan if they work past 9pm.

I’m generalizing here too. No need for panties to get bunched up.[/quote]

Ah, that actually makes sense.

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[quote]jasmincar wrote:
Sorry to hijack the thread but is University and college the same thing in the US? Where I live there is 5 years high school (instead of 6 in the US I think) then 2 years at a college (pre-university) or 3 years (for a technique). Then you at university it take 3 years for a bachelor, 5 year for a master and 7-8 for to be a doctor.

Now that I am in my last year of college pre-university, what would be the equivalent in the US?[/quote]

High school is 4 years long. College is the same as “university”. You go to college after high school…assuming your grades and conduct didn’t suck so bad that it keeps you out.

I couldn’t even imagine being around the people I went to high school with for 6 whole years.

It sounds like the UK sucks ass in this regard.

I guess that’s why some poster from Britain didn’t know that dentists are doctors in America.

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[quote]A Ninny Mouse wrote:
It’s commonly ascribed nowadays (and also mentioned by Prof X in that Social Life vs. Bodybuilding thread) that you basically need a higher degree (grad school) to really do much. Something like a master’s now is like a bachelor’s 20 years ago or something like that? I know my sister’s friend who went into engineering, despite going to one of the best engineering schools ended up just doing tech support with a bachelor’s degree. So…yeah.[/quote]

She probably did not apply herself, getting a degree doesnt mean you will get a job… The MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do as an undergraduate engineer is get a co-op / summer internships (multiple) or you wont have any contacts and will have a really hard time finding a job… so many people think they will just be handed stuff in life they dont work hard / go after it…

Get involved in professional societies as a student, make contacts, work hard during internships and you will have multiple job offers even in this economy before you graduate…

50

[quote]Professor X wrote:
High school is 4 years long. College is the same as “university”. You go to college after high school…assuming your grades and conduct didn’t suck so bad that it keeps you out.

I couldn’t even imagine being around the people I went to high school with for 6 whole years.

It sounds like the UK sucks ass in this regard.

I guess that’s why some poster from Britain didn’t know that dentists are doctors in America.[/quote]

Our primary school(ages 4-12-ish) is 8 years long and our high school(just called secondary school) is another 5 or 6 years(one year being optional). It’s not that unusual to be with some of the same people from your first day of school all the way through school until your last day of HS. Hell, 3 of my friends chose the same course in university and ended up in the same classes there too. I’ve made friends that I would consider family in those years.

51

In Canada the term “college” is used to refer to a trade school or a school that offers programs that are anywhere form 6 months to two years long. Any school that offers anything longer(bachelors,masters,PHD) is called a “university”. I know this is different form the U.S, just thought I would clear that up.

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Dropped out in 2004 because it was impossible to do the trifecta of work, school and training, so I chose work and training. Now wish I had done school and work. I was training for track, not bodybuilding mind you.

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college and university can be used interchangeably here in the us. high school is 4 yrs then you can go away to a college or university for 4 years and receive a bachelors degree, further schooling for masters, dr’s etc. or you can go to a junior college or community college which is usually only 2 years and you receive and associates degree. the credits from community college can then be transferred to a 4 year college or you can take you 2 yr associates degree and see what work you can find. certain careers only require an associates, firefighters police to name a few, but most careers now a days are looking for at least a bachelors here in the us. hopefully that was somewhat helpful and not so confusing.

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If you want to get technical, I believe a “College” in the US refers to an institution which only provides undergraduate
education (i.e. only gives B.S.,B.A. etc) while a “University” provides both undergraduate and graduate education.

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[quote]pja wrote:
If you want to get technical, I believe a “College” in the US refers to an institution which only provides undergraduate
education (i.e. only gives B.S.,B.A. etc) while a “University” provides both undergraduate and graduate education.
[/quote]

LOL

Most people just say, “I’m going to college” and that covers it. Let’s not make this that damn complicated. I went to a “university”…because “University” was in the name of the school…but we all still went to college.

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[quote]pja wrote:
If you want to get technical, I believe a “College” in the US refers to an institution which only provides undergraduate
education (i.e. only gives B.S.,B.A. etc) while a “University” provides both undergraduate and graduate education.
[/quote]

This is incorrect. I got my BS from a state ‘college’ with no “University Status”, but it had several graduate programs.

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Even if your career choice is one that requires a college degree, don’t go straight from highschool to college. Take a year or two and work a shitty job and pay some bills. Everyone I knew who went straight from highschool to college (including me) was still just a child and basically fucked around for most of their 4 years, that is, if they graduated. People who had a few years of living like an adult took college more seriously and made the most out of it.

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[quote]SteelyD wrote:
pja wrote:
If you want to get technical, I believe a “College” in the US refers to an institution which only provides undergraduate
education (i.e. only gives B.S.,B.A. etc) while a “University” provides both undergraduate and graduate education.

This is incorrect. I got my BS from a state ‘college’ with no “University Status”, but it had several graduate programs.
[/quote]
Ok so I should have said “in general…” because in GENERAL this is the case.

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[quote]Professor X wrote:
pja wrote:
If you want to get technical, I believe a “College” in the US refers to an institution which only provides undergraduate
education (i.e. only gives B.S.,B.A. etc) while a “University” provides both undergraduate and graduate education.

LOL

Most people just say, “I’m going to college” and that covers it. Let’s not make this that damn complicated. I went to a “university”…because “University” was in the name of the school…but we all still went to college.[/quote]

My comment was more directed towards those discussing the specifics of US vs. British schools.

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[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
Even if your career choice is one that requires a college degree, don’t go straight from highschool to college. Take a year or two and work a shitty job and pay some bills. Everyone I knew who went straight from highschool to college (including me) was still just a child and basically fucked around for most of their 4 years, that is, if they graduated. People who had a few years of living like an adult took college more seriously and made the most out of it. [/quote]

I completely disagree with this. Most of the guys I knew who took time off either didn’t go back to school…or they took so long to go back that they had so much responsibility in their lives by that time that they couldn’t even afford to go back. Taking time off takes you out of the mentality of doing homework or getting things done for a deadline even though you might think it is busy work. There is no way in hell I would actually want to go back to school at this point in my life.

Life isn’t going to wait on you and I know I am very glad I got to the point of having a real career before the age of 30 as opposed to some of the people I knew that were just going back to school over the age of 35 after having kids.