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Frank
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Getting started |
Registered: February 2006
Messages: 18
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Life has really sucked recently. School blows and I'm not a fan of it at all. I suppose it is just rather disturbing to realize that what you have apparently spent the last 13 years preparing for isn't anything you want to be doing at all.
Seriously, college looked damn good back in high school when I was checking it out. It seemed like everyone here was either who I wanted to be or who I was. Then I suppose reality sunk in when I actually came. I guess it is a bitch to realize that everyone here either hates me or I hate them. It seems like we are inhabitants of two different planets and mine happens to be about 15 years faster then theirs.
I'm not saying these guys are dumb or anything. But I used to think that I lived under a rock. Then I came here. Now I realize that I lived in a booming metropolis of ant colonies thriving in some manner I am still not sure about. Now trust me this isn't one of those, there just different, this is like straight up naive and ignorant by choice.
Perhaps I am just bitter that people here told me that I should just leave because I was just bringing negative energy to the table. Negative eneergy I mean who honestly says that anymore...
SO now I am majorless with a lot of enemies and a bf who is losing his mind with me. Life sucks. For anyone here reading this and getting ready for college I say, don't expect to enjoy it, or fit in, or make friends, because your destined to be dissapointed.
Perhaps if I put dreds in my hair I'll feel better but for some reason I don't think that it will make any difference inside.
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Guest
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On fire! |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 2344
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 ) you need to chill and relise you have a lot of life ahead.!
do not let the child in us come forward.
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Frank,
I don't think I know you, so welcome to the board.
I'm sorry to hear that things aren't going well. When one is young college or university seems like a natural progression, the culmination to the learning of one's childhood. If it doesn't work out well, one feels that one's entire life has been in vain. At least, that was my experience.
The fact is (and something that everyone in every educational system likes to keep quiet) that what one learns in college has very little to do with what one uses in "real life". The main purpose is to get a piece of paper that says "I spent a lot of time and money and effort on getting this piece of paper". That piece of paper may get you a job. But, except in very specific cases like medicine, it doesn't actually give you a qualification to do that job; provided you're willing to learn in your own time, you won't miss out on anything by not having a degree in it. The only problem is convincing employers that that is the case. If you think you can get more out of stopping a degree and doing something else instead (and truly believe it) then by all means do that.
I myself started a course in Computer Science which I stopped because I was unhappy at university and didn't enjoy the course. Then I worked for a while. Then, after a year and a half, I started another course. I'm frustrated at the course I'm on at the moment because most of it is not what I want to do ultimately -- I'm quite technical, and most of the other people on the course aren't interested in the same things as me. And it isn't easy to make friends and get to know people in a place as big as this. But I'm sticking with it because it gives me an opportunity to learn in my own time, and hopefully I'll get a degree which will give me a minor step up in the industry I'm interested in. I'm not convinced that it will make an awful lot of difference to my employment prospects (though admittedly the film industr is totally different from almost every industry), but it seems a great waste to give up now.
If the purpose of your post is to warn people off going to college or university, then the purpose of this post is to say that, ultimately, university is not as important as schools and parents would have you believe -- and whether one should go or not is not an absolute either way, but dependent on what one hopes to be doing in a few years' time.
David
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I blew my degree and have regretted it.
Why are you majorless?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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David puts it very eloquently, and I would agree with just about everything he said.
I'm another of those who went from school straight to Uni, and found that it failed to live up to my expectations. I didn't complete the course.
Several years later, I went to different Uni, doing a different course, and throughly enjoyed it. It was a fantastic experience - not because the course was "useful" to me, because it wasn't, although it was interesting. But the students union got me into the worlds of theatre and entertainment and running buildings, which have been my career ever since.
I may say that - as an employer - I increasingly find degrees to be of little value in helping me assess candidates for jobs (this obviously wouldn't be the case in fields where a degree was a first stage of professional training, like law or medicine, but I think it's true in most areas!).
However, I would say to anyone who is contemplating leaving any course part-way through, that it is worth considering the academic cycle, and waiting until a suitable end of semester / year / whatever ... and making sure that all credits are recorded and you know what they are - you might just find them useful to start a completely unrelated course in a few years time.
In short, Uni can be great, and it can be an excellent way of getting away from unpleasant home circumstances. But not everyone needs to do it straight from school, and not everyone needs to do it at all.
Frank, I hope things soon start looking up for you, and that you can reach a decision about the way forward that will suit you ... not your friends, or enemies, or loved ones, or even your b/f.
NW
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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Guest
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On fire! |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 2344
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I dont know you either, but welcome. Everybody here are great guys. I would be more concerned about the number of enemies and your b/f freaking out. Can you not find people of your own persuassion there? those are the ones I would want to make friends with, not the ones I just want to pass by in the hall. I got friends here and a b/f and a couple of good friends. thats all I seem to need but then maybe im easy. Cant say much about the college thing, thats a few years away. Seems to me your b/f should be boosting you up. If hes the one bringing in these unsavory guys then you should rethink things.
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Hi Frank,
I spent most of my life either in school or teaching in a uni atmosphere.
I had good courses and semisters and I had bad courses and semisters as well.
One thing for certain though is that there are litteraly thousands of colleges and universities and each one of them is different. If you are not happy where you are consider transfering to another school.
I discovered that in college most people were generally full of their self importance. They would get absorbed in their agenda and if you were not a part of that agenda you were nothing more than an obsticle that had to be walked around.
Given some time though, I found out that there were among the thousands of students a cadre of people that were after the same things I was there for. We bacame friends and one in particular became someone somewhat more than a friend.
Don't let freshman doldrums wear you down. It happens in one way or another to just about everyone at college.
If you need, you can E-Mail me....
Otherwise I am here.....
Marc
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Hello.
I would like to offer a second opinion. I am doing a degree in computer science, with a twist, and I live it and thrive and learn a lot. Of course, some things do suck, but mostly I enjoy myself tremendously.
As for degrees - I agree, it is a paper. But you can learn a lot in uni, and learn stuff you wouldn't learn at home. I see people programming who are self-taught, and a lot of their programming sucks. They have only learned parts, the ones that interested them, perhaps, but they don't know enough.
Then again, for "practical" jobs, it's IMHO like this: The bad programmer says: "I know thius and this and that and foo and bar".
The good programmer, on the other hand, presents his work.
Sorry to hear about your social troubles, BTW - that's painful. Best wishes.
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Silfer:
>I see people programming who are self-taught, and a lot of their programming sucks. They have only learned parts, the ones that interested them, perhaps, but they don't know enough.
The vast majority of programmers are self-taught. Yes, maybe a few have had lessons as part of a degree programme in (choose one of) Java, C, C++, BASIC, Pascal, etc., but ultimately there's no way a degree course can teach you everything you need to know. There are too many languages, too many platforms, too many architectures, too many libraries. And some technologies are so new, or so esoteric, that there are no courses that cover them.
A degree course might try to teach you some good programming style. But this can be learnt, too -- and in fact, I might even suggest that self-teaching teaches you not just what is the best technique, but why it's the best technique, through trial and error. When I first started programming in 1995 or 1996, my style was appalling (GOTO -- ugh). Now (though I don't program nearly as much as I used to) I'm incredibly careful to make my code both readable and as bug-free as possible. It's a matter of pride.
Also, a good programmer will always have several different languages at his disposal, and choose the best one for the job. A genuine enthusiast will have tried all of them. On the other hand, I've met several computer science graduates who try and force each problem into the language they were taught at university, because it's the only one they are familiar with. So they try and write a shell script in C, or a 3D game in Java, where in fact neither is ideally suited to it.
>Then again, for "practical" jobs, it's IMHO like this: The bad programmer says: "I know thius and this and that and foo and bar".
>The good programmer, on the other hand, presents his work.
Absolutely. The computer programming industry is not dissimilar from the film industry in that respect. In a parallel universe, I might have ended up in that industry. I still might, I suppose, if the film industry and the computer industry converge more than they have done. (Don't believe anyone who says they are already doing it. Only on the surface.)
Getting back on topic, it occurs to me that I might well be in a desk job hacking Perl right now (yes, even at half past one in the morning!) if it were not for the fact that I was accepted onto the course I am now on. So while I might be frustrated at the course, taking a degree in film it has essentially changed my entire career direction. I just wish that the course was one year instead of three!
David
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... 'cos we're all discussing it!
I confess that I didn't really enjoy uni - maybe because my b/f at the time was back home! - and it's certainly true that my qualifications have no sort of relevance to my life out in the big, bad world.
Strangely, though, looking back from a distance I'm glad I did it, though I was tempted more than once to chuck it in. But I agree with the previous posters that everyone needs to make their own decision.
If I can help, I will; I'm a good listener and a reasonably clear thinker, but to offer any sort of valid thoughts I'd need to know a little more about exactly what's bugging you. If you'd like to, you can talk on the board or by e-mail, and I promise that despite my venerable antiquity (I'm exaggerating, honest!) I'll never be judgemental.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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Frank
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Getting started |
Registered: February 2006
Messages: 18
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I'm majorless because I decided it wasn't what I wanted to do and I realized that there was nothing I wanted to do
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Is there something you want to do outside the educational system?
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And that is understandable. I didn't realize what I really wanted until just a couple years ago and I am 55 yo. I spent the majority of my life floating along, not completely satisfied, but getting by. Even now my chosen direction does not fulfill the monetary needs of life so I find jobs that allow me to do my volunteer work.
Most of my job related knowledge is self taught. I never formally attended college but I have and continue to take accredited courses that allow my skills to remain up-to-date and to learn new ones.
Realize that you are not sure where you want to go or what you want to do at this point in your life. Look for opportunities to expand yourself physically and mentally. If you actively seek growth you will find others with similar aspirations that consciously or unconsciously will be woven into your fabric of life. Only through opening your mind (and heart) will you realize the direction for you.
Hugs, Charlie
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Sounds to me like your just giving up. We done had the discussion about the t shirts, trust me they dont fit.
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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There are, I suppose, two pieces of advice here:
1) Get a job and ignore universoty.
2) Finish what you started.
Neither is perfect. Each has its own hardships. And I think neither is right unless you solve the underlying issues. Those are worth airing, maybe here, maybe to a student counsellor.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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