INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Here's to hoping they're more exercised than they were in 2008.
the brain is a muscle.
It isn't, actually It's an organ comprised largely of nervous tissue
Just an excuse to be lazy
ironically, it's mostly composed of fat
Re. university education, not to jump in an defend it because I often think it was a waste of time and money in some ways, but it did offer some general experiences that are valuable in the work environment. I don't think it can substitute for trade school or trade type training, but in college I was routinely forced to do a lot of things I'm still doing at work.... doing projects I might think are pointless, working in groups with people I don't necessarily like, managing time and resources, etc.
OK so we did some of that in high school but the level of maturity and professionalism was not really the same as what is required in college and at work.
I will be honest, if I'm asked to be involved in hiring a new team member I rarely consider anyone without a BA, even though the work we do requires technical certifications you don't get with a liberal arts BA. The technical stuff is easy enough to train and our employer will help people get the certifications they need but the level of professionalism, maturity, and interpersonal skills goes above and beyond what people experience at a high school or GED level, and I'm not talking about a highly professional career either, I'm talking entry level $32K/yr job.
But it isn't supposed to train you for that. I'm not sure why you think that these days university degrees are tied into job training. They most certainly are not.
The reason that people tend to look at undergrad degrees even for secretarial positions (like we do when we hire legal assistants) is because if you have 10 equally good people competing who have a BA and maybe 4 who don't (because that's really a realistic ratio these days), then why wouldn't we go for the person with a BA who has 4 extra years of maturity, who has written major papers and we know with some degree of certainty is fairly literate and capable to do some critical thinking?
I think for the most part those that are feeling that university degrees are useless are probably approaching them incorrectly.
I think bad food being "cheaper" is about more than just the actual price of the ingredients. I'll admit I often get lazy and stop somewhere to "grab" something (not Big Macs though, usually some sort of sandwich that is made in front of me). For me it's not just the price of food but the "cost" of having to shop around for ingredients and the time it takes to make the food. Also right now with it often being about 100 degrees and humid which means 90 degrees inside the house, there's no way in hell I'm turning my *oven* on to cook meals and prefer not to use the gas stove either. It "costs" me less to just buy a cheap meal on the run because it doesn't involve any prep work or inconvenience to me. We have a really nice fresh market at the end of our block and have been shopping there a lot for fruits, salad stuff, and meats, but the food is really fresh, eat it within a day or two or its not good. It's hard for me to get into the habit of having to grocery shop every other day when I'm used to doing it once every other week. So yes it does come down to laziness which for me translates to the cost of my time and other factors that I often am not willing to deal with on a daily basis for every meal.
Here's to hoping they're more exercised than they were in 2008.
This is something I strongly disagree with. Liberal arts degrees don't promote professionalism, it's a playground to fool around in a bunch of different subjects without actually being serious about something.
oh ok. thanks for clearing that up with us who worked our tails off to get BAs from liberal arts colleges and make healthy salaries working 60 hours a week.
What about the person who has been doing other work and spent the same amount of time maturing? If they're the same age, "maturity" is not a logical way to rule them out. Those people that you are turning down might just be incredibly talented, mature, professional people that you're ruling out and judging because they don't have a degree.
Let's say I have to hire someone as a legal assistant or secretary. I have 10 choices, 6 with bachelor's degrees, 4 without. It is just as logical here to assume the people without degrees have had a much harder time finding work and will appreciate the job a lot more. Some people with BAs feel as though they're above doing that kind of work, so they'll slack off. People without BAs tend to know where they stand more often. I would consider the ones without the BAs first, looking into their experience, what they did in high school (were they involved in clubs? did they get good grades?), etc.
It is not always more logical to just grab the person with the degree.
The fact is that many of the people coming out of these degrees did not know what they wanted to do when they rushed into college. Most (not all, most) went for these degrees because they had no idea of what they wanted to do and were just going with what was expected of them. It's better to have a liberal arts degree than no degree! Right? That's why we have to get one! At least it's something! These people did not have the creativity to bust out and do something unique, were not smart enough to realize they didn't have to go to college and should wait until they knew what they wanted to do first, and they didn't have the talent in a specific field to pursue that field.
There's the occasional exception, but many businesses I know will throw applications with "liberal arts" degrees in the trash because of how unprofessional those graduates can be. We just recently fired someone with a liberal arts degree because they had no clue how to work in a professional environment. They need a college schedule dictating how they spent their time and when they suddenly had to plan things on their own... they couldn't.
The difference is when you encounter someone that wants to study many things, and usually those people will pick a specialty later on in life. The rare person who goes to college to learn. Perhaps I am guilty of generalizing here, so I should mention that I don't immediately judge someone for having that kind of degree. It's just something I see that's so common it's hard to separate the two. But unlike the stuck up people who refuse to consider someone without a degree professional, I will never rule out a person for a job based on their college education (whether they have it, what degree it's in, etc). I take the time to interview them, see their skills, look at what they've accomplished, and decide from there.
Erica the flaw is that the post seems to assume that undergrads don't work.
High school involvement carries little weight for me personally because 1) it's highschool and 2) most of the stuff people do during that time largely depends on privilege and not actual skill or level of commitment.
At the time I often felt college was useless but the farther away it seems, the more useful it has become. Also I wouldn't take back the cost of tuition to give up the friends I made.
That's fine by me, I have no desire to work for someone that judges people for not finishing or going to college.well, based on this, i wouldn't hire you. so there's that?
That's fine by me, I have no desire to work for someone that judges people for not finishing or going to college.
Give me someone smart, hardworking and ambitious who can read, think, and most especially write.
I will mold them into a great asset to my team in a way that I could never with people who decided to specialize when they were 18 and have oodles of technical experience but no ability to think big, different, and bold. Worker bees are great, but that's all you'll ever be unless you can engage on a higher level and make connections and take risks.
But you're judging all people with liberal arts degrees as lazy, unprofessional, scatterbrains
ladyfreckles said:That's fine by me, I have no desire to work for someone that judges people for not finishing or going to college.
Good thing, because I don't like to hire people who think that they know everything.
For myself, I completely agree, but by saying that taking the time right out of highschool to get job experience instead of schooling experience is better, aren't you implying that those people knew what they wanted to be at 18? (I worded that horribly)That's the thing, I don't think it's possible for someone to know what they want to do at 18.
ladyfreckles said:You have me all figured out, don't you?
For myself, I completely agree, but by saying that taking the time right out of highschool to get job experience instead of schooling experience is better, aren't you implying that those people knew what they wanted to be at 18? (I worded that horribly)
I think you have a limited experience of the world.
It all makes much more sense.
ladyfreckles said:Well of course I do. I'm only twenty and the world is billions of years old.
And there is where I stop you. While older people may be more experienced in general, it doesn't always guarantee that they know more.
Having read the past few pages, this is completely unsurprising. I know it sounds condescending, but your lack of maturity has shown in this discussion. I work in higher education, and while there are certainly students who are getting degrees that are more trade related, engineering, business, film, they are also getting a foundation in the humanities. I myself was one of those liberal arts students, one degree in the Classics, and I truly believe even though I do not have a job relating to my major, I use skills I learned every day.
I think Irvine may have been responding more to your views on your accomplishments. I can kind of see where he's coming from (and like trojanchick, that isn't meant to be condescending)