I remember talking to a group of people at a workshop some years ago, and one of the people spoke up and opined that "The only purpose of a college degree is to train people to show up on time according to a schedule, and to provide potential employers with a piece of paper that tells that you, in fact, CAN do so!"
I have a very fine double degree in Finance and Marketing, that I pretty much have never used for anything. I never worked in Finance, or anything related. I have occasionally worked on marketing my own businesses, but soon enough learned that the theory taught in Universities doesn't necessarily have much practical application outside a Fortune 500 company.
Perhaps what I have had the most practical use for in life is my minor in English.
I did take a lot of creative writing courses in college, as well as a couple of semesters of technical writing, and that has come in handy, from time to time.
However, I also never pursued a career in creative writing, although I did "do time" as a technical writer in the IT industry.
By contrast, I have spent most of my life tooling around in various creative fields — in which I have no formal training — and a fair bit of time as a "lay person" in many different aspects of psychology, mental health and self-improvement.
I expect my family of origin would not have been very impressed with my path through life as they were all ostensible "Captains of Industry" in various ways and I have pretty much always walked a quite opposite path.
I do remember my mother — fairly late in her life — lamenting "what a waste" it had been to push me through all this great education only to have me choose to "not do anything worthwhile with my life."
Thanks, Mom!
In retrospect, my college degrees did get me one job, but it wasn't because of the subject matter... but simply because one of the conditions for applying for that job was "must have a 4-year University degree."
I did. And then I spent a year or so grading the written part of English papers for California High School Exit Exams. Not much to do with Finance and Marketing.
Of course, these observations wouldn't be honest or complete without the admission that I never seriously pursued work in the Finance or Marketing industry. I "fell into" a couple of marketing-like jobs more or less by accident... since I was "the one standing there" who had the most knowledge and qualifications.
I suppose the "moral" to this story — if there even is one — is that the vast majority of us don't know or understand what what we really want to do with our lives until after we've been in the working world for a while. So getting a college degree in "some subject" before we've sampled the possibilities?
Maybe I'm missing something, but it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Get a basic education, work at various things for 5-6 years, and then get a formal education in some field after we know it's what interests us.
Thanks for reading, and have a great Friday!
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Created at 2023-03-16 23:24 PST
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