Theodore H. Smith wrote:
>>>> It also demonstrates that your at least persistent enough to
>>>> accomplish and acquire one instead of just waving your hands and
>>>> shouting "bullshit" at it.
>>> But not smart enough to realise that you can acheive more outside of
>>> the academia? Must be a very useful kind of intelligence, smart
>>> enough
>>> to be persistant at what others tell you is a good thing, but not
>>> smart enough to question if it is REALLY a good thing.
>> Ah right you have to have NOT had a degree to realize that.
>
> Nope. Honestly the main thing University seems to teach is arrogance.
> The belief that you know more than you know, which usually shows up
> when you encounter an area new to you. The tendancy to copy other
> people's ideas and believe that you are really really clever and
> superior, for having copied someone else's ideas, despite that you can
> invent nothing. That sort of thing.
Wow. Thanks for the free psychoanalysis. Did I do something in
particular for you to start insulting everyone you don't even really know?
I mean, not having a degree must automatically mean you're on par with
everyone below your own social strata, right? Just like having a degree
means the opposite?
Or maybe you're just looking to denigrate people on this list who have
degrees? Did someone with a degree take a <deleted> in your coffee when
you weren't looking so now you're on a mission to insult people?
Oddly enough, I have a degree, a minor and a major in two different
areas actually, and at the same time I don't really give a damn if the
guy at the next desk has a degree or not as much as I care about whether
they have more than the intelligence of a horsefly and I can work with
them to get the job done, much as I don't care if they drive a porche or
a ten year old Honda.
I've known plenty of people with little or no degree yet much ambition
and drive to get ahead in the world. I've known people with degrees in
CS who couldn't recognize a Bash prompt or know what rooted means, and I
know people making twice my salary who panic when their desktop icon
layout changed slightly. I guess it takes all kinds.
If you have an issue with someone who happens to have a degree maybe you
should consider they're just a jerk, and it doesn't come from having a
degree or their academic experience or lack thereof.
> I wasn't arguing that. I was arguing that you can learn the
> theoretical side without university, far quicker, and far better
> outside.
Really? I've found that people get institutionalized to a particular
way of thinking depending on the environment where they're
indoctrinated. You might not like the academic culture, but it's still
supposed to be there as a resource to learn in. You'll also learn a bit
working in IBM, or Microsoft, or Apple, or any of a number of other
businesses that have adopted a particular environmental culture.
Of course, you both learned it on your own and in an academic
environment so you can authoritatively make this assertion about
learning it better and quicker on one side or the other, right?
You also have to take into account that people learn in different ways
and some have a need or drive to learn; set them loose in a library and
they'll digest the material around them, others will sit and whine about
the lack of American Idol.
My personal opinion is that it takes a snob to sit and opine that their
lack of academic education and the assertion that to have an academic
background of some kind makes the graduate snobby while the person in
question implies he has the one true way of learning, pulled by his own
bootstraps, is filled with a false sense of self importance and
arrogance. I'm fully aware of the fact that the average farmer probably
doesn't know what an event horizon of a singularity is but I know jack
<expletive> about running a farm, and I have a degree, so where do I fit
into your spectrum of people who have wasted their time becoming self
important in a college environment?
And if you're going to poke again at the assertion that degree-holding
people are sensitive to jerks telling them they wasted their time, then
yes, but it's not because I want "science" part of a title. I NEVER
portrayed myself as a "computer scientist" to my coworkers. I'm a tech.
I'm a geek. I'm a "computer person". I'm also considered a
technology janitor and a necessary evil in the organization I work in,
since it's not a technology-oriented culture. But when I was in college
I learned plenty not only from my peers and their background, and from
my professor who was employed many moons ago at Bell Labs, but from my
new friends and peers. I learned more about getting along with
different people, I was exposed to other cultures, and yes, I busted my
arse studying concepts I never had in public school, so while I didn't
walk out of that experience with Godlike powers I did leave knowing that
I was better for the experience and certainly did not waste my time
aquiring that knowledge and meeting those people.
I certainly will not let some self-proclaimed self-taught blowhard I've
*never MET* tell me that he's my superior only because he learned in the
school of life, or that he has more money, or drives a better car, or
some other measure that in the long run means nothing since two hundred
years from now we'll both be FERTILIZER.
Whatever. If you want to make a point by point off list, I'm up for it.
I fully admit this was more of a rant than anything else, so it ill
represents who I am...but hey, it's not like the argument here is really
accomplishing anything. But this is really off topic, it accomplishes
nothing, I'm having a bad day and really, the points have already been
boiled down to,
"College people are arrogant and snobby and think they know everything
when they wasted their time. They should have worked on their own and
have nothing other than life experience to show for it."
"Nuh-uh!"
"You just deny it because you don't want to lose your sense of self
importance"
"Nuh-uh!"
"I'm not going to listen to you because I'm right."
"Well, I'm not going to listen to you because you're wrong."
"Well, I'm making gobs of money and I'm smarter than you, so I'm right."
"Well, I make enough to pay the bills so far, and I don't even know you,
so I don't really care. So I'm not going to continue this rubbish on
the lists and continue making points with so many words that most of the
audience isn't even READING the damn thing anyway, so it's a waste of
both our time to pursue this."
Or maybe I've completely misread what the OP or later posters intended,
and was in a mood where I was just looking to vent and this is how it
came out...if that's the case, I apologize. If I was right in how I
read it...well..this is the last I post to this thread anyway.
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