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Since so much of it seemed unnecessary for my profession, i referred to it as "jumping through hoops."
This is a good way to describe how I feel about the process, and It's what stops me from seeking higher education. Too many barriers to entry. I feel like if I want to learn, you should let me learn. Instead, I have to get sized up according to all these factors that have less to do with learning and more to do with whether I'll ultimately make the school/advisors look good once I "succeed" in the ways they think are successful. No thanks. I've done way more critical thinking outside of school. Sure, it'd be nice to have a degree that shows people how smart I am, but I don't need to go thousands of dollars in debt for an institution to program me how to think.
Work is about sticking to a process and not fretting over a specific result. If the result isn't the right one, it's on the manager to fine-tune the process - to troubleshoot and see what went wrong and do better next time.
School is about getting very specific results no matter how. It's like being an independent contractor. To keep things interesting, grading is done on a curve which is most certainly NOT how the real world works.
As others have said, it depends on the job. For me, thinking on the job (I'm retired now) was much harder than any thinking I had to do while in college and that extends to thinking in grad school, too. The amount of "thinking" I had to do on my job was dynamic and challenging. It was never about "sticking to a process and not fretting over a specific result." If what I did on my job resulted in a poor outcome, people could have been seriously harmed or died because of it.
When a person's job is in health care, it's really not acceptable to have a manager "see what went wrong so it can be done better next time." I definitely wanted specific results and even though there are certain things that do follow a process, my job mostly required being able to think on my feet and to know when to follow protocols and when to deviate from them. Things could and did change on a dime and there was a lot of "thinking" involved - much more so than when I was in school.
But that is my point, thinking is harder under pressure and from lack of sleep.
But let's fantasize that the hours are the same for both work and school. Then work in my case would still be harder and require more thinking than just school. The complexity of the work required in my job far exceeds that what is required in the classroom. Multiple competing deadlines even in a 40 hour week which require analysis, communicating with clients, writing specifications, coding, testing, migration to production and support for as many as 20 clients taxes the mind far more than just sitting in a classroom, controlled study with the material to study already prepared for you, and taking examinations that you have studied for in a static manner.
Interesting because I found both college and work to have multiple competing deadlines but work was much less stressful because the product had to be right but didn't have to match a predetermined answer. That was one of the most stressful things in college was providing the answer they wanted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jobaba
School favors harder workers while work favors quicker thinkers.
At work, a client or your boss might come to you Monday morning unexpectedly and demand you produce something, or give an answer to a question, and you have to answer on the spot.
In school, you know when everything is coming, all the quizzes, tests, and papers, so you can prepare for them and work harder than others if you're not as quick of a thinker.
Work is painstaking attention to detail to mundane tasks.
School is painstaking repetition of engineering problem sets so that when a similar problem comes up on the test you 'get it right'.
Neither is particularly fun, but I was better at school.
I found the opposite. School favored the quicker thinkers who could provide the "school solution" on a dime. Hard working plodders didn't score as well. Usually tests had more questions than a plodder could answer in the required time, even though the answers were right. Those who answered the most questions scored higher even though their answers were only partially right.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aboom
College was definitely harder when it comes to "thinking." Since so much of it seemed unnecessary for my profession, i referred to it as "jumping through hoops." Twenty years later, i'm still paying for them too.
Definitely a lot of "hoops" in college. Mostly related it seems to the required humanities courses no one would take otherwise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gree
College was like "mental masturbation".
I've found a lot more of that in the work setting. Look at the number of meetings that are nothing more than a couple execs talking to themselves while everyone else suffers through it.
The work environment is just stabbing people in the back, undercutting people, kissing rear, establishing cliques, throwing people under the bus for your own selfish gains. .. Thats pretty much the ABSENCE Of any real substantive work and bring value,
College was far more difficult. You can essentially have a lifetime/career of avoiding ANY WORK in the workplace. Can't tell you how many do nothing managers or office leaches Ive seen totally devoid any responsibility or producing anything of any real value to the company besides throwing others under the bus. . No accountability.
Theres generally no scamming around work in college. You have to EARN it. You can spend a lifetime scamming around responsibly in the workplace. Ive seen plenty of people do it. People that should have been let go years ago with jobs for life for whatever insane reason
Every single job I had for which my degree was the gateway was harder and entailed more "thinking" than any college class. Tnff, that includes teaching.
Jobs in which you not only had to know "stuff" but utilize it while integrating past experience and decision making skills into the task.
That includes the non-employment activities in which I'm involved.
Depends on the job. I was a software developer and found college way easier. College is a controlled environment with set assignments and expectations. Work for me was much more hectic with constantly shifting workloads and expectations. Sometimes a veritable madhouse where clients, assignments, and after hours support suck the life out of you. Sometimes work is dumped on you because the office is deliberately understaffed and there is no one else that can do the work. As you intelligently prioritize and let management know the timeframe of the work that will be scheduled for completion, even if it were possible for a person to work 24 hours nonstop, they look at you as though you are insane and simply say "Get it all done, today." They say that because they have never worked in IT and only manage it. They have no clue what has to be done to complete these assignments nor do they want to know. They just set the deadlines, that's all.
So you scamper around and try to do the best you can to meet the impossible deadlines, but then you get the message that it's only many overtime hours that they really want to see. They want to see you working 20 hour days and then your deadlines can slide. But if you are only working 50 or 60 hours a week, then watch out! The termination lion may just gobble you up.
So yeah, college was way easier for me and a much more enjoyable experience since the work was scheduled in a civilized manner and there was ample time given to do the work.
Yup. I worked a full career entirely and solely in systems analysis, design, programming and production support. College was challenging but it didn't come close to the stress of a job. I guess that's why the latter paid so well!
College generally was based on merit. You had to work to get the grades. The work environment is by and large based on everything BUT merit now. Your have a higher chance of being grossly underemployed and enjoy gross market undervalue and in a position you're overqualified for then you do being in a position that warrants your education/experience etc.
College was more a mentally stimulating environment. Most corporate environments are just a drag and mentally unstimulating unless you're on the "company fast-track to success" but most of these positions are reserved for cronies/friends of the family of corporate hot shots
The anger and hatred you feel for work is absolutely palpable in many of your posts and I am saddened for your mind-pain.
You really need to get a better job.
I remember in college, classes were hard and required a lot of hard work, memorization, studying, problem solving, etc. Especially math classes, science classes, and many others. I was an average student and always felt behind many of the brighter students.
Now I work and while it obviously requires me to think a lot, it’s not nearly as hard as college courses were. I work with people who I know made much better grades than me or went to better colleges, but I don’t feel they are any smarter or have a leg up on me like in college. I don’t struggle like I did in college. Mostly n cause I think experience trumps everything. If a smarter person learns something a little faster, it really doesn’t matter because my experience will get me there anyways. Or what we are learning doesn’t require you to be super smart. Anyone agree?
School is about education. Work is about producing a product or service. They are two entirely different things. School is harder for most people because you are learning something new and aren't in control of the environment as much as you are in the work place. In the work place, you want to take a break, you take it because you have control over it. You can't do that in school, you can't decide to take off a week and not attend classes after completing a stressful assignment.
Work tends to be easier for most, because work is about getting things done, and it doesn't matter how or how you do them. In school, you have to do everything yourself or it is considered cheating.
The work environment is just stabbing people in the back, undercutting people, kissing rear, establishing cliques, throwing people under the bus for your own selfish gains. .. Thats pretty much the ABSENCE Of any real substantive work and bring value,
College was far more difficult. You can essentially have a lifetime/career of avoiding ANY WORK in the workplace. Can't tell you how many do nothing managers or office leaches Ive seen totally devoid any responsibility or producing anything of any real value to the company besides throwing others under the bus. . No accountability.
Theres generally no scamming around work in college. You have to EARN it. You can spend a lifetime scamming around responsibly in the workplace. Ive seen plenty of people do it. People that should have been let go years ago with jobs for life for whatever insane reason
Maybe in lower skilled jobs this rings more true, but that's why those jobs pay less and are less mentally engaging: more people can do them. It's also why people in these jobs tend to care less about the work they produce or do the least acceptable job as to not get fired. They have no autonomy and freedom at work, are generally micro-managed and are seen as easily replaceable cogs. I've had many jobs like this, and they are mind numbing and soul crushing. This is also why I went back to school at 25 to get a technical degree.
This is why tech/engineering/medical and other high-skilled jobs pay so well. You have to produce objective value or you don't survive, there's no such thing as avoiding work or scamming around things. You have mentally taxing and highly detail-oriented projects that need to get done and deadlines to meet. People that are even "acceptable" in a lot of these fields companies will do a lot to retain since it is so painful to find and train a replacement.
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I worked a full career entirely and solely in systems analysis, design, programming and production support. College was challenging but it didn't come close to the stress of a job. I guess that's why the latter paid so well!
