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College presents new material over a much broader spectrum than virtually all jobs do on a day to day basis where most work is largely repetitive. The basis of a college education is to teach certain material but also to teach one how to think and access material.
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.
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.
The high school kids here have to learn two years of algebra and take geometry and calculus and trig. Not one teacher can explain when or how they will ever use this math. i look around my small town and doubt anyone uses such math either. Common sense stuff like keeping a home budget isn't taught. I wonder if a person who took none of this math could just do it all with his computer. I personally am glad I read fast it comes in handy each day. I have been a truck driver for many years and you would be surprised at all the drivers I have met who had advanced degrees in various things. It came across as a waste of time and money. If you have some advanced math degree or learning I hope it has done something for you.that you use it.
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?
In general, I agree.
Some jobs are more complex and require more mental applications. But these jobs too, require education and experience helps one go from that progression. Most (nearly all?) jobs are repetitive to different degrees.
The progression is:
Unconscious incompetence
Conscious incompetence
Conscious competence
Unconscious competence.
My Uni days required more thinking than any jobs I've had.
I’ve mostly had jobs where I was creating intellectual property. Software with copyrights. Architecture with patents. I’m always learning new technology and making decisions that impact the commercial success of my company. A poor decision can put the company out of business. For the first 25 of my career, I was way more intellectually engaged than in college. I’ve aged out of being as strong doing quick study and being creative. I now rely more on experience.
Electronics engineering was easily as hard as college, sometimes worse. I eventually discovered that by and large, I was mentally exhausted by 4:00 pm, and wasn't generally very productive for serious design unless I was already deeply involved in some problem. Late afternoons were the time for documentation, where I could back off.
Yes! I feel like I learned way more about my career and how to function while on the job, of course. A lot of what I learned in my degree program isn't used or relevant, but still required in order to graduate. I remember the study groups I was in staying up until 3 am together memorizing course content. I can barely recall any of that now, and excel in my position nonetheless.
College required hard work, but learning is cumulative.
I'm an EE. I remember that first course in electronics as being very difficult.
But after doing EE design for 5 years, that stuff was easy. I reviewed that first EE textbook 5 years into my career and discovered that it was like reading a comic book. I covered it in 5 minutes.
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.
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