Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Only if you've done it several times and then you run the risk of an employer wondering why you've switched jobs so many times. One thing a degree says is you finish what you start. There's something to be said for sticking with a program long enough to get a degree.
One of the issues today is it's so easy to get a degree that employers wonder why you didn't if you don't have one.
Yep... I have come upon that question already, why haven't you stayed in X for that many years. Only real two answers is, I was trying to find a good fit, or city I liked, or, you just do your career taking 6m1yr contract to hire jobs. On the other hand, if you were to stay in one position too long, they might wonder why you didn't get promoted, or if your career is on track for your age. At my last employer the director on my review said I could definitely have been doing more for the company with my skillset, and recommended that to the manager... thing is I didn't WANT a different more responsibilities job. I have also had to turn down jobs from other departments, i.e. I had one company want to hire me as a QA Analyst, but turned it down, I hate QA!. And again, I've had colleagues that see my work ask me why the heck I'm not doing something else, even why I am in IT altogether, I certainly don't fit the mold, I don't want the damn stress! I just want to go in, do my work, get the job done then forget about it and live the rest of my life lol.
A person with a college degree (typically) posses' a willingness to learn which is much more important to an employeer than the actual degree. I have two Bachelor's degrees and I'm working on a Master's degree and I've learned so much more than just what's in the books in my college career. I have to say that I very strongly agree with jps-teacher in that communication is by far the most important trait than any job-seeker could posses. You may be "IT" smart and you may know everything about computers, but what good will that do you if you can't communicate with customers? If you can't use correct grammar and spelling when writing a tech. document? I worked hard to get my degrees and it would very seriously upset me if someone who had no college education was hired over me. You want to know why a college degree makes you smart? I worked 80 hours a week for 6 years and took 18 hours of courses for 4.5 years to get 2 bachelor's degrees and came out with a 3.8. I'm working full-time now and taking 9 hours of courses at night to get my Master's degree...that discipline is not something you can teach. It's so much more work than someone who hasn't lived it could ever imagine. Yes, I have a great job that I got because of my degrees and I wouldn't change that for the world...but to work from 7-3, sit in class from 4-8 and then come home and do homework until 1 in the morning? That's discipline, hard work, and strong ethic and having that degree proves that to employeers.
Not everyone who has a college degree is smart, not everyone who doesn't have a college degree is stupid...it just shows an employeer so much more when they can see that you went to college.
you run the risk of an employer wondering why you've switched jobs so many times
I've always considered that to be a very minor risk....essentially a non-issue in my mind. I just give em a straight answer, tell em I was bored, it wasn't a good fit, or I needed a higher salary, etc. If my honest answer to that question or any other question for that matter is the reason I didn't get the job, then thank God it worked out that way. I probably wouldn't be happy working there anyway. If I gotta tell a little white lie and/or put on a pretese to get the job, chances are that I'd have to keep playing those games to keep the job anyway. What a pile of crap that would be. My interview strategy has always been to be brutually honest, and if my honesty offends them or turns them off, I'm glad I discovered their non approval of the authentic me early in the game. It would have been hell working there anyway, always pretending to be something other than who I really am. Obviously with an attitude like this I have not gotten every job I applied for, but then again I look at an interview as an opportunity for me to find out if I really want to spend 40 hrs a week in an their environment. On the other side of the coin, I've received offers that I didn't accept because of answers given to my questions. Many people forget that an interview is a two way street.
Last edited by CosmicWizard; 10-24-2009 at 04:25 PM..
A person with a college degree (typically) posses' a willingness to learn which is much more important to an employeer than the actual degree. I have two Bachelor's degrees and I'm working on a Master's degree and I've learned so much more than just what's in the books in my college career. I have to say that I very strongly agree with jps-teacher in that communication is by far the most important trait than any job-seeker could posses. You may be "IT" smart and you may know everything about computers, but what good will that do you if you can't communicate with customers? If you can't use correct grammar and spelling when writing a tech. document? I worked hard to get my degrees and it would very seriously upset me if someone who had no college education was hired over me. You want to know why a college degree makes you smart? I worked 80 hours a week for 6 years and took 18 hours of courses for 4.5 years to get 2 bachelor's degrees and came out with a 3.8. I'm working full-time now and taking 9 hours of courses at night to get my Master's degree...that discipline is not something you can teach. It's so much more work than someone who hasn't lived it could ever imagine. Yes, I have a great job that I got because of my degrees and I wouldn't change that for the world...but to work from 7-3, sit in class from 4-8 and then come home and do homework until 1 in the morning? That's discipline, hard work, and strong ethic and having that degree proves that to employeers.
Not everyone who has a college degree is smart, not everyone who doesn't have a college degree is stupid...it just shows an employeer so much more when they can see that you went to college.
Exactly. It shows you took the time to complete a degree which isn't easy, or at least didn't use to be easy.
It is amazing how many people today don't know when to use even there, their, or they're.
People with college degrees aren't necessarily smarter than those without. Far from it. I believe that those who truly choose a college education will be expecting bigger and better career opportunities. Rightfully so. Notice that I said people who choose, not people who were forced to go by their parents, etc.
A person with a college degree (typically) posses' a willingness to learn which is much more important to an employeer than the actual degree. I have two Bachelor's degrees and I'm working on a Master's degree and I've learned so much more than just what's in the books in my college career. I have to say that I very strongly agree with jps-teacher in that communication is by far the most important trait than any job-seeker could posses. You may be "IT" smart and you may know everything about computers, but what good will that do you if you can't communicate with customers? If you can't use correct grammar and spelling when writing a tech. document? I worked hard to get my degrees and it would very seriously upset me if someone who had no college education was hired over me. You want to know why a college degree makes you smart? I worked 80 hours a week for 6 years and took 18 hours of courses for 4.5 years to get 2 bachelor's degrees and came out with a 3.8. I'm working full-time now and taking 9 hours of courses at night to get my Master's degree...that discipline is not something you can teach. It's so much more work than someone who hasn't lived it could ever imagine. Yes, I have a great job that I got because of my degrees and I wouldn't change that for the world...but to work from 7-3, sit in class from 4-8 and then come home and do homework until 1 in the morning? That's discipline, hard work, and strong ethic and having that degree proves that to employeers.
Not everyone who has a college degree is smart, not everyone who doesn't have a college degree is stupid...it just shows an employeer so much more when they can see that you went to college.
So...I should spend tens of thousands of dollars to prove...willingness...
Ok, back when I was a kid, I thought I'd do an experiment. My mother got me a my first job at age 15 cleaning cabins at a resort. My goals: to be the best, to be quick, and to get along with those adult women I worked with (I'd not got along with my mother and thought this would be a challenge). No problem and I did this on Saturdays for three summmers. I was hired by a family friend to work at a flower shop. My goals: sales goals, working with customer, working with more female employees. I got bored though. I wanted more of a challenge...something that would prepare me for hard work, self disapline, and working with men later in real world jobs.
What do you think that 17 year old kid did...trimmed Christmas trees. Sounds rather nulll...unless you realize that you are swinging a dangerous and sharp machete for 6-8 hours a day in 120 degree heat, working with career criminals who couldn't hold a job. It was a job where my boss was not around, I worked in an area by myself (shorter trees) and pretty quick I was training in new people. I was the only person to hold the job the entire summer.
Another one I took was working at a gas station. When my boss went on vacation a month and a half later, I was put in charge...over the assistant manager. During his vacation, the district manager brought a GM in training for another store for a week of training with me. Can you see that? A kid, with less than two months of experience, training a GM. I was promoted to assistant manager shortly there after when the other guy moved away for college. I would have been promoted to GM in short time later when my boss finished night school to be a minister if the company hadn't decided to close the location. (bad location, drug dealing the parking lot, ect) but I wasn't so sure I was interested in getting paid $40,000 a year for what I'd be putting into it.
The one thing that has always been consistant from laborious jobs to sales, I have always been selected as "the next replacement" and have had to turn those jobs down to keep myself available to my family as I wish to be.
Ok, where are these dead in jobs going to get you in life? What does having many and a wide range of jobs like this do for you? How did these jobs influence my decision and ability to run my own job?
I learned self disapline
I learned what hard work really was and everything else is easier by comparision
I learned how to run the books
I learned how to track inventory, how to order supplies, and how to develop relationships with suppliers
I learned responsibility
I learned leadership, how to talk with my employees, how to teach them, and how to gain their respect even though I was much yonger than them
I learned through fixing mistakes how to be my own IT guy
I learned how to sell well to a wide range of people
I learned how to gain, through body language as well as spoken communication, demand respect from men who otherwise were disrespectful to women
I learned how to predict issues long before they arose and prevent issues
These are all things that I learned long before my peers were down with college. Instead of paying some people to teach me, I let them pay me to learn it. I was carefully and purposely using my skills to gain the knowledge that I needed before moving on to something new to learn the next skill.
I have taken college courses but I never cared to get a degree. I never understood everyone esle's obsessions and this willingness to give your life to people who's modivations are to use you to better their financial lives.
At the end of my life, when I'm old and sitting in a rocking chair, no one is going to be caring about my financial imput to society or what degrees I had to get there, nor am I. I will be able to measure my importance by how often my family come to visit, the memories we share. My self worth is not measured in dollars signs and I will see by the look in my grown children's eyes how what we gave them impacted them because, in the end, they are the only ones who are going to care about any of it.
BUT: What a way to use everything I learned to support myself without having to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt to do so. That is a value I am looking to teach my children.
My IQ: Not saying exactly but it is somwhere between 130-150.
DH's IQ: Higher than me in sciences and artistic abilities
Kids IQ's: they haven't been tested but...DD, 7, is somewhere between 6-12 grades, DS #1, 5, started homeschooling formally mid August and is proud to have just finished 1st grade (actually while typing this he completed his first double digit from double digit subtraction worksheet in less than two minutes), DS #2 will be four soon and has been reading for at least a year so we'll see where that takes him.
College degrees are for people who lack the knowledge and abilities to make it successfully all on their own.
College degrees are for people who have the knowledge to understand that they don't know everything, and that there is much value in having the opportunity to study with people who have dedicated their lives to studying various fields in great depth.
I learned how to support myself without going tens of thousands of dollars in debt, too. There's a little thing called scholarships (and fellowships); my undergraduate debt is small, and includes a study abroad experience, and my graduate degree was free, plus paid health insurance, a stipend to live on, and a generous book allowance. So yeah, I guess I could say that I didn't pay others to teach me, either; I let them pay me, and as a result I have an advanced degree, have had the opportunity to indulge in research that would have been difficult or impossible to do otherwise. I learned not only the practical things in life, but also learned that life (and "smartness" is not measured by money, it's not measured by IQ, and it's not measured by degrees completed. My degrees don't make me a better or smarter person than someone who doesn't have those degrees, and a degree in itself is not an indicator that someone is smart, but I did come out a smarter person than when I started school. It gave me new ways to look at the world, provided different perspectives that aren't necessarily easily encountered at your local library, and had access to people and places that would have been off-limits if I'd been busy working a "real" job. And you know what? Life is long; there's time for both school and for "real" jobs.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I bet some of them even got good grades and still came out dumb!!
), DS #2 will be four soon and has been reading for at least a year so we'll see where that takes him.
