This is the thread where you make me feel better about not having a degree.

The college I go to is mostly teacher training and every day I spend their makes me wish I had caused more trouble in school. I do most of my reading in and around the college library and am not sure how much longer I can listen, day in day out, to the same conversation that alternates between "I was so hammered last night" and Dawson's Creek bullshit, and made me think "no argument here" when on the bus I overheard someone say it was like a secondary school. I feel for the lecturer who today when comparing the text to Poe's 'Fall of the House of Usher' "which you might have heard of", received looks betraying a Father Dougal level of puzzlement from people who, at age 19, having chosen to study English, having chosen to study Robinson Crusoe, having received three lectures on it, don't know what the word "colonial" means when faced with it in an exam. So yeah, all you people complaining about over-academic bullshit, I hate you because I imagine you are like the vacuous, idle-brained, dull-eyed cunts I find it harder and harder to hide my utter disdain for. Which is not to say its fun-fun-happytime either. That the place contains very few local people has done nothing to destroy my prejudices re: country-folk, e.g. yesterday someone was peeved almost to the point of violence when I told him I didn't care about hurling or any other sport (though I would that what he blamed it on - my being from Limerick - were true. Sadly, sport is so ingrained in the minds of the aforementioned local people that the aforementioned Father Dougal look becomes painfully familiar when they find you unable to talk about fucking rugby). What's worst is I have the feeling that: (a) if (increasingly when) I leave for another college, I'll find I've just described that one too and (b) I will end up a teacher myself.

(It's a bit exaggerated)

I'm trying to get SOME kind of degree, though, even an AA.

There are little life experiences really to be had at uni that you can't get elsewhere if you really want them. If you want a degree, you could always do an Open University one, then you still get to keep having a job and therefore being superior to the suckers with the £££ student loans who don't even have work experience.

also remember it's never too late (oh god, here he goes again). there are grillions of mature students these days (sorry jonney, i don't know how old you are), and i think you tend to get a better deal out of the whole fees/grants/loans thing if you've been supporting yourself for a couple of years. also as of 2005/06 it *should* be free for grown-ups to do a-levels (still at planning stage at the mo) if they haven't got them already, and there are loads of other ways full and part-time to get back in to it, if you choose.

I don't feel it harmed me intellectually at all - I think I learned more (admittedly widely and rarely in huge depth) by just following my interests. I don't doubt that I missed out on some experiences (you don't live like a student when you're married and in your late 30s, so that didn't count - and I did computing then, and didn't get the impression the young students were having thrilling experiences) but I had some other experiences, and I have no particular reason to think they were lesser or worse ones. As for career, it depends what you want to do - for some things it is far easier if you have a degree (but only in a few is it a necessity), in some it makes little or no difference. Depends what you want to to do.

university is wasted on the young, it seems, since adding an education on top of all the other shit you go thru at age 18-twentywhatever doesn't always have the best results.

Do you really have to meet the people who buy your work if you're an artist? I would hate that, as I'd end up judging whether the person was worthy of owning my work.

Also, my partner is 21, gave up on school in year 11, failed maths every single year, and is now a very talented 3D artist/programmer with an intimidating grasp of 3d math formulae and is a fantastic cartoonist, obviously he didnt need to study to get where he is now (lead artist's job at 21!)

Lucky bugger...

So no-one has found that a degree hindered them in any way career-wise? I'm looking to get into database/Win based development (which is kinda what I do at the moment, albeit unpaid and under-appreciated) - I was under the impression that no matter how good your "portfolio" is (I dunno if portfolio is the right word, but you now what I mean) you won't get a foot in the door if you don't have a piece of paper saying that you can do it. Is this true?

But then again I've got to have SOME kind of bugbear now I've accepted... Richey... is ... d-d-d-d... DOWNTHEDOGS he isn't dead! He isn't!!

Ho hum.

Anyway the upshot of all this is that I'm working through a GCSE maths textbook to see if A-Level Maffs is what I should have a bish at later on this year. I appear to have forgotten EVERYTHING so perhaps not eh?

Coincidentally, HSA didn't even study art AT ALL - he studied psychology, which is probably MUCH more important to understand if you plan on being a successful artist.

However - my 4 years of university education were a series of experiences that I wouldn't have missed for the world. That's really all I feel non-studes are missing out on. Lots of free and cheap stuff, too.

My actual career is nothing to do with what I studied. However, now I keep thinking I should formalise it and get some useful qualifications within my field, which would be a lot more useful than the supposedly fun and entertaining vanity degree I attempted.

Hmmm, Birkbeck is around the corner from us. Met one of their professors at the conference in Hull last weekend, he was mad as a snake, but very entertaining.

You got us! Trade them in.

Granted, being an academic was never an ambition of mine, and I knew right from the start that this wasn't what I really wanted to with my life.

As for the lack of a degree hurting anyone intellectually, hell, I can't tell you how many dimwits I've had to endure who have an armful of doctorate degrees (the more they boast about them, the stupider they usually are) or the functionally illiterate undergraduate students I had who not only graduated, but went on to potentially "successful" graduate-level posts and future academic careers.

I can also tell you about the genuinely intelligent and capable doctorate degree-holders I know who are lucky if they can find a part time teaching gig at a junior college, ending up earning less than the average grocery store cashier. Sad but true.

Of course, there are social pressures, the hollow esteem bestowed upon the university graduate. My mother just cannot understand why her "successful" son threw it all away to scrape by as an independent artist, doing whatever odd jobs may be necessary to pay the bills. What she doesn't realize or doesn't want to hear is that the reality of my so-called academic "success" manifested itself in terms of a large student loan bill, sub-minimum wage teaching gig with no security whatsoever, and so on.

Intellectually enriching? I've given this a lot of thought over the past couple of years, as objectively as I can manage, and, incredibly, I have to say that I really learned very little of any lasting value from any of the classes I took. I would like to think there was more to it, but at this stage I really have my doubts.

STORY OF MY LIFE.

marcel proust only wrote a handful of books, i think (the vast majority of which were different volumes of rememberance of days past).
-- Eisbär (llamasfu...), February 12th, 2004.

Well, yeah, but they're worlds in themselves. Plus his sentence style is umm, particular, to say the least.