Education Decision Crossroads

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 6:44 pm

So I've begun to grow dissatisfied with where my life is heading so I've been revisting my old ideas of going to college or university. Working dead-end jobs in kitchens as a dishwasher with my fucked up back can't keep going on. With my back as it is, I can't even do the better paying roadwork I did when I was younger, so it seems I need to find something Better.

As a kid I wanted to be a scientist but eventually the metalworking trades took my attention and kept it there. Sadly, school repeatedly dicked my cohorts and I around, costing us apprenticeships and wasting numerous semesters on courses that ended up worthless. So no trades for me.

The last few years I feel like I've become dumber; I haven't had my mind tested and challenged since around grade 10, which was when I still believed the promises they gave me. I'd like a job that makes me think, I guess.

So that brings me to going to post-secondary. I need to take something that won't leave me in debt for the rest of my life, and will actually get me a job. I'm rather interested in sustainable living, alternative fuels, etc.

So far I have two ideas:

1) Chemistry. I never really took it in school aside from in general science courses. It sounds fascinating and could let me make useful chemicals and fuels, or let me produce LSD or something.

2) Take courses on alternative building techniques, renovations, and entrepeneurialism. Start a business on making and renovating homes to be more efficient, "green", or what have you.

I am about to try Tai Chi to help my back finally get back into shape. I haven't been able to exercise much for several years since it gets hurt so easily. If, over the course of a year, I can get close to normal, perhaps #2 will be slightly easier.

Can you guys help me decided on a path to take? Not necessarily the two I posted, naturally, but I'd appreciate input.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 7:07 pm

Every now and then I wonder if there is a when the health care bubble which will pop and leave a ton of unemployed, but until then it is a decent field for jobs.

You could get training to be a pharmacy tech or some other techie job. Sometimes just getting your foot in any hospital job can allow you easier access to move to other jobs within the facility or network.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 7:44 pm

If you do go to college, make sure you have a specific job in mind with a specific degree with verified knowledge that the desired degree from your school will with high probability get you the job you want.

The vast bulk of college students are only there for financial aid (or "free money" as they call it), not realizing the lifetime of inescapable debt that is incurred when they spend 6 years getting a 2 year degree in Sociology that nobody anywhere is willing to pay for.

While chemistry will require college coursework, you'll gain nothing from college in the other fields you mentioned. Instead, go work for a handyman for a pittance to get basic skills, then read some books.

Looking at those other fields you mentinoed, my free advice is that you could probably start a business setting up solar energy systems once you have the basics of being an electrician down.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 8:01 pm

If you're looking to transition from manual or skilled labor into a white-collar job, there are plenty of options - technical writing (normally a 4 year bachelor degree or a 2 year associate's) or paralegal (2 year degree) work isn't too terribly difficult to come by, though the initial pay rates aren't terrific. If you pick up enough engineering courses and experience then even without a degree you could apply for a professional engineering certification - which is a bit of an ass-kicker, but opens lots of doors.

K · Post by K » Sat Sep 17, 2011 9:10 pm

Ancient History wrote:If you're looking to transition from manual or skilled labor into a white-collar job, there are plenty of options - technical writing (normally a 4 year bachelor degree or a 2 year associate's) or paralegal (2 year degree) work isn't too terribly difficult to come by, though the initial pay rates aren't terrific. If you pick up enough engineering courses and experience then even without a degree you could apply for a professional engineering certification - which is a bit of an ass-kicker, but opens lots of doors.

My experience with tech writing in Silicon Valley is that it's hard to get and you are the first to get laid-off. This is probably because there really is no certification for it.

I hear IT is pretty easy to get into and the pay is much better than dishwashing.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 9:50 pm

erik wrote:Every now and then I wonder if there is a when the health care bubble which will pop and leave a ton of unemployed, but until then it is a decent field for jobs.

In theory, when the current baby boom generation croaks, the bubble will pop. On the other hand, a lot of people will also be going into retirement in the industry at that time so it might be a wash.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 9:51 pm

Any form of Engineering is a permanent boost to your employability, and kicks open a ton of doors. Engineering is also harder than most degrees though (on the average, not in specific). If you're going that way though, make sure you can at least pretend to be a general engineer. I was biomedical, I got a job in reliability by emphasizing how close that was to electrical. Aerospace is about the only exception, and that's still something you can pretend is mechanical. Speaking of: Mechanical engineering means HVAC work. I thought it meant cars too; I was wrong too.

Don't believe everything you see on what various degrees make; the fine print is a real killer. Often it only measures people with employment, and even then it's not regionally adjusted. Reliability engineering (for example) is a great field, but there's not a lot of demand, and you pretty much have to live in the area I'm in, where even a no-frills starter house is a quarter million dollars.

An Ivy League law degree is worth a lot more than a community college certification. One is worth mortgaging your future, the other is worth amounts of money you could carry in your wallet. Don't confuse them.

Maybe 10% of what you learn in college will be applicable most of the time. You will not know which 10% until after the fact.

Networking matters more than anything. That's always true, but bears repeating.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Sep 18, 2011 1:13 am

Doom wrote:If you do go to college, make sure you have a specific job in mind with a specific degree with verified knowledge that the desired degree from your school will with high probability get you the job you want.

This.

Also, do your research. There's a lot of really crappy Community Colleges that are happy to take your money and not give much for it. I'm not saying they all are bad, I am saying my experience with the community college system is not something I'd recommend to anyone.

K · Post by K » Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:07 am

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:
Doom wrote:If you do go to college, make sure you have a specific job in mind with a specific degree with verified knowledge that the desired degree from your school will with high probability get you the job you want.
This.

Also, do your research. There's a lot of really crappy Community Colleges that are happy to take your money and not give much for it. I'm not saying they all are bad, I am saying my experience with the community college system is not something I'd recommend to anyone.

Community colleges are a joke, both from an educational standard and as an investment in your future. Since the teachers are generally incompetent, you don't get the kind of feedback you need to develop actual skills, won't make important contacts, and might even get poor grades because the teacher isn't smart enough to run a class.

I mean, I once had a teacher try to fail me because she failed to write down the evaluation notes she gave me for a final presentation and tried to pretend that I didn't show up that day to do the presentation.... that I did with a partner and so our group effort would be in his eval .... and two other students who were also a part in the presentation and it should have been in their evals too.... well, draw your own conclusions. I eventually had to go to the Dean of her department and I still only ended up with a B instead of the A that I deserved. Screwing your transcript because your teacher is incompetent is a risk you take at community colleges.

I also took philosophy courses with no writing where some students were able to turn in a fucking song for their final project. Compare that to a university intro. to philosophy course where you write five papers a quarter with a major paper at the end and get the teacher's feedback on your work, and they actually show up for office hours and you have a TA for more personal feedback.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Sep 18, 2011 11:05 am

K wrote: Compare that to a university intro. to philosophy course where you write five papers a quarter with a major paper at the end and get the teacher's feedback on your work, and they actually show up for office hours and you have a TA for more personal feedback.

I fucking hear that. I'm not 100% sure any teacher I had showed up for office hours because typical office hours at the place I went was two hours a week. Twice a week they might be in their office between 10-11 am. And it was generally timed when I was at work or couldn't be arsed to be there (it's hard when a teacher has office hours between 7-8am, and you work until 1am at night, and you're an hour away).

I bombed my third (and hopefully final) attempt at English Literature because the teacher I had kept changing the syllabus a couple times a month, never had any dates on the syllabus (the assignments were labeled Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, etc. Which was fine until he started fucking with it.), and wouldn't respond to e-mail (Maybe excusable, except for the fact that this class was 100% online and that was the only way to communicate with him). I gave him a bad evaluation, but said teacher was also head of the fucking English department.

And to make it worse, the guidance counselors fucking lied to me. They said I could transfer to a real college at the end. The local college says they don't even give transfer students from Community College an actual Bachelor's degree. You spend two more years taking college classes and get a "Certificate of Adult Education". You don't get to declare a major, you don't get to have a curriculum, you get a second phoney-balogna degree to add to the first.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 2:27 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:And to make it worse, the guidance counselors fucking lied to me. They said I could transfer to a real college at the end. The local college says they don't even give transfer students from Community College an actual Bachelor's degree. You spend two more years taking college classes and get a "Certificate of Adult Education". You don't get to declare a major, you don't get to have a curriculum, you get a second phoney-balogna degree to add to the first.

Wow, that's a double crap; both the community college and the rgular college. I know that with my alma mata, RPI, they worked with the local community college to ensure that the same material was taught in the community college and transfered 100% of those courses into the regular degree program. In the community college where I live now, they make their major advertisements that their students graduate (with real degrees) in a number of local colleges in the area including state colleges.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 3:14 pm

Universities are just as bad as community colleges really. I've had more than my share of incompetent university profs; like K, I'm still annoyed at my university English professor because she kept taking points off because I was using words improperly (eg, I'd write "There are many facets to this argument...", and she'd put an X on "facet", because that word "is for jewels", and this sort of confusion happened every paper, sort of like here, actually). I also remember a university physics professor that curved my 90 down to a B because all the frat students got straight 100s on all his tests (because he never changed tests, and as a freshman I didn't know that, while the frat boys just needed to memorize the multiple choice answers to get their 100). I've also known some great community college profs.

It really depends on the actual place you're going to (and then particular professors there), not the label, which is why before you step foot on campus, whatever kind of campus it is, you need to make sure whatever you're going to get there is something you can use, at a price that makes sense to pay.

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 4:06 pm

Let's see, "2 year colleges" can go like this:

http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2 ... mills.html

So yeah.

Research a lot about the possibilities of employement of each career AND how graduates of the college are seen on the labor market. In my opinion, STEM fields with real world applications are money, Liberal Arts are garbage.

In an Ivy League you pay extra for the networking.

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 4:11 pm

Damn, now my university is sounding awesome.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 5:32 pm

tzor wrote:
erik wrote:Every now and then I wonder if there is a when the health care bubble which will pop and leave a ton of unemployed, but until then it is a decent field for jobs.
In theory, when the current baby boom generation croaks, the bubble will pop. On the other hand, a lot of people will also be going into retirement in the industry at that time so it might be a wash.

Oh it will be sooner than that. Hospitals are totally fucking up healthcare by competing against one another. Even though a community already has more hospitals than it needs, the competing hospital networks will build even more hospitals in order to capture more marketshare from their competitor hospital networks. Sure it creates a lot of good jobs, but it also keeps driving up the cost of healthcare tremendously since you have all these unnecessary extra facilities and employees needing paid.

This cannot go on forever, and eventually the hospital networks are going to compete themselves out of a job, as they tear down the rest of the economy in the process.

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:52 pm

Meikle641 wrote:I am about to try Tai Chi to help my back finally get back into shape. I haven't been able to exercise much for several years since it gets hurt so easily. If, over the course of a year, I can get close to normal, perhaps #2 will be slightly easier.

I would suggest supplementing your Tai Chi with light yoga. You can usually find classes taught at your local YMCA or equivalent. It doesn't have the coolness factor of Tai Chi but it will help to strengthen your back and core without stress.

K · Post by K » Sun Sep 18, 2011 9:31 pm

I realized that when I first posted I didn't have any actual advice, so here it is:

If you got good or great grades in high school, get into a four-year school. Transfer into a better school if you can because people only care about where your degree is from and not the path you took to get it, but the value of going to decent schools the whole time with real teachers cannot be underestimated.

Second, don't work and do school. You are going to be taking out big loans, but when school is your actual route to success those are not going to matter. I went to UC Santa Cruz and got away with 30K in loans, which is the amount of a good car but easily payable if you are making 30K a year more than you were before. Also, the extra free time not spent on breaking the curve of your classes should be spent on degree-related self-projects because that kind of thing is epic to bring up in interviews and is basically free experience (ie, if you want to be a mechanical engineer, you should be playing with mechanical shit in your free time) .

Third, liberal arts are not the route to getting a job. If you wanted to be a tech writer, an engineering, CS, or other science degree will open more doors than a degree in literature. This is because writing and art can't be taught and engineering can and most people know that and ask for a portfolio or sample anyway.

Fourth, don't go to a private school unless it's an Ivy League or MIT. The extra 20K a year is not worth it.

Fifth, be realistic about your skill-set. For example, if you weren't taking advanced math in high school, chances are good that you are never going to be an engineer without several years extra being tacked onto your education.

Sixth, as an older student you are going to shocked at the laziness and apathy of some of your fellow students and their terrible plans of getting a useless degree. Try not to let that be a model of behavior for yourself because those guys are going to be degree-holding dishwashers while you are going to be that well-employed guy who once had a dishwashing job.

PS. Young college girls are not going to want to fuck you. Just go into it knowing that.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 10:19 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote: And to make it worse, the guidance counselors fucking lied to me. They said I could transfer to a real college at the end. The local college says they don't even give transfer students from Community College an actual Bachelor's degree. You spend two more years taking college classes and get a "Certificate of Adult Education". You don't get to declare a major, you don't get to have a curriculum, you get a second phoney-balogna degree to add to the first.

Hmm. That sucks. Here, in California, the community colleges all have the exact same transfer policy: The public universities are required by law to accept essentially everyone with a certain GPA and classes completed.

As far as teaching quality goes, I'd avoid research universities, as the professors aren't there to teach, they are there to do research. I once had a professor who quit her previous job for being reprimanded for letting her teaching get in the way of her research.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 1:18 am

To add on to what Neeeek said, schools that are known to be good for graduate students aren't always good for undergrads. Do your research.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 2:23 am

Yeah, I'm an American River College Student, and most of the teachers are pretty good. There are some, especially in my major program, Culinary, who clearly do not want to be teachers, and hate grading and such, but they're good at the actual teaching part and know their stuff, so if it takes a bit of extra time to get papers back, I'm fine with that.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 9:02 am

I'd like to recomend geology as an easy field to make money in. A BS will essentially guarantee you a paid internship + company grants with an oil/mining/construction company if you're smart and then you use that to get your MS. In exchange, you work 5 years for your corporate sponser at ~50K a year and then go do whatever with your life. If you have the brains for chemistry/engineering, you have the brains for stratigraphy and geochemistry.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 3:50 pm

erik wrote:Oh it will be sooner than that. Hospitals are totally fucking up healthcare by competing against one another. Even though a community already has more hospitals than it needs, the competing hospital networks will build even more hospitals in order to capture more marketshare from their competitor hospital networks.

I haven't seen this on Long Island. I've seen existing hospitals go into specialization (mostly in areas not related to the elderly), but there has been no major increase in hospitals in my area (fortunately, there is no longer a major decline in hiospitals in my area).

Count Arioch the 28th · Mon Sep 19, 2011 4:12 pm

Neeeek wrote:
Hmm. That sucks. Here, in California, the community colleges all have the exact same transfer policy: The public universities are required by law to accept essentially everyone with a certain GPA and classes completed.

Just out of curiosity, what GPA is that? I'm wondering because such a program exists here, but the GPA requirements tend to be 3.5 or higher. (Universtity of Virginia requires a 3.9, and Radford requires a 3.0, but they are both outliers statistically from my own research)

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 5:14 pm

My .02 buckaroos on using community college to complete undergrad credit assuming that they'll take it:

1.) Figure out the difference in rigor between the classes taught at community college and the non-community colleges. It doesn't always follow that what the community college and university teaches are the same/different in difficulty. For example, at ACC the Differential Equations class is a joke compared to the UT but the Vector Calculus class is viewed about the same in difficulty (because it's taught by the same group of professors).

2.) Figure out how much you're going to be using that class in the future. Everyone for the EE Track recommends taking Physics 1 during the summer because it's easier at ACC and you use almost nothing from it in later courses. Physics 2, not so much--then again people say for EEs to take PHY2 at ACC anyway because there's more of an emphasis on electromagnetics than the one at UT.

3.) Schedule your damn classes. A lot of colleges won't let you enroll simultaneously in another college and their own. So either you're going to have to take the class at the community college during the summer or punt the university altogether.

4.) Sometimes summer classes are easier, sometimes they're not. Vector Calculus is a lot easier during the summer than it is during the semester because they cut out some of the more 'useless' things. I could not imagine taking Differential Equations during the summer unless I wanted to lose my mind.

5.) This really isn't applicable to what you asked, but some people say to take all of your hard classes first and save the easy ones for later. I don't quite agree with that, I think it's 'best' to have one or two 'easy' classes per semester to get to 'full time' student. Taking more than three hard classes in a semester is a recipe for failure.

6.) Very strongly consider taking a minor in another language. Those things are worth their weight in gold and pound-for-pound those classes are worth more than probably anything else you'll take at a university. Unfortunately if you're going math/science there's probably literally no room to fit them into your schedule short of taking an extra semester or two, so you might consider taking one you're already good at. If you have the money for it though it's damn worth it.

7.) More non-university advice: you need to go into the university realizing that you're dumb and probably don't know a lot. I got out of the Naval Nuclear Power program thinking that I was all swoll and smart and after getting the shit kicked out of me in Physics and Calculus it was a humbling experience. I remember the first time that I got an 'F' on a test after the teacher posted our grades; I was physically sick and had to leave the class.

You need to go in with the mindset of 'I'm not that smart, I'm not that smart' otherwise you'll be in for a rude awakening. You also especially need to keep in mind that just because the younger students are slacking and getting A's doesn't mean that you'll be able to get away with it. Especially for lower-division undergraduate classes there's a very good chance (especially at the richer universities) that a classmate of yours took a class similar to it when they were in high school and for them that was like less than a year ago so they can get by with coasting.

One other thing, esp. for math classes you should learn all of the basic formulas for calculating area/volume and especially trigonometric identities. It'll save you a lot of grief if you know every single one of them and how to calculate the value of a unit circle without referring to it. You should both brute-force memorize them and also learn how to derive them.

8.) The general rule is that the more generalized a class is the easier it will be, though this isn't always the case. One of the hardest classes I ever took was 'Introduction to Theater since the 19th Century' and it was about 50+ pages of plays and at least a 5 page essay every week. Just because you're good enough for math or science majors this doesn't mean that every non-science/math class will be a cakewalk.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 5:37 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:
Neeeek wrote:
Hmm. That sucks. Here, in California, the community colleges all have the exact same transfer policy: The public universities are required by law to accept essentially everyone with a certain GPA and classes completed.
Just out of curiosity, what GPA is that? I'm wondering because such a program exists here, but the GPA requirements tend to be 3.5 or higher. (Universtity of Virginia requires a 3.9, and Radford requires a 3.0, but they are both outliers statistically from my own research)

I want to say 2.7 for the CSUs and 3.3 for the UCs, but it's been a while since I checked.

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