What is your highest education level? Do you want to go back to school

[Celethiel]

Primary=Elementary and Middle schools.

Secondary=High school.

 

There is a big difference between only having completed 8th grade as opposed to 12th. You are pretty much useless for anything other then manual labor jobs if you haven't even graduated high school. Even just being a high school graduate doesn't get you very far any more in the job market. Gone are the days when you could go to work at 18, make a decent living as a low-skilled worker, and retire after 30 years in the factory. 

you're pretty much useless for anything but manuel labor WHEN you've graduated Highschool, (I would know i can't get a "decent" job and I did graduate from highschool)so there really isn't much difference in getting a job... the difference would only be I graduated from highschool, i can now go to college, where as you might not be able to with an 8th grade eduation....

My grandmother only had an 8th grade education.... she also owned at least two businesses....

her mother didn't go to college until she was in around her 50s.

[Lisa]

I don't mean to butt in b/c I really was just reading about the different educations of the members of GA, and I wasn't going to comment, but I need to say something. And I'm sorry for getting off-topic.

 

Having a social anxiety disorder is a horrible thing. I have a sixteen-year-old who struggles with this every day. He's on meds to help him but it's a struggle. He has friends in school but he won't hang out with them after school. When he's at his father's house he will only talk if someone talks to him and even then it's like pulling teeth.

 

He doesn't feel comfortable talking to most people. I worry about him a lot, especially now that college is two short years away. I can't imagine him living on campus, in a dorm room with other kids. I could only hope that he will improve by that time. I would love for him to have this great college experience like I had but I'm afraid he'll just be holed up in his room. Alone.

 

Having a "normal" college experience is extremely difficult for kids with social anxiety. They're not "fucked up", their brain is just wired a little differently. I think we all need to be a little more accepting and compassionate with the people around us and not judge others so much.

 

Again, I'm sorry for getting off-topic; I just couldn't not say something.

[Gene Splicer PHD]

I pretty much treated my high school career like a train in a continuous derailment. Lots of noise and dust and a wreck at the end, did a military enlistment that grew me up (much like college does). Got out of the military, got a decent little job as an inventory clerk at an automotive parts manufacturer, and worked my way into installing and building computers and servers for small business, something I've been pretty successful at for over 20 years, at least. I've spent a good chunk of change learning - probably as much as a college degree, but spent on technical schools and certifications. I am starting another class in a week, because at my age and in my profession, you're "old" at 45 and out of date at 50. 

 

I do this independently and I run my own business. I have a select group of small companies - some manufacturing, some more "office" type - but i know a lot of different people who work in all kinds of jobs, in many different industries. I know everyone from the kid on the forklift to the president at most of my clients. Its nice that I know enough to rattle off "how to do x on y computer", but it's also good to know how these places work, and have a bit of a voice in how they spend their money on technology. All without a college degree.

 

Most of the folks I work with, at these small companies - they don't have degrees either. They're press operators, construction workers, pressmen at print shops, they're all over the map. They're good friends with their co-workers, good people to know. Solid, honest people with a good grounding in their families, their friends, their trips to Vegas, their cabin up north. Most will retire from where they are with a 20 year watch and a nice little pension, and then they'll go do something else - one guy retired as a press operator and started an online business with his kids.

 

Can you be successful without a college degree? Absolutely YES. Can you be rich? Sure, but it's a lot harder. Most people don't try (but I do know at least two people that built nice little companies from nothing - one was a landscaper who built his business up and sold it for a few million. Another is a college dropout who went to work in the family business and made it take off. He'll sell it in a couple of years after the patriarch passes - and he'll make way more than a few million. 

 

And about that military stint of mine - it's the same as college at that age. It's a grinder - you go and work and party your ass off, and at the end of 4 years, you figure out if it's going to be a career or if it's not for you. But you learn how to be a grown up, and that's what it's about.

[joann414]

I graduated high school as an honor student.  Small town people got the best of me.  Instead of waiting to enter college in the fall, I jumped into a business school that I could enter straight after graduating.  I was bored senseless.  After a few months, I applied for a job that I thought I would like, worked days, and continued school at night.  Still not being able to handle the people where I lived, I quit my job, and much to my dad's dismay moved over a hundred miles away, alone..

 

Luckily, I still had no problem finding a decent job.  I took some classes to gain more knowledge of my job at the time, which prepared me to a point for the job I've now worked close to thirty years.  I never dreamed that grasping different types of knowledge when they were offered would be such an asset.  During this time, I went through a thirteen month marital mistake, divorced and decided to take night classes at a small college.  I met my present day husband during this time.

 

We married, two years later, I started doing what I'm doing now.  My computer skills came from hands on experience and being able to comprehend what I read when learning new programs.  I even teach other employees the programs if they can't grasp it.  Although I don't have a degree, I have a grasp on the concept of learning.  Never think you know it all, and when knowledge is offered, absorb it and store it.  You never know when it will be useful.

 

My opinion of levels of education?  By all means, get all you can and want.   It's always a plus

[Adam Phillips]

No student needs to choose between social life and learning. You can do both. And you should. Lol You just treat sleep as optional. I and my crew in college socialized and partied to excess--and I'm talking EXCESS--and I still took care of my academic stuff.

[Sasha Distan]

Can you be successful without a college degree? Absolutely YES. Can you be rich? Sure, but it's a lot harder. Most people don't try (but I do know at least two people that built nice little companies from nothing - one was a landscaper who built his business up and sold it for a few million. Another is a college dropout who went to work in the family business and made it take off. He'll sell it in a couple of years after the patriarch passes - and he'll make way more than a few million. 

 

I have to say, the richest people i know have the fewest qualifications. the couple who own the farm where my horse is (and incidentally, that place where i spend all my free time and got married) both left school with nothing at all. they lived in a caravan with a chemical toilet for two years, saved, went to america and worked in whatever they could. they made their first million before they were 30, they now run 9 businesses. 

 

Education is only as important as resilience and the desire to succeed. 

[Kitt]

Rich is a relative term. I have no university degree, and I don't have a whopper income. Monetarily I am upper middle class. But I have family, a job I love, also run a small business in the same field, and my health back after a rough time of it. I also have a few fantastic friends that are there for me when I need support. I think I am pretty damn rich!

Edited March 17, 2014 by Kitt

[Daddydavek]

If we are going to talk about being rich,  I never wanted to have a ton of money.  Too much bother, responsibility and a pain in the ass.  I always wanted to be comfortable, afford most of what I want and to be able to provide for my family.  I basically accomplished that and therefore consider myself rich in all the ways that count.  

[Bumblebee]

I left high school after year 9, and since then I've done my Cert 2 and my apprenticeship Cert 3.
I'm classed as a post-compulsory age student (not quite mature age student) so I was able to do year 11 WACE, and next year do my year 12 WACE. (if I were a mature age student I would have to do Cert 4)
WACE is what high school students here do to pass year 12 and get their ATAR score, which gets them into uni.

 

So I'm doing that at a school which takes up to an hour and a half to get there in morning traffic (with no traffic its about 20mins)
Once I've completed this, the uni I want to go to would take about 2 hours to get there (2 hours to get home) from where I live now, there is an option to live there but it would still be cheaper for me to live at home then try and fight for a dorm room, since uni housing is pretty much non-existent.

[Thorn Wilde]

I have a Bachelor's degree in Popular Music. I went to school here in Oslo for two years, and then took a third year to complete my degree in England. I could never get used to the drinking culture... Most of the people I lived with in halls would go out every night, and I just can't keep up with that sort of thing. For the first semester I was okay, as I made friends with two people in my corridor and we would hang out in the kitchen with our laptops, go to the movies, make dinner together, etc. But then one of them, who was Dutch and there on an Erasmus programme, went back to Holland, and the other moved to the less expensive halls, and so I basically spent my second semester sitting alone in my room. I have mild social anxieties, but it was enough that I never really quite managed to make friends with the other people on my course. Coming in at the third year into an already established group is hard like that. So the social aspect of university for me was... limited, one might say.

 

It was only a couple of months before the end of the semester that I made proper friends with a guy called Robin, who was a first year music student, and he started bringing me along to the pub with his friends. They were a core group of four guys, sometimes joined by a couple more, and just the right amount of people that I could relax in their company, especially in the slightly more quiet pub we used to go to to drink good ale. They had jam nights there, too, so we used to go to those as well. It was nice. But then the year ended and that was it, and the months I had spent at university had amounted to one close friend and a degree that, let's face it, doesn't actually help me get a 'proper' job.

 

I'm going back to school in August, if I get in. I've applied to a sound technician programme. It starts as a single year diploma course but can be built up to a Bachelor if I want/can afford it. Either way, it'll teach me a craft I can actually use to make money. I mean, when I have gigs the majority of the money I earn goes to paying the sound tech. This is obviously the more sensible choice of career.

[W_L]

Wow, I love these diverse views and amazing life stories.

 

For a few key points, yes, I do agree that money ain't everything (I'm an accountant, so I should know as I see millions of dollars come in and go out, but I don't get to use it myself ). However, I like my job, because I enjoy working on numbers with meaning behind it. My life and experiences in the last few years has changed me.

 

For me, health care wasn't my first calling; it was the allure of Wall Street and High Finance. I didn't go into college with a desire to be Einstein or Socrates, but maybe develop my skills so I can male a million dollars in an hour My original major was Economics and Finance, but in my second year, I switched it to accounting, because I saw enough to know I should change my major. Even then, I didn't actually have a clue that I wanted to get into health care as my first internships were with accounting firms. After being told there were no jobs in big firms, I looked for a job, any job really that would pay. I worked as an Administrative assistant for a time to pay for my graduate degree. Even after I finished my Master's degree, jobs were still scarce. I ended up working for a non-profit Community Health Center Management company in Dorchester, one of the most crime ridden parts of Boston. I went through two drive-bys and a stabbing. I thought; "well, if I am going to work my way up, I got to start somewhere at the bottom and I got to fight through this.".

 

I took on the task of managing the books of a faltering institution, too much spending and poor collections from medicaid pool had pushed cash down severely. Health Care reform in Massachusetts was a dramatic shift for community health centers, who depended on the Massachusetts uninsured pool of funding for support on patients, who had no money. The transition eliminated the free care pool of money and meant for several months, patients without health insurance were getting services without an offsetting source of money on our end. The genius of a collaborative management firm was that several health centers could pool together their reserve funds and endowments together to weather the reform, but in the end, the concept failed due  to poor management and expensive capital projects that drained funding without a reliable period of collections. Before it was too late, I jumped ship and landed my current position with a for profit health care firm that I have worked and built as one of Massachusetts fastest growing firms.

 

Life is complicated and there's a lot of unexpected turns. Even with a great education, drive, and determination, you can't say that things will go your way. I have always been a slight cynic of humanity, because nothing comes easy. You can only fight and have faith that something better will come your way. At points, I stopped fighting and lost faith in the possibility of a better world; I broke down and cried at my life,thinking my life is at a dead-end. However, I found something to claw back and keep on fighting, because I had to.

 

In some ways, I have to thank GA and all of you guys for keeping me sane and resolute (even the disagreable Zombie ). You guys helped give me a world to escape to, when my life was stressful and hellish.

 

Beyond Education from school, I think the best education is from those around; GA itself is a great learning institution

[trackstar195]

This is a personal response. Education goes deep with people, and after all of the formal training I've had in careful, rigorous philosophical argumentation, I don't have any arguments or hard evidence for the worth of education; I just have a hodgepodge of experiences and feelings and thoughts and circumstances and guesses and doubts and fears and beautiful things and pain and suffering and stories of fortune and hope.

 

After graduating at the top of my high school class, I was accepted to two top ivy league schools, and a slew of other elite east coast colleges. However, despite their histories and international reputations, the colleges seemed ordinary. What I wanted was a community that desperately--as if its life depended on it--sought out Truth and Beauty, a community that like Diogenes forsook sleep and comfort for the hope that holding up the lantern in just one more dark corner might reveal profound meaning. I met Professor Brouwer at Wabash, and I decided to attend.

 

In the Symposium, Alcibiades reports that Socrates is the only man in the world who made him feel shame. Early at Wabash I was pulled between majoring in French or in Philosophy and reporting to Mark Brouwer one afternoon on the third floor of Center Hall that, alas I had decided to major in French, I was not met with a word but with a scoff. And so it was that I decided to double major in Philosophy. But that puts the matter plainly and misleads. The truth is that I was bitten by worse than a viper in the place most vulnerable: bitten and struck by philosophy in my soul. Not only by the words on the page, but by the man in whom those words became flesh. Throughout my undergraduate career, he poured his time and effort into me, buckets full of both, in a mentorship the likes of which I don't expect to see again until kingdom come.

 

To put it all in a word, I am who I am because of Mark Brouwer. He shaped my character, my ethos. What more can one say?

 

I am currently pursuing a graduate degree in Philosophy, and I am beginning to see that my struggle with coming to terms with academia parallels my struggles with religion. For Augustine, becoming Catholic was a struggle where even the self becomes a community: "My inner self was a house divided against itself." I am not Catholic in some static, fixed sense of being. I cannot be Catholic, I can only become Catholic. Deep in some far off corner of my mind, I know that I live and die for philosophy...that philosophy, for me, is a continuous sense of becoming and knowing and teaching and understanding.

 

New question: Why do we want to become educated?

 

It's a mystery, that's why.

[Daddydavek]

New question: Why do we want to become educated?

 

It's a mystery, that's why.

 

My definition of educated is acquiring the ability to decipher the what, how, why, when and where of facts, ideas, processes and intentions of others.

 

The why flows naturally and it is so we can make some sense of it all or have some illusion of control.

 

At least that is what I have learned in the school of hard knocks which is also called living..... 

[JamesSavik]

If I were younger maybe.

 

My College made such an unmitigated ass of itself a few years ago when SoulForce was touring in the South, I have no desire to go back- there anyway.

 

I probably couldn't anyway as I was one of the alumni that picketed.

[AquariusGuy]

I have an Associates and Bachelor's in Business. Many places want some type of degree and it frequently doesn't have to be related to what work you do. My degree has helped me get a better position in my company and that's it. If you want to move forward with them a degree is required or you don't get an interview. 

 

We get tuition reimbursement as long as our degree can be used in our line of work. Many business and technical degrees are covered but there are some that are not. 

 

When I was unemployed tons of people were going back to school for a degree and then you had tons of people fighting for the same job. I also got turned away from jobs because of my education.

 

The Federal government will higher people with high school diploma's and you can move up but I know people who have gotten stuck because of this and landed up going to college later in life so they could move forward in the job. 

 

I want to go back to school but I need to find the time. I got my degrees while working 40 hours and taking a full course load. Wasn't the easiest thing to do and I know my grades kind of suffered.