College courses Vs Current situation (1 Viewer)

[nofunchee]

if we want to remain relevant, rather than make college the only place to learn, we can also facilitate learning outside the walls of academe. Not just going out and telling the rabble how it is, but acknowledging that people can teach themselves, and it's our job to make sure the rest of the world knows that we're not the only ones who can know stuff.

.|..| totally .|..|

 

[carbide]

Hmm, its all a bit confusing/scary for me at the mo. My top choice on the CAO is the BESS in Trinity (http://www.tcd.ie/Admissions/courses/course.php?ID=66) and I have no idea where I'll end up, not that I really care like

most of the BESS graduates i've met have been working as administrators, but then an awful lot of graduates of all sorts seem to end up as administrators. and there's http://www.tcd.ie/Careers/students/year.php?courseID=470 - BESS graduates by job title.

i'm an architecture student, and we hear dead serious phrases like "when you join the profession..." quite a bit. it's kind of ominous.

 

[jane]

.|..| totally .|..|

Besides, intellectual environments are great hotbeds for activism and radicalism, and how can that be compatible with professional training grounds? I know I'm being much more doomsaying than I need to be because really, the university is what the people make it, and it's not a foregone conclusion.

I know people around here probably don't want to hear this, but I think a lot of the American liberal arts colleges have got it WAY more than right already. The Irish system tried to adopt aspects of the American system, but if you ask me, it took all the wrong ones, and it makes me very sad.

 

[Rogue]

Besides, intellectual environments are great hotbeds for activism and radicalism, and how can that be compatible with professional training grounds? I know I'm being much more doomsaying than I need to be because really, the university is what the people make it, and it's not a foregone conclusion.

I know people around here probably don't want to hear this, but I think a lot of the American liberal arts colleges have got it WAY more than right already. The Irish system tried to adopt aspects of the American system, but if you ask me, it took all the wrong ones, and it makes me very sad.

Agreed and agreed (and agreed.|..|to duncheeknifed). I think Ireland's universities suffered most at our post-being-a-3rd-world-country grab at the money. In amreica (correct me if I'm wrong..) the liberal arts colleges are significantly supported by rich patrons rather than state/industrial/corporate funding, something that Ireland doesn't have enough of to help. Perhaps if all those nice millioniare artists in this country would put some more money into arts faculties, that'd be nice: also balance out the tax-break for artists who earn millins problem.

I'm going to put elitism back in it's box. I also think that worse is grossly abused so I try to give it some positive power, but this isn't the right argument for it, elitism's time will come...

With regards to radical research vs professional training. It seems to me that while on the surface the universities seem to lump all students together, in practical terms there is a level of separation between the two. But radical research always seems to ose out in the end with insufficient funding, resources and time. There's no trust, wherein the university would give researchers more free rein to fail and try again and fail and try again: the history of progress is all about failure and new attempts, a culture which doesn't allow the leash to be long enough for exploring the occasional wrong path is playing dangerously.

 

[Rogue]

Oh yeah. While Ivory towers are useful for a certain type of research, I completely agree that the learning has to be disseminated and people outside the formal education system should have access to the learning and participation in it. I just wish more people wanted to know this stuff rather than just waiting for a dumbed down version which is more black and white but less useful.

Apologies for freeform rant, hope some of that made sense.

 

[Gambra]

most of the BESS graduates i've met have been working as administrators, but then an awful lot of graduates of all sorts seem to end up as administrators. and there's http://www.tcd.ie/Careers/students/year.php?courseID=470 - BESS graduates by job title.

i'm an architecture student, and we hear dead serious phrases like "when you join the profession..." quite a bit. it's kind of ominous.

"Job Titles:
Accountant | Army Cadet | Auctioneer | Bank Official | Business Analyst | Business Consultancy | Consulting Analyst | Copywrite Assistant | Customer Service | English Language Instructor | Estate Agent | Events Reporting | Finance | Financial Exec | Fund Accountant (x4) | Fund Administrator | Graduate Trainee – Supply Chain Management | Hedge Fund (Trainee) Accountant (x2) | Insurance Claims | Investment Banker | Legal Apprentice | Licensing Administrator | Marketing (x2) | Office Administrator | Office Manager | Pensions Administrator | Political Adviser | Policy Officer | Recruitment Consultant (x2) | Retail Manager | Sales Executive | Sales Rep | Teacher (x2) | Trainee Accountant (x5) | Youth Information Officer"



Not looking to good on the whole future prospets there, pretty much everything there seems extremly boring to me..

 

[Gambra]

Hmmm, reading up on that info on other courses, it seems half go onto further study and the other half go do stuff like "Bar Tending" or "Apprentice Chef"
http://www.tcd.ie/Careers/students/year.php?courseID=1862&nodeID=2548&year=2004

 

[Rogue]

Not looking to good on the whole future prospets there, pretty much everything there seems extremly boring to me..

Maybe you should take a year out. I went straight into a Materials Science degree after the Leaving and flunked out after 6 months. I quit not because I was about to fail all my exams having gone to only 3 lectures that term but because I realised I'd only gone there to find people to be in a band with; I didn't find anyone so there was no point in hanging around for the inevitable kicking out. But I did manage to convince my parents that it was it was ok to quit as they'd get a partial fees rebate and I was going straight into a short private course in a dublin recording studio (pulse, on harrington st).

I ended up floating around galway and belfast till I was 24 good times and shit times in equal measures) when I finally figured out what I wanted to do and I've been on that track ever since, never looked back.

I needed to be out of the education system and it's inherent goal-directedness and wait to find a subject that I was so engrossed in that studying it and working in it would be joy (most of the time and Admin tasks aside)

 

[nofunchee]

Besides, intellectual environments are great hotbeds for activism and radicalism, and how can that be compatible with professional training grounds?

ucd is pretty bad for that shit though these days, at least explicidly. the student's union is monopolised by right-wing assholes. the type of assholes who want to relegate the women's, disabilities, and LGBT officers to a less influential position within the union. they also voted recently to ignore a mandate by the students by means of a referendum back in the '90s requiring the union to provide non-directive information on all the options in crisis pregnancy.

we were talking about contempory student political activity in class one day and one of the older women was saying when she was in college the student base was fairly lefty and radical (at least in irish terms). she was basicly asking us younger members of the class what went wrong. she was really dismayed and thought that in her day they'd moved foreward significantly and it had regressed so much since.

third level has always been monopolised by the middle class but what's the difference now? is it celtic tiger materialism? a right-wing backlash against an out of touch left? disillusionment and cynicism?

 

[carbide]

ucd is pretty bad for that shit though these days, at least explicidly. the student's union is monopolised by right-wing assholes.

during the student union elections, one of the candidates trekked out to visit us, and in the middle of his Forced Chat Telling Us What We Want, started taking the piss out of another candidate, saying "oh, she's probably off reading the communist manifesto right now!", and when i asked about her, he said "she wants all this bullshit transparency and stuff", and that he was more "to the centre, balanced".

so, not only was he ok being openly right-wing, but assumed it was what all of us wanted to hear.

third level has always been monopolised by the middle class but what's the difference now? is it celtic tiger materialism? a right-wing backlash against an out of touch left? disillusionment and cynicism?

i've been leaning towards the cosy/celtic tiger option, that nobody'll do anything until it directly affects and serves themselves. recently, though, my class got a bit screwed around with (very close) deadlines being shunted around a lot, and the prevailing attitude was one of "oh, we're all in the same boat", immediately resigned to it and complaining to their friends, not kicking up even a tiny fuss. and any discussion about protest or action on any issue seems to go under "ah, that's what crazy people do!". grr.

 

[Buzzo]

I did two years of a single honours history degree in Trinity and coming to the end of 2nd year I thought 'what the fuck am I doing'. I also thought, all the way through the two years 'BESS students are such wankers'. seriously. everyone did apparently.


Anyway. I dropped out, realising I'd committed myself to something I had a passing interest in. I bummed around for a year and then met some Russian street children and decided that I wanted to work with poor people. I never wanted to commit myslef to a 4 year degree again so I did a diploma in social care, realised I loved it and carried it through to a 4 year degree.

So... I dunno what I'm trying to say... nothing's final. Life experience helps you make choices about college. Life experience changes you and who you are and what you wanna do...

 

[Gambra]

But I did manage to convince my parents that it was it was ok to quit as they'd get a partial fees rebate and I was going straight into a short private course in a dublin recording studio (pulse, on harrington st).

Trure but you still went and did something when something you "dropped out" you know? I don't know.. My parents would freak out if i suggested a year out cos they'd see it as the end for me and that oce I got some sort of job I'd never go back etc etc..

 

[Rogue]

Trure but you still went and did something when something you "dropped out" you know? I don't know.. My parents would freak out if i suggested a year out cos they'd see it as the end for me and that oce I got some sort of job I'd never go back etc etc..

When I say convince, I mean that it was clear to them that this was the best option as I was about to flunk anyways. It got much worse then when I moved to galway and went on the dole then disappeared to belfast for 5 years working in a grocery store.

If you used that story as an example of what happens to people on year(s) out then I think a lot of parents would get freaked and try to take control of your obviously recklessly-driven life.

On the other hand if you can show them that you have some sort of plan - say working in a few different areas (idealistic but do-able) to see what you find interesting - then hopefully they'll let you take a shot at it.

When it comes down to it, they're just worried that left to your own devices you'd just take the piss and become a directionless loser. What they need to see is that you know what you're doing, even if you don't. It's kinda like the white lies you put on CVs so that employers believe that you can do the job when you'll actually just learn how to do these things in the first few weeks of working there.

The post 'leaving' years of my life look awful on paper but it just took me that long to figure out where I wanted to be and how to get there. It takes time and dedication to ruin your entire life in a couple of years and most people when trusted with their own future get it right after a few fumbles.

 

[jane]

Ditto to that. I finished school really young, and I was too young and too broke to go to college for a while. I worked in shitty jobs for junkies and psychopaths, and after a couple of years of it, I was ready to run straight to college. I dropped out after a year for a bunch of reasons, and then I enrolled in like three or four different colleges to do entirely different things (and withdrew and got refunded before THREE of them started, as well as dropping out of another one mid-semester) before I decided to go back to the college I went to in the first place. I've now been in college for 11 years, and I've been at at least 10 universities (though haven't actually attended all of them), and I still have no fucking clue what I want to be when I grow up, except something that net me enough money to pay off the $40,000 loans before I'm 80.

But now, despite the fact that the last five years of my life have been an utter waste and sheer hell beyond description, I can honestly say that there's nothing anyone can throw at me that can make me not absolutely love teaching more than anything else. I know I can't handle the bureaucracy of a school system (it would kill me), but I am damn sure that whatever it is I do will involve teaching in some way because I absolutely can't live without it. I stlil have no idea what that means for me, but at least it's a skill I can be relatively sure I have, even if I still don't know what field I'll end up in.

I kept chopping and changing because I thought I was doing something wrong, that I should be 100% sure what I wanted to do, and whenever I wasn't, I was sure it meant I was in the wrong place. I've never really been sure what I want to do, and even now, I'll give you one answer one minute and another one five minutes later, but what I did learn -- finally -- is that it's okay if you don't know, and the important thing is that you think it's interesting even some of the time, and you can use that interest to get you through the inevitable boring bits. That's the best thing you can learn in college, I think: to get through the boring drudgery without letting it put a damper on your interests. You'll always second-guess yourself, and you'll always wonder if you should have made a different choice, but that's completely normal.

Maybe you should point out to your parents that you should go to college when and because you want to, not because they want you to. College is too important to just do it because it's the 'done thing'. I've seen lots of people go through because their parents made them do it, and some of them ended up doing really well and loving it, but a lot of them were miserable because of it, and most of them, even the ones who did well, didn't really love it. The ones who did the best, and who were the happiest in the end were the ones who were there because they chose to, and who have studied the stuff they really liked, and who did well because they were interested.

There's a big difference between someone who does well in college because it's expected of them, and someone who does well because he or she is really into it. There's a big difference between someone who goes through college because he or she chose to study something interesting, and gets to the end and says, "Ooooh, what's next!?" and someone who goes because they're 'supposed' to, and does what is 'practical', and sees the end of college as the death of youthful exuberance, or curiosity, or whatever it is that makes life not suck all the time.

 

[Gambra]

Wow, this got very interesting, didn't it?

Although, honestly the reason I'm going to college is that I actually do want to go, I want to study what I'm hoping to do (originally apart from Business, but I now do want to do for reasons too long to get into here). The main reason I was wondering all this was whether people actually did stuff relevant to awhat they studied or whether it was just for experience in "self-directected learning" etc.

I'm still full of different thing I want to do that don't actually need a degree but I want to go to college for a load of reasons (extreme interest in Sociology & Politics mainly, want to get out of the backwater home I currently live in etc etc etc). The main thing worrying me is what I'll do after it, further study? a more indepth course on a different topic altogether? McDonalds? thats the main thing on my mind at the mo. Apart from actually gettin the points I need, which is another story altogether..

 

[jane]

Wow, this got very interesting, didn't it?

Although, honestly the reason I'm going to college is that I actually do want to go, I want to study what I'm hoping to do (originally apart from Business, but I now do want to do for reasons too long to get into here). The main reason I was wondering all this was whether people actually did stuff relevant to awhat they studied or whether it was just for experience in "self-directected learning" etc.

I'm still full of different thing I want to do that don't actually need a degree but I want to go to college for a load of reasons (extreme interest in Sociology & Politics mainly, want to get out of the backwater home I currently live in etc etc etc). The main thing worrying me is what I'll do after it, further study? a more indepth course on a different topic altogether? McDonalds? thats the main thing on my mind at the mo. Apart from actually gettin the points I need, which is another story altogether..

Dude, there's no reason to worry about the fact that part of your interest in going is to get out of your backwater home. Part of going to college is about being in a new environment. But if you want to do Sociology and Politics, then why not do that? Did the jobs that BESS graduates got interest you even remotely? And to be honest, even if they did (the only ones that looked interesting to me were 'policy officer' and 'political adviser'), someone with an arts degree would probably be just as qualified to do them. Don't worry now about what you'll do after college. Go to college and enjoy it. Then decide.

There's no point in planning for the future now, when you have no idea how you and/or your goals will change over the next few years, or even over the next ten or twenty years. Someone asked me a few weeks ago what my 'five year plan' was, and I was like, "Huh, I don't even know what I'm gonna do right after I punch ya in the suck hole." Seriously, though, I work myself all up into a tizzy when I start worrying about what I'm going to do when I finish, but I'm trying not to worry about it until it's actually time to start looking for a job. Sure, my eyes are always at least a little bit peeled (especially when I find out that what I do here for practically no money, and which no one except me and my mate think is worth doing, pays like 50 grand a year plus benefits -- to start! -- back in the US). You will find something you like doing, and whatever job you get after graduation does NOT have to be your job forever and ever amen.

Anyway, to get back to your first question, I think that, for a lot of us, all the stuff we did in college has been relevant to the choices we made later in life, and for any number of reasons. Some people do go into the field they studied as an undergrad, but even those who don't use the stuff they learned in college to help inform their later choices. So there's no 'is it relevant' or 'isn't it relevant' to your job, but more to your life. I mean, I still know a lot more about what I don't want to do than I do about what I do want to do, but it doesn't mean all the shit I've studied or done for work or whatever haven't been used. I know it might sound like a lot of sunshiney waffle, but it's absolutely true.

The more you follow the path that best suits your interests and what's important to you, the more likely you are to be satisfied and fulfilled later in life. There's no point in doing a business degree if you don't want to go into business, and you can still go into business with an Arts degree. It's good to think really hard about what you do in college and when is best for you to go, but it's best to think really hard about whether you'll enjoy it and whether you'll get anything out of it as a person.

I would absolutely hate to be sitting the Leaving. I think it's the worst piece of crap excuse for an educational system since the invention of corporal punishment. It does nothing even remotely resembling creating a level playing field, and all it does is encourage people to see learning about 'getting points', making it harder to really enjoy getting to know shit. I don't really believe in exams, period, and having had to spend two years pleading with first years to stop being so obsessed about what they'd need to know for the exams so that they coudl relax and we could talk about cool shit, it most certainly doesn't prepare you for college. In fact, the more you adjust to the kind of learning the Leaving requires, the harder it might be to adjust to college. Just prior warning: college will be a total shock to your system, and it might freak you out, but it's totally normal.

When I have kids, they're going to hippy school, and that's final.

 

[oh shit]

The main thing worrying me is what I'll do after it, further study? a more indepth course on a different topic altogether? McDonalds? thats the main thing on my mind at the mo.

yeah i had a similar concern. if you do politics and sociology and take any kind of critical readings of the fields (which i think you'd probably be most interested in based on some of your posts) it may not open up much in the way of what you can specifically do, but it should change the ways you'll think after it, ie the way you think about yourself and the way you think the world. and then you can go train to be a plumber or something useful.
i know that might not sound very reassuring...

 

[Gambra]

But if you want to do Sociology and Politics, then why not do that? Did the jobs that BESS graduates got interest you even remotely?

I will be studying them, this is the list of stuff you can get your final degree in in the BESS:

The B.A. Moderatorship can be taken as single or joint* honors in:

* Business Studies (joint honor)
* Economics (single or joint honor)
* Political Science (single or joint honor)
* Sociology (single or joint honor)
* Contemporary European Integration (single honor)

I would absolutely hate to be sitting the Leaving. I think it's the worst piece of crap excuse for an educational system since the invention of corporal punishment. It does nothing even remotely resembling creating a level playing field, and all it does is encourage people to see learning about 'getting points',

To quote Mark Twain, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education" Honestly, I know that the system we have is a complete joke and the pressure put on us is abnormal.. I do study for way too much a day (5 hours) but most of that time I'll be sitting reading THe Guardian or a Joyce book or something

As for the leaving in general I think the whole thing is irrelevant, I currently am doing Physics for the LC which I find totaly useless to me but I have to do just to fill my subjects (tried to drop it but was told I couldn't) Why can't I just learn whatever the fuck I wanna learn??

 

[Gambra]

yeah i had a similar concern. if you do politics and sociology and take any kind of critical readings of the fields (which i think you'd probably be most interested in based on some of your posts) it may not open up much in the way of what you can specifically do, but it should change the ways you'll think after it, ie the way you think about yourself and the way you think the world. and then you can go train to be a plumber or something useful.
i know that might not sound very reassuring...

Thanks, but thats pretty much what I am thinking. I know that I want to study it critically as you mention but I also know that there's not many options available to me job wise. Thats me main worry right there.

 

[ICUH8N]

I think it's too early to worry about job prospects at this point, especially since your degree is of a general nature. You can narrow the focus in 3rd/4th years, and there's always MAs/MBAs afterwards, should you decide that you require more specialisation. Enjoy college, drink, sleep around, learn stuff. That's what BAs are for.