(Untitled)

[octaveleap]

A thought occurred to me the other day as I was walking my dog. Suppose I hadn't gone to college, and had instead learned to be a construction worker. If that were the case, I would have been working steady employment for much longer, I wouldn't have any student loans, and I could spend every day climbing to the top of telephone poles doing neat

Comments

[twirlynoodle]

A lot of your 'smart friends' you made in high school, though, right? Assuming they would stay your friends even if you got certified as an electrician (which I think is what you'd need to be, up in a cherrypicker playing with wires) they'd still be your friends ... ? Of course, had you gone that route, you might be seeing people drive by in their nice work clothes sipping lattes and thinking 'what if I had got a proper degree, I could sit in an air conditioned office all day and have interesting people to talk to.' Of course there's no reason you couldn't do both - I knew someone who trained as an electrician in her 30s and made quite a successful go of it, though I think she was doing more house-wiring than telephone poles. Speaking as someone who learned a trade instead of going to proper school, I am currently finding all sorts of regrets about not having got a 'real' education where I'd have been challenged by teachers, exposed to new ideas, taught how to write a real research paper and learned things just for the sake of

[octaveleap]

You know, you have a good point. (Several actually.) I probably would have kept the friends I made in high school no matter where I went... and looking back on what I wrote, it seems pretty classist of me to think otherwise. I take back my statement about probably not having as many smart friends. And your point about the grass being greener on the other side is important too

[twirlynoodle]

That is a really really good comic!

The thing about college for me isn't necessarily learning to be clever, it's ... I've never had the chance to find out just how clever I could be. High school was more or less just learning stuff; at the time I thought college was more of the same just with more advanced stuff, so why bother? But getting to know serious college graduates has given me a different picture of it - it's about learning how to deconstruct, analyze, and synthesize, and really use the 'stuff' you've learned. A research paper in and of itself is more or less useless in everyday life, but learning how to find the information you need, examine evidence on both sides of an argument, come to a conclusion (or at least present a theory) using what you've researched, anticipate counterarguments, etc ... that is useful. And yes, I am capable of doing it on my own, but I've never had to do it in any serious way and I'd like to find out what would happen with some real training. Usain Bolt probably always found his morning jog