Not Going To Happen 'Cause I'm Not Harry Potter (Impossible Patron Requests)

[faithlessone]

To be fair, I think part of the problem lies with the school system.

At least in my own experience, in a lot of cases, you've got new graduates who've spent the past 20 years or so being told that if they worked hard and achieved a degree, they could be whatever they wanted to be. I can't remember a single careers talk where they mentioned being "practical". It was more "Go out there and do whatever makes you happy!"

Then you're left with a good portion of a generation of people with impractical or not-quite-what-they-need degrees, who don't want or even can't get entry level jobs. You have no idea how many places I've applied to who tell me that they don't hire graduates. Then, on the other end of the scale, there's the jobs, which, even at entry level, have so many qualified candidates that it becomes necessary to have post-graduate degrees and years of relevant volunteer work in order to even get a look in.

It's easy to get disheartened when you hit the real world and learn that those lovely adults in your life have been lying to you for 20 years.

Gah, sorry. Private pain.

(Girl with a Classics/Archaeology degree who doesn't want to be a Latin teacher, and so is working part time as an admin assistant until she can save enough money to do a Masters.)

[Katana_Geldar]

I wish someone had told me that before I left school. There's a teenager who looks up to me and is just starting his last years of school. He wants to do history and ancient history and be an academic. I suggested he try and do teaching too, have something to fall back on and pointed out that a teaching degree would help him with academic teaching, my best history lecture used to take high school history. I also told him what it was like doing ancient history (rather boring lectures by boring old men, lots of reading, essay writing and dead languages) and suggested he also do Ancient Greek or Latin so he could read the text without translation.

I also told him that going to uni puts your life on hold, and that when you get out you'll always be behind your peers who don't go.

I'm not sure I convinced him. I'd pretty much said what his parents did.

[Library Dragon]

Not Harry Potter nor am I a time lord.  Tomorrow (the 16th) we are having a Doctor Who anniversary party at the library.  We had multiple phone calls today to confirm the rumor that Matt Smith will be at the party. 

Our first response was, "What in ehell did we say in the press release?"
No, nothing even intimated that there would even be someone dressed as the 11th Doctor. 

I was  at the idea that people would think that the week before the 50th anniversary a major actor in the series would be at a small city in Alabama. 

[Katana_Geldar]

You might have a better chance of the Doctor himself dropping by.

[Twik]

I also told him that going to uni puts your life on hold, and that when you get out you'll always be behind your peers who don't go.

Really? I'd scarcely say anyone I know wh went to university is "behind" those who went into the workforce straight from high school. I do no one very intelligent person who is, 25 years later, still handicapped professionally from lack of a degree.

[Katana_Geldar]

I also told him that going to uni puts your life on hold, and that when you get out you'll always be behind your peers who don't go.

Really? I'd scarcely say anyone I know wh went to university is "behind" those who went into the workforce straight from high school. I do no one very intelligent person who is, 25 years later, still handicapped professionally from lack of a degree.

I noticed when I left university that people who went into the work force instead were ahead of me career wise while I had a long agonizing job search that didn't go anywhere. DH didn't go to university and he's in a stable full time job.

But this just might be where I am.

[MariaE]

I also told him that going to uni puts your life on hold, and that when you get out you'll always be behind your peers who don't go.

Really? I'd scarcely say anyone I know wh went to university is "behind" those who went into the workforce straight from high school. I do no one very intelligent person who is, 25 years later, still handicapped professionally from lack of a degree.

I noticed when I left university that people who went into the work force instead were ahead of me career wise while I had a long agonizing job search that didn't go anywhere. DH didn't go to university and he's in a stable full time job.

But this just might be where I am.

I think it must be. In Denmark you're much better off when it comes to seaching for a job if you have a uni degree... Well, a uni degree in a practical area anyway.

[Katana_Geldar]

That many people have uni degrees these days it's almost not worth it.

[jedikaiti]

I also told him that going to uni puts your life on hold, and that when you get out you'll always be behind your peers who don't go.

Really? I'd scarcely say anyone I know wh went to university is "behind" those who went into the workforce straight from high school. I do no one very intelligent person who is, 25 years later, still handicapped professionally from lack of a degree.

I noticed when I left university that people who went into the work force instead were ahead of me career wise while I had a long agonizing job search that didn't go anywhere. DH didn't go to university and he's in a stable full time job.

But this just might be where I am.

Too many variables. I once (long ago) worked a PT job with a guy who was very proud of the fact that by skipping college and going straight to FT work, he'd be making $25k a year in another 4 years. 2 years later, after I graduated college, I started my first FT job at $25k a year.

In some areas, and some fields, it's hard to even get an interview without a degree in SOMETHING. For me, the degree was worth almost as much as the experience - for my 2nd bachelor's, I was able to get a great internship, and a great p/t job as a student, both of which were instrumental in obtaining my current awesome employment. Had I not gone back to school, I don't know where I'd be - quite possibly still unemployed, or having changed careers to something less interesting (to me) and possibly less $$.

[Hillia]

And it depends on your field.  If your goal is to be an auto mechanic, then yes, your degree in history won't do much for you - but you still would probably be better off with a trade school certification, if one exists in your area.

[Thipu1]

And it depends on your field.  If your goal is to be an auto mechanic, then yes, your degree in history won't do much for you - but you still would probably be better off with a trade school certification, if one exists in your area.

That's what the son of a friend did.  Everyone assumed he'd become a teacher.  He went to College for one term and hated it.  He then went to a trade school to become an auto mechanic.  He's making good money, has a home of his own and is quite happy. 

[MommyPenguin]

Part of the problem sometimes is that jobs require a college degree because they can't count on a high school diploma being worth anything.  I had a job that really shouldn't have required a college degree, but it did.  Lower level jobs that didn't require a college degree had major issues finding qualified applicants because people couldn't alphabetize, add, write coherently, or other really basic skills like that.  If high schools actually turned out graduates who could do those skills (in that particular area, schools were terrible), then maybe they wouldn't have had to require a college diploma, and you'd have 4 more years of earning time *plus* no student debt.

[greencat]

I briefly worked for a hotel restaurant where the manager insisted that the lowest-level front-of-house staff at least have an associate's (2-year) degree.  His reasoning was that they were interacting with the guests and needed to be reasonably well-spoken.

He did not manage to reason that the reason why he had higher-than-usual staff turnover was that, for someone with a college degree, waiting tables was the dead-end-job to make ends meet while searching for a better position, not something they were ever planning on sticking with long-term.

[RegionMom]

 Somewhere I heard that a college degree basically means that you can get yourself up and dressed and sometimes to class sometimes.
It means you have proven somewhat responsible.

[Jocelyn]

In many ways, a university degree is a union card. If you can't get your dream job without one, it's worth it.  People need to think ahead to the job they want, and research what employers are wanting, before deciding they should go. My BIL went to vo-tech school, and, as my sister says, when you go into the hospital for a MRI, do you hope the MRI was installed by a man who knows how to do that job correctly, or by one who has read Beowulf? I think he would have enjoyed college just for the opportunity to learn, but it wouldn't have advanced his career any. Would he have chosen a different career? Possibly. But we shouldn't look down on people who are doing jobs we want done, just because they don't have a degree. We still need people who can install and maintain the hospital's equipment, and who can come out in the middle of the night to change the bulb when the stoplight's bulb burns out.  Well, actually, the one who changed the lightbulb was my sister, because the controls in the bucket were wonky, so he had to stay on the ground to make sure the person in the bucket got back down again. So apparently in their town, the city electrician has no college degree, but his assistant has a master's.