bah!
Scribbled down on May 13th, 2008 by she
Posted in Learning & Education
Quite often I sit around ranting about how annoying it is to have to return to university in pursuit of a degree. Don’t get me wrong – I love learning and spend a significant amount of time digging around in libraries and bookstores reading anything I can get my hands on (based on my sphere of interest). I’ve just never been a fan of formal education. It’s too constraining. While you can still follow your own interests on your own time, I find there’s less room for debate in many courses. Some (not all) instructors seem to believe that there is only “one true way” of interpreting information. Their way. As someone who likes to sit back and review multiple sides to the story and multiple layers of context, I find this increasingly frustrating. Funny, in the corporate world, it made me a good go-to person for risk mitigation strategy development. In school it makes me the annoying kid at the back of the cyber class contantly asking the prof and fellow students “…but what if…?” Oddly enough, I’m working in an academic environment. Which means that additional formal education is required to move anywhere within the college. Which puts me in mind of a very infamous quote.
Might have been the losing side, still not convinced it was the wrong one.
– Mal, Firefly
I’m off to do my homework.
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May 15th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Good quote for sure. I don’t have the education you have. Only high school for me, but in my next life it will be different :o) So my entire life has been spent asking questions, reading, listening, reading some more, asking more questions, always trying to learn ‘something’. My family finds me quite exhausting….much like my teachers did way back in my school days.
May 17th, 2008 at 6:34 am
so after having had you on facebook for the better part of a year, i only just now notice that you have a blog. i am somewhat less than observant.
i also love that quotation, as i also have tendencies toward the coats of brown. by which i mean, rabid firefly fan here.
my bro never completed any post-secondary education, and he’s done just fine for himself. i have three degrees and the student loans to go with. i do just fine for myself too. i think both ways are equally valid – i just like school, and he doesn’t. but i also work in an environment that places a high value on academic knowledge, that’s important to me.
what are you studying? and why rmc?
May 17th, 2008 at 10:49 am
It’s this type of informal learning that I don’t think gets the recognition it deserves. And I’m not sure (me with my certificates, diplomas, and now a half finished degree) that formal education really serves a purpose greater than providing people with a method for segregation. We’ve all met someone with little to no “formal education” that followed an informal learning path and earns our respect for the depth of their knowledge. And we all know someone who spent years in university and (if lucky) ended up book smart with no idea how to apply concepts they’ve learned or without any real understanding of the theory…