Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2020 11:05:13 GMT -5
Garland,
What I found in the process of getting my degree is that "we don't know what we don't know", and your comments on the subject really highlight that. There are many more differences between degreed and non-degreed than you mention. Before I got my degree, I often said exactly the same things that you did. My achievements were formally validated with a patent, and that was before I got my degree. Usually, in a company environment, there are several names on a patent and usually, only one or two did the most work. On mine, my name was the only one and I was the only one on that project. I proposed the project, management accepted it and gave me the go-ahead, and after it was done, there was a patent at the end.
I couldn't (and wouldn't) make the argument that one needs a degree to do this kind of work. I have known a number of fine engineers who didn't have degrees. However, unless you are your own company, you don't get to make the rules. Even if the only differences between a degreed and non-degreed engineer was a bit of math and a sheepskin, that sheepskin gets you in the door. That was not always true, but things have changed as more colleges and universities have been pumpong degreed engineers into the workplace.
The way I describe what changed for me as I worked through my degree is to to consider a graph, with the various skills needed to do the job on the X axis, and the level of each skill on the Y axis. Before getting my degree, I had several skills that rated quite high on the Y axis, as I am sure you do to. What the degree did was introduce me to skills I didn't know about and then bring those up to that level too. In short, I got a much broadened skill set. Getting a strong math background sure saved me a lot of embarrassment for those times when a lot of serious math was involved. That has happened quite a bit, especially in the medical world. I honestly doubt I would have been able to hold up my end in those contract jobs if I hadn't gotten that background.
I am very familiar with the arguments on both sides of the degree issue, since my first 10 years or so working as an engineer were without a degree. I never like the feeling that I had to justify myself on occasion when working with degreed engineers who had exposure to things I barely knew existed. The problem I see with self-teaching, regardless of the subject is that we don't know what we don't know, and therefore can't teach ourselves that. We tend to teach ourselves what we think we need, but don't realize how much more accomplished we could be if we had the rest of the story. I see that in my own guitar efforts when I talk to a friend who graduated from the Berklee College of Boston, or another friend who graduated from the Guitar Institute of Technology in California (now know as Musician's Institute).
I don't intend to continue this discuss of degree vs non-degree because, as I said, I have been on both sides and made the same old arguments from both sides. I got my degree and all that stuff was no longer an issue. I have the experience, the patents, the pedigree and feel little need to go around and around on this.
Regarding self-esteem, I think it is taken out of context these days. My understanding of self-esteem is that it is EARNED (not a right) by right actions, and that has been my personal experience.
As Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living". If we don't take time to stop and think about who we are, what we are doing, and where we are going, I think we tend to drift at the whim of the circumstances around us. That is not how I choose to live, and once I made the decision to take control of my life, things got better.
Tony
What I found in the process of getting my degree is that "we don't know what we don't know", and your comments on the subject really highlight that. There are many more differences between degreed and non-degreed than you mention. Before I got my degree, I often said exactly the same things that you did. My achievements were formally validated with a patent, and that was before I got my degree. Usually, in a company environment, there are several names on a patent and usually, only one or two did the most work. On mine, my name was the only one and I was the only one on that project. I proposed the project, management accepted it and gave me the go-ahead, and after it was done, there was a patent at the end.
I couldn't (and wouldn't) make the argument that one needs a degree to do this kind of work. I have known a number of fine engineers who didn't have degrees. However, unless you are your own company, you don't get to make the rules. Even if the only differences between a degreed and non-degreed engineer was a bit of math and a sheepskin, that sheepskin gets you in the door. That was not always true, but things have changed as more colleges and universities have been pumpong degreed engineers into the workplace.
The way I describe what changed for me as I worked through my degree is to to consider a graph, with the various skills needed to do the job on the X axis, and the level of each skill on the Y axis. Before getting my degree, I had several skills that rated quite high on the Y axis, as I am sure you do to. What the degree did was introduce me to skills I didn't know about and then bring those up to that level too. In short, I got a much broadened skill set. Getting a strong math background sure saved me a lot of embarrassment for those times when a lot of serious math was involved. That has happened quite a bit, especially in the medical world. I honestly doubt I would have been able to hold up my end in those contract jobs if I hadn't gotten that background.
I am very familiar with the arguments on both sides of the degree issue, since my first 10 years or so working as an engineer were without a degree. I never like the feeling that I had to justify myself on occasion when working with degreed engineers who had exposure to things I barely knew existed. The problem I see with self-teaching, regardless of the subject is that we don't know what we don't know, and therefore can't teach ourselves that. We tend to teach ourselves what we think we need, but don't realize how much more accomplished we could be if we had the rest of the story. I see that in my own guitar efforts when I talk to a friend who graduated from the Berklee College of Boston, or another friend who graduated from the Guitar Institute of Technology in California (now know as Musician's Institute).
I don't intend to continue this discuss of degree vs non-degree because, as I said, I have been on both sides and made the same old arguments from both sides. I got my degree and all that stuff was no longer an issue. I have the experience, the patents, the pedigree and feel little need to go around and around on this.
Regarding self-esteem, I think it is taken out of context these days. My understanding of self-esteem is that it is EARNED (not a right) by right actions, and that has been my personal experience.
As Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living". If we don't take time to stop and think about who we are, what we are doing, and where we are going, I think we tend to drift at the whim of the circumstances around us. That is not how I choose to live, and once I made the decision to take control of my life, things got better.
Tony