This time of year is when people go back to school. I wrote the below over ten years ago for my brother as he started college, and it covers what a man should expect from academic and dorm life in college.
Academics
Your purpose
GPA is the magic acronym that will rule your life for the next four years. Unlike high school, where it is all the same, in college, people get varying degrees. This is significant because it dictates what you have to do for the degree and makes the whole “let’s take impressive courses to look good for our next school” argument rather irrelevant.
You need to select your degree and then plot out, with the help of the school catalog, what courses you HAVE to take, what courses you COULD take, and what courses you SHOULD NOT take. What every modern college kid needs to understand is that undergrad college is NOT about learning things, it’s about getting a degree of your choice and maintaining a good GPA while doing it.
Employers or grad schools don’t care about your carefully crafted interdisciplinary custom degree to make you the perfect rounded person; they care about whether or not you have the degree they want, and what grades you received while earning it.
Degree. Grades. Then maybe, if possible, learn something along the way.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
In your quest for a good GPA, there are some people you need to cultivate. First, you MUST find some upperclassmen that has been there, and done that in your major. Try to find him (or her) this fall, and buy them a meal or something. Bring your course catalog and a notepad. They will tell you which of the required courses are pains in the rear and which are cake, which professors are closet Nazis and which ones are still part of the human race, and what electives to take and to avoid.
Your faculty advisor does not understand the point of college (outlined above.) He or she will think you need to take challenging courses to make you grow, and interesting courses to expand your knowledge. This would be true if the GPA was not the holy grail that it is. But, since it is, you want to get your chosen degree with the EASIEST course load possible.
An example. Student A takes Required Course 101 with Professor Himmler. Student B takes the same course, but in a different section, and has Professor Buttercup. Both students give it the good effort, and Student A gets a D while Student B gets an A. Both students get credit for the same course, even though the courses were obviously much different in difficulty.
Difficulty, however, does not matter. All that matters is ‘Required Course 101’ and the grade on your transcript. All sections are supposed to be equal, even though they are taught by different profs. However, this is almost never the case, and you MUST find out which sections with which profs to take beforehand and register appropriately. Once everyone finds out what a Nazi Himmler is, they will all try to transfer out to Buttercup’s class and very few will be successful; the rest are boned because it is too late. The most they can do is drop the course and waste a slot in their schedule, and that’s only if you don’t drop below the minimum hours required.
Furthermore, arrange for some one section class to occupy the same slot as Himmler’s section so that they cannot pull bullshit on your scheduling because you would not be able to take that one section class. The registrar thinks all sections are equal; they are not, as outlined above.
Find the upperclassman, and get the info on the department’s faculty and courses and then don’t spread it around. Write it all down and make sure you get the right profs in the right sections. It could mean the difference between an A and a D for the same effort.
As for electives, sometimes names sound overly impressive when they actually are not. “Direct Energy Conversion” was easier than “Heat Transfer,” although it sounds meaner. Think “Which elective will fill this slot and give me the easiest A?” Ask your senior friend about which ones to take.
You need study buddies. Doing homework in groups is much better than doing it by yourself; you can split the work up, check each other’s answers, and learn more, faster. Go to review sessions, go to office hours, look like you care, and you might get a bump up to the next letter grade for a good effort. Many profs will drop obvious hints about what will be on the tests to folks in their review sessions.
“Aren’t you TEACHERS?”
Most of any given school’s faculty and administration don’t care about whether or not you do well. You’re just a number, and if your TA can’t speak English, or your professor gave you a test on a chapter that hasn’t been covered yet, no one will really care.
Some teachers DO care, and there should be ONE dean that will actually listen to a student who needs help. If you find yourself getting screwed, refer to the catalog, prepare your case, make an appointment, and walk in there confident and polite and make your case.
Your Dorm
The room
Respect your roomie’s stuff and privacy, and he should respect yours. Lock the door. Thievery will be rampant, and the targets will be laptop computers, wallets, cd wallets, and anything else that is small, expensive or valuable, and ubiquitous. If the thievery gets really bad, take your keys along with you in your shaving kit. I don’t know how your laptop will lock up, but I’d pick up an Action Packer (plastic container, lock on each end), two padlocks, and a chain. Lock the Packer with the laptop (and other goodies) in it and lock the chain to one of the locks after you looped it through your bed frame.
Your room is not a place to throw parties. Any party, for the next year and some for you, will almost always have alcohol. Underage drinking is a way of life at college, everyone does it, and only the stupid get caught. I won’t tell you not to drink; I will tell you not to be stupid. Let your friends throw the parties in their rooms, you won’t have to clean up the mess, stuff won’t get dirty or stolen, and you can leave when you’re tired or, more importantly, when the five-o shows up. The quieter, cleaner, and more safe your room feels, the more comfortable you will be living in close quarters with people. Having a couple friends over is different from a party, obviously.
….is that THE mattress?!?!
Your room is not a place to study. Your desk will be small, and taken up with stuff, you’ll want to play music and be distracted by things; it just doesn’t work. Find some area, like at the library, get a big table, and do your homework there. You will be able to do much better work much more quickly. You don’t go to class in your dorm room, you really shouldn’t do homework there either. Writing papers is different; figure out what works for you.
Your room is not yours. The university can come in there any time they want, and do anything they want. If it’s not during business hours, you can be as rude as you want, but they might call the cops. Hide anything you don’t want noticed by the school, like illegal software or weed, in that action packer. The room might be theirs, but they would need a search warrant to break and enter your locked container. Likewise, don’t leave beer in the fridge until you’re of age.
Get to like your roomie, and agree on things like hours, who to let in, and make things work, or apply for a new roommate or a single.
Community bathrooms
Never go into the bathroom barefooted, especially to take a shower. Risking bare feet on the floors of a dubiously cleaned bathroom stands a great chance of getting the funk. Get a pair of sandals and use them for bathroom shoes.
Figure out the showers and use them accordingly. Pressure, hot water capability, and the tendency of condensation to drip cold water on your head all vary from stall to stall.
The proper response to walking into a bathroom and hearing a woman with a guy in the shower or something, or seeing female feet or something, is to quietly walk out. The proper response to seeing or hearing two men going at it varies on your acceptance of that sort of thing.
Be advised, although a man should be allowed to be sick from drinking in his own bathroom in peace, dorm bathrooms are university property, and the paramedics, cops, area residents, resident assistants, and whoever else feels interested, can sit there on your sick self and threaten to take you to the hospital or jail. Be sick in your dorm room into the trash can, especially if you’re underage. It might piss your roomie off, but it’s better than attracting attention.
Put paper down on the toilet seat…same reasoning as rule 1.
Use a bathrobe. You don’t have to worry about the towel falling off your rear, and that IS something to worry about because there WILL be fellow dorm residents of the sort of persuasion that shamelessly stare at guys wearing only a towel in the bathroom there with you, and they’ll start screaming oppression if you call them on it.
If someone heaved and missed the toilet, it’s a biohazard. Stuff a note under the RA’s door and make that guy work for his money.
Bonding BS and other Dorm stuff
You’re there to go to school, not to participate in stupid dorm activities. Unless they have free food, don’t bother with any dorm bonding activity. The first dorm meeting is mandatory and you’ll learn important stuff. Anything after that is somewhat optional, and, if you miss something that they consider important and they bitch you out, say you were working on a group project or something similarly impressive.
The RA is just a student. Keep your music down and your trash out of the hallway and otherwise ignore him. If you make friends with him, make sure he’s your friend first and your RA second. Don’t have a beer with your “friend” and then get busted by him for underage drinking.
The RA, and the head resident have NO power on their own; all the juice they think they have is derived from staff housing directors and the local police. If either of those authorities show up, show respect, but don’t feel you have to defer to the RA. An RA is like student government; it matters to the people that do it, and everyone else thinks they’re just another tool. If the RA wants you to do unreasonable stuff, tell him to kiss your ass or something equally insulting, and it should end there. Powertripping RAs are very common and they can be dealt with by not buying into their BS; if they report you to their boss, and you get hauled in, make him look foolish.
Fire drills. They like to do fire drills early on, and they will schedule one for some evening. Be elsewhere at that time, lest you have to stand around like a schmuck outside the dorm, or leave and get food or something.
Women RAs are REALLY scary. Try not to be alone walking down some girl’s floor (if they divide by floor), even if you are just leaving from some visit. According to modern female college doctrine, any unescorted guy on a female floor WILL rape, pillage, and burn if left alone. A guy I knew got MACEed for just walking down a hallway in the middle of the night in a girl’s dorm.
Conclusion
Other than the opening and closing, I only edited the 2006 original for length. It’ll be interesting to see if its lessons still are valid.
Read More: What To Do If You Were Just Falsely Accused Of Rape In College
1. Unless you are the cognitive super-elite going into theoretical physics, you are an idiot for going to college. Precisely what useful skill will you emerge with? English lit? STEM, maybe, but you can learn in a few months more from a Makerspace and online by building things at a fraction of the cost, and then actually start earning money. The purpose of College is to get a credential and credentialism is a SJW virtue.
2. Vocation, vocation, vocation. Being able to weld, repair something with an engine in it, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, is going to be the gift that keeps on giving. It won’t go robotic anytime soon, there is no oversupply, and it is also cheaper and you will be earning money much faster. For that matter Lyft/Uber can get you a positive cash flow today.
3. The internet has better courses. Tomwoods.com has some pointers, Vox has a whole game development, MIT and Stanford has courses. There are also 3 month code-academy bootcamps that you will be earning income as soon as you leave. From T. Woods, Praxis has entrepreneurial internships. No college I know of has any entrepreneurial course set.
4. If you were going to “go away to College”, there are better places to go away where you won’t have to worry about a campus rape accusation. Oil is down but you may find a blue-collar-ish job somewhere. Hazards if you don’t pay attention to safety, but good pay. And if you are in a SJW urban stronghold, you can search for an area that hasn’t been converged.
I don’t entirely disagree with you but there isn’t enough that can be said for STEM or the chief fields which serve the elite; STEM, medicine, and law. If going to an average school is all you can do initially, be exemplary and you can make it to the elite where your career and salary bracket will be guaranteed for life.
Cronyism is at an all time high so friendships, fraternities, networking, is your chief goal in college. For those of you comfortable with drugs, this may mean do some with students with a high potential to being powerful.
For those of you who income is not an option, do not waste time with liberal degrees unless if you choose to double major. Even still, add whatever degree you obtain with a degree geared towards a proven method of attaining wealth. Business degree comes to mind here.
For everyone who wishes to to get involved in a softer field such as the arts, every day you are on the job. Every day you are building your resume. Work quietly and network publicly. Have some work at the ready to present at least four times to a year and seek those who are in your chosen field to present them to. There are always mentors floating around.
College is recommended for many because while going there blind increases your likelihood of being sold a lie, not going to college all but removes your chances of having your resume given serious consideration by any of the higher paying corporations.
Also, you shouldn’t go to ANY college that demands:
1. Any kind of harassment or sensitivity training.
2. Taking a women’s study or gender study or whatever nonsense course as a condition of Graduation.
3. That imposes a fee on your tuition to fund liberal on-campus groups (PIRGIM).
4. Other irrelevant courses like Foreign Language unless you actually desire to learn (and they can actually teach it correctly).
5. The 168th edition of a textbook which costs $200 because last year’s 167th is only $20 but has three small typos corrected.
I had to buy a new book in college (waaaaaaaay back) because the prof and her husband were drinking buddies with the guy who wrote it. She didn’t even use the damn text all of the tests were based on her lecture notes.
its because teachers get extra money for recommending a textbook
that said textbooks can be found a lot cheaper than one thinks if you arent an idiot that shops at the school book store.
Just about ALL colleges now require harassment and sensitivity training. I was shocked when my son had to take a “sexual awareness” training (light weight online module, thank God) at his relatively conservative, apolitical, party school, Arizona State University, which took place last semester for the first time.
“. The 168th edition of a textbook which costs $200 because last year’s 167th is only $20 but has three small typos corrected”
Didn’t Amazon and other avenues of buying books undermine the extortionist prices the colleges were charging?
My books just swapped pages. That’s it.
Instead of page 67, you go to page 103. Stuff like that with the sole purpose of requiring a new book.
Math doesn’t change enough to warrant a new book every year. And Shakespeare isn’t exactly writing new stuff either.
Courses that effectively teaches foreign languages are few and far between. The Japanese program at Cornell, for instance, is good. They drill it into you and I’ve seen those who work at it come out after a year with functional Japanese.
Fuck college.
Take the money you would give your kid for college and invest it for them.
Insist that they work AND live at home while doing it.
Insist that they save most of the money they make and invest it as well.
In this way they can rapidly accumulate a nest egg in the time they’d have otherwise spent at college.
At the end of that four years they can be cut loose with that nest egg.
Hell of a lot better than four years at the local indoctrination center.
Agree. Reasons for the repugnant college bubble and confiscatory tuition rates include federally backed student loans, the opportunity to extend adolescence, and the sense, heavily inculcated by government schools and corporations, that employers demand or all but demand that piece of paper for any non-lower-class job.
How many alt-right and manosphere followers in management and entrepreneurship agree with these points, yet still mindlessly put – or let HR hippopotami put – “four-year degree” on job postings? The only way to make a difference is by directing applicants not to include their educational background in their application. They can express their achievements and talents in other, more accurate terms, which it is your job to interpret.
If all employers nutted up and did that, then we would begin to see the true market value of the privilege of attending these half-Bolshevik, half-corporatist de-education facilities.
But the repugnant college bubble’s life persists because it gives employers a massive pool of conditioned, debased, debt-shackled proles in place of the uppity middle class of yesteryear.
That is an extreme emotional view. In some cases college is good, and in some, bad. If you want to be a doctor, you need it. If you want to start a business, you don’t.
Stay composed.
As a non-american i have to feel sorry for the American college students. I thought i had it bad but you guys have to do 4 years instead of our 3 due to an entire year of useless pre-requisites which is just a scam to get another year of tuition out of you…. Also not being able to drink alcohol legally sucks too.
“any unescorted guy on a female floor WILL rape, pillage, and burn if left alone”
Look, Vikings gotta Vike.
https://goo.gl/images/SBpgCr
..
while the fuck college answer is completely valid…..as school is largely a brainwashing institution.
it does need to be said certain career paths require that degree and if you must go into college….I want to repeat and emphasize something 1000000 times
DONT FUCKING GO TO DORMS….DO NOT FUCKING DO IT
it is hell on earth in every possible way shape or form. google dorm horror stories. they are real they exist.
dorms will crush your sanity, destroy any sense of privacy, you can say fuck sleep because thats what your sleep life will be like(i think soldiers in basic training get more sleep), rules only exist to screw you, if you arent a super liberal prepare to either get gang raped in some form or another or fake it or simply convert(its a matter of survival really), the odds of a cool roommate are exceptionally low, parties while a potentially cool thing are not healthy 7 days a week, eating habits will devolve into total shit,
on the bright side you’ll have a new fond appreciate for your mother who you used to think was a hard ass when she told you clean your damn room. you’ll be begging for a clean room….clean kitchen(the dirty kitchen will result in shit eating), stuff is going to get stolen
college is where lifetime liberals are made….k-12 is the foundation to making a liberal. college seals the deal.
and so much more.
It’s funny.. dorms are such an American thing. Here in Oz land (and everywhere else I think), we do have student dorms, but the places are very limited. By far the majority of students live in a share-house arrangement off campus. Probably best that way 😉
while dorms are awful….student housing arrangements in general are shitty for a variety of reasons. sure you get by with less BS in student housing aka something that is student oriented but not directly on campus.
you still run into the nightmare of a bunch of 18 year old liberal fucktard twats now bunched up together. there is nothing healthy about this in anyway shape or form.
I can only imagine other countries are worse because other countries tend to be a lot more liberal(communist) than America with the only big difference being the feminist wave of communism hasnt infected other places AS much.
You should also go into the financial things. Try and get scholarships, get a part time job/internship related as closely to your intended career unless you really need money, buy or borrow used books or look online for cheap ones.
Drinking into a stupor or being addicted to something is bad and can ruin this one in a life opportunity. Drink enough to bond and have a purpose to socialize
Also when you choose a major make sure it’s of the STEM variety don’t waste time on something you enjoy as a kid, you’re not a kid anymore, computer engineering or pharmaceuticals are some examples
If you enjoy art or literature and take those majors so you can enjoy your hungry penniless college life hope you continue to enjoy them since you will be living a hungry and penniless life, it’s like after graduation you still live like a college student but worst
“Aren’t you TEACHERS?”
This is an important point and deserves some expansion. The fact is, the professors teaching STEM — and you are doing a STEM degree, aren’t you, coz anything else is next to useless — are there primarily for research and, increasingly, trying desperately to earn their keep by partnering with industry. Teaching sits at a very low third on that list. Some professors do care about students and are very good teachers.. but these guys are the minority. To most professors, teaching classes is a necessary evil to put bread on the table.. and they are actually *less* qualified than school teachers on that account.
More importantly, unlike school teachers, professors will not chase you up to make sure your study is on track and your work assignment are being completed. The professor’s door is open (to a varying degree) if people have any problems.. but the onus is 100% on the student to manage himself. If you don’t complete an assignment or fuck up an exam, you will get an F and you will fail the class. Simple as that.
Colleges are essential if you’re pursuing careers that require esoteric knowledge in convoluted and specialised subject areas, like medicine, science and law. Besides these, it is not necessary and certainly not essential to attend college if your life goals is to simply be rich or at the minimum make enough for yourself and your family.
college is only essential for those careers because the law requires it. but the fact remains you could learn all you need to know for 90% of careers in under a year with hands on work experience. but sadly they don’t allow that.
gots to have a PhD and 10 years of work experience and references from everyone youve known in the past 50 years and a notarized letter from the president and a copy of your 5th grade report card and so on and so forth.
Two lessons I learned from college back in the day:
1. DROP any class if you don’t like the professor or if you are doing poorly. Better to have a “Withdraw” on your transcript than a shitty grade.
2. DEMAND that the professor helps you with any material you do not understand. Make him spend as much time with you as you need. He is there to serve you! You are paying him a LOT of money, so make him do his job!
Whatever you don’t live in a dorm that’s for babies. Food is shit and oper priced like the accomodation. You have no privacy.
You can rent off campus for less and cook for yourself saving and eating way healthier.
That’s if you go at all. I wouldn’t take my degree (Arts) today I’d simply go into a good trade.
Actually, if I had started real estate investing when I first thought about it in 1997 after university I’d be retired by now..
Young men “think ahead” I beaseech you!
Going to college is literally Hitler.
Htiler is literally college.
Hitler resisted Judaism
I enrolled into a collage once, very colourful.
Got a finance degree, useless info. 4 weeks of getting paid to study for a Series 7 exam by a broker netted me far more real world knowledge.
The author missed any discussion on the importance of minimizing student loans, taking a curriculum with a high starting salary (STEM, medical, law) and picking a college with a high graduation rate. I minimized student loans by joining the military, attending college via the GI Bill, working for a company that had tuition reimbursement and selecting the electrical engineering curriculum. Picking the easiest courses and getting a 4.0 GPA won’t help if one is in a low paid starting salary curriculum (psychology, sociology, liberal arts, history, music, women’s studies) although the advice to select easier grading professors makes sense. $100K in student loans for a starting salary of $30K/year doesn’t make sense and it will be something that you regret post college. You are going there to improve yourself and work hard, not to party and pick up chicks (that comes later). This is what I feel every young man should also know.
I did not include that since I wrote the original a decade ago, and we have a 2k word limit. Good stuff for a follow up article next month.
Another point would be to start out at a low cost Community College and then transfer credits to the more expensive 4 year College to reduce expenses (i.e. 1st 2 years at CC; last 2 years at 4 year College). Virtually all of my Community College credits were accepted and transferred to the higher cost 4 year college. My 4 year college degree looks exactly the same as someone who went there the entire 4 years. The 2 year Community College degree was also beneficial in getting a job that had tuition reimbursement at the 4 year college. Working while attending engineering school night classes was hard (actually it sucked), but I had zero student loan debt upon graduation. Many college students would also be better off with just getting a 2 year Community College degree in one of the trades instead of going the 4 year college route. Too many students are shocked when they start having to repay the student loans post graduation. It would be better for everyone if student loans were based on the graduation rate of the college along with the starting salary of the curriculum being studied.
Example: Selected curriculum has a starting salary of $35,000 at a college with a graduation rate of 50%, then loan is capped at 10% of starting salary ($35,000 X 50% X 10% = $1750/yr = $146/month). Higher starting salaries and higher graduation rate for the selected college qualifies for a higher student loan and vice versa. This gives an incentive to the college and encourages students to take a curriculum that is actually in demand.
My main point is: DO NOT BECOME A SLAVE TO YOUR STUDENT LOAN AND YOU BETTER BE THINKING ABOUT HOW YOUR GOING TO REPAY IT. BTW, I’m not really shouting here, just emphasizing the point and sorry if I rambled on too long but I really feel it is important to emphasize this.
“In your quest for a good GPA, there are some people you need to cultivate. First, you MUST find some upperclassmen that has been there, and done that in your major. Try to find him (or her) this fall”
It was this that caught my attention: “Try to find him (or her) ”
NO. No “her”. Women’s reasons and goals for college are different from men. In college men have to make good gpa’s as well as decide majors, in order to get a good job and succeed in the World. Women’s goal is to coast on through and find some chump who will make a good useful idiot, er… I mean to say a good starter husband, which she will divorce later and begin starting her nest egg by receiving alimony. And teachers do behave differently to male and female students. Yeah right, let’s consult with some twat on teachers and stuff. Her World and what teachers are nice to her, and her circumstances will be different from what you as a man will experience.
Besides, with RAYPE culture so prevalent, haven’t they made it illegal for male students to speak to female students yet?
And freshman orientation — I’m sure that will be a lot of fun. The male students being placed in an auditorium and given courses on “how not to rape”
Used to be college was a fun experience, now it’s simply a sick environment to be subjected to for 4 years. That, plus the formula for success (college degree = success) is no longer. This current culture that still send their kids to college do so because the are in auto-pilot even though more people are getting suspicious that it is a waste of time and money.
That would be one of the items that didn’t hold up so well to ten years of time since it was written.
Visit your professors during their office hours at least once. That way they know your name and know that you’re interested. This will pay dividends down the road, with your grade and/or future recommendations.
Here is the best advice you will get on going to college. If you are a young man contemplating the journey read this.
Enroll in your local community college for the first two years. The classes will be easier than at your state school equivalent and your credits will transfer easily in almost every state these days. Live at home and keep a part time job if possible. Combined with lower tuition this will keep you debt down.
At year three transfer to your flagship state school. If you can still do so live at home. Yes not as much fun as your friends might be having partying it up in the college town, but you will also not be 50-75K in debt at the age of 22. Pile on the classes every semester and get out early if possible. Your sole goal once you transfer is to get your degree as quickly as possible. Take harder classes during the summer as they tend to be easier. This will help you GPA. If you want the “college experience” of partying and hooking up get a job in the college town for a year after you graduate and live it up.
Do NOT do anything remotely political even if you are inclined to do so. Stay far away from student groups and anything that might involve a SJW or anything they would protest. Do NOT interject any political opinion into anything ever on campus. That includes class discussions, groups of friends, or even casual conversation. Be very careful when it comes to dating or having sex with women on campus. Fake rape and false sexual harassment charges are real and quite common these days. You don’t want to end up getting expelled over one when you are 12 credits shy of your degree.
Remember you can party and date as much as you want once you graduate. But, college in this day and age is not place to do that especially if you are a man and doubly that if you are a white man. You will be better off just getting your degree, keeping your debt as reasonable as possible, and then enjoying your life. The difference from being 10-20K in debt as opposed to 50-75K like your friends who got expensive dorm rooms, paid full state tuition, and partied it up will be immense especially in your 20’s. You won’t be sacked with heavy student loan payments and will have much more professional mobility.
Trust me all on this. You might think it will be a lame four years but your 22-23 year old future self is really going to thank you for doing this.
Well said, treat college like a job, that includes avoiding having sex with coworkers. poison……
Dipping your pen in the company ink is almost always a bad idea whether it be your actual job, volunteer group, school, etc.
This is basically the path I took to after I graduated high school with a little bit of variation. My parents both lost their jobs when the economy took a shit, so I didnt think it was wise to take on extra debt in a time of uncertainty. I graduate in Spring of 17 and am looking at about 12k of student loans at less than 6% interest and plan on paying that off as soon as I possibly can. Most of my friends graduated with 30k+ and lived on campus and had the “time of their life”. I haven’t had the best luck dating or partying, but I will once my debt is paid off and I dont have that cloud looming over my head for 20 years like they will.
Well played. You are better off keeping the dating and hook up stuff off until you are more into your 20’s anyhow. Men mature socially a little bit later than women and by 25 or so you will have more confidence, more money, and a better grasp on your future. Plus I have always found that women who are slightly older are better to date as they start losing the looks, stop getting as much attention from men, and have to start thinking about the future as far as kids and relationships go.
Professor Himmler? Oh, we have couple of those at my college
I would also recommend to any student pursuing a liberal arts, or degree in the social (soft) sciences to get some practicum credits (actual work experience) while in school. I hate the idea of discouraging my own kids from college, but they are no longer places for people to improve their intellect or character like they once were. If either of my two sons decides they want to pursue STEM careers, than I would definitely encourage the university path. Shot of that, I won’t encourage it nearly as much. There are a lot of good, high paying careers that don’t require a Bachelor’s.
I’m going to college to be a management consultant. I highly doubt I can just up and apply off the bat and get hired over someone with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration. I agree that liberal and art degrees are about next to worthless, but you can’t tell me college is a waste. Ignore the indoctrination, think critically, get your degree and dip.
Advice to give my son.
– get a job first. Preferably in a field you think you like. Doesn’t matter what. Once you are the parking attendant at that big company, talk to actual employees and bosses to see what they actually hire.
– take that knowledge and persue a degree that hits those targets. If your counselor says you need a masters in CS, but the actual company says they value a strong core in math, just take a math major. (The college won’t hire you. They just want your money).
– since you have been working at said company anyway, use your contacts to get an internship. MAKE SURE ITS PAID. No excuses.
– maintain a high gpa. Not necessary after your first job, but better to have it than not.
– enjoy your career.
Alternative.
Go get a marketable trade. Trade schools are cheap by comparison and certifications are something you need anyway most times. So go out and get them.
Only go to college if you are being passed over for promotion from lack of a degree. If so, pay cash, be debt free and get some easy degree
My two cents:
Go STEM or not at all.
First 2 years do community college to save money.
Your summers should be spent studying ahead. Party after you graduate college.
For cheap books, go to amazon or http://www.chegg.com
For reviews on professors, go to http://www.ratemyprofessors.com
Avoid all who don’t excel at their studies.