[aclug-L] Re: CS Degrees (Was: Re: Cool new fan site....hehe)

["Jeffrey L. Hansen" <jlhansen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, Carl, you are fairly on the mark with that conclusion (sticking to it
because you wanted it badly enough).  I didn't stick to it because of many
medical problems that put me in the hospital about every 6 months for many
years.  The overall experience made it impossible to stay in class and has
made it necessary to take many of the same classes repeatedly when
reenrolling to continue the course.  My wife has had enough and so have
the kids.  I'll remain on the bitter side toward those in the HR
departments who refuse to try someone who has plenty of academic
credentials but no degree.

How did I get into rant mode?  sorry.  I'll go back to sleep now.



On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Carl D Cravens wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Jonathan Hall wrote:
> 
> > indication that a degree practically means nothing.  All it is is a 'tactic'
> > to get into certian companies that are too 'stupid' to realize how worthless
> > degrees are.
> 
> They're not entirely useless in that respect... a 4-year degree,
> regardless of what it's in, says that you had the perseverance and
> ability to stick with college long enough to get it.  That your basic
> level of intelligence is high enough to have passed all those general
> education and degree-specific courses.  Having a degree says, "Here's a
> guy who can go after something he wants, stick to it, and has the basic
> smarts to get the job done."  
>  
> > Being knoweldgable in the area of computers or Unix specifically is not
> > "magic."  You cannot become proficient at school.  You become proficient at
> > home, or on the job.
> 
> I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's very difficult to
> learn Unix administration by yourself ("at home").  There is so much
> word-of-mouth knowledge that you can never learn in books... you have to
> have a strong link to an experienced base of users.  My last job I took
> over an admin position from someone that was entirely self-taught on the
> job... he read books and in the end knew a lot of technical details.  But
> he did a lot of stupid things because he never had anybody to reveal to
> him the traditions of "how things are done in Unix" and you don't get
> those from a manual.  Especially going from administering a one-user
> machine to administering production servers with real users.
>  
> > A degree does have uses...  For me, attending WSU served only to 'force' me
> > to learn the material that I could have learned on my own, but was too
> > unmotiviated.  (That's a pretty high price tag for motivation, though!)
> 
> I've considered taking some creative writing classes for the same
> reason... I need a jump-start. 
>  
> --
> Carl D Cravens (raven@xxxxxxxxxxx)
> My reality check just bounced.
> 
> 
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