Comments on: School Did Not Prepare You for Work

By: Old Miller McMillerson

Old Miller McMillerson — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:36:05 +0000

I went/go to Purdue University. The only thing I learned from school is that most of my competion for jobs were stupider than random crack addicts I’ve met while wandering around in Detroit, but were white and had families with more money. My proudest achievement was getting hired for software development engineer position at a small, elitist company without having a degree yet. This is my first “real” job, and after years of working kitchens, cleaning up shit, and spending months eating nothing but white rice whiel trying to pay bills and tuition (and being laughed out of classrooms by idiotic little pricks who never worked a day in their life because I couldn’t afford new clothes), all I can say is that if the worst of your problems at work is that somebody isn’t coming along huffing your farts and telling you they smell like roses every few weeks… wow. I’ve never seen anything more worthy of being listed as a “first world problem”.

By: Ed Hamilton

Ed Hamilton — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 01:06:44 +0000

All true. But short on answers. I can also make long descriptive posts with little bit of coping skills for it. The challenge is, what’s the answer. Coping isn’t an answer.

By: Some dude

Some dude — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:08:50 +0000

Really great article.

I can relate to EVERYTHING you have stated. One point I’d like to add is that learning in general doesn’t work the same way in the real world as it did in school. Teachers were paid to do nothing but teach you material that they are very familiar with. Books were made to teach you EXACTLY what you needed to know for the problems or situations that you were given in school. In the real world, there’s rarely documentation that shows you how to solve a particular problem. You are at the mercy of your coworkers to teach you. They probably don’t have the time to sit down with you and teach the material to you in detail. Even worse, some coworkers purposely hoard information in order to keep a leg up on you. Who can blame them? Who wants to part with their knowledge when it’s the closest thing to job security that exists this day and age? You have to learn by trial and error and learn by your mistakes. I was so unhappy with my first real world job because I learned VERY little compared to what I learned in college. It always felt like pulling teeth to extract the info from coworkers that were just too busy or annoyed to help out the new young guy.

Also, there’s no longer any “right” or “wrong” answers and even if there were, you couldn’t check the back of the book to make sure you “got it right”. Now there’s several solutions to the problem and knowing which is the “best” answer usually requires a crystal ball and extremely good fortune telling skills. You have to pick one of many possible solutions and usually your decision is questioned by bosses and coworkers and you end up having to defend your position.

By: Bryant

Bryant — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 01:42:18 +0000

Identified you website by way of google I must say I m amazed along with your content!

By: anonymous

anonymous — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:34:39 +0000

Whoever made this article’s an unappreciative hypocrite. Without school, you won’t be able to function well in the real world. Think about it.

By: boohoo

boohoo — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:59:43 +0000

I am a little late to the party, but for me work is a flashback to all that I hated in my K-12 education. Basically a highly structured day with little to no say in how things are done. Essentially, designated leaders give work and you finish it by the deadline. If you do those tasks in a manner they like and communicate ideas they perfer to hear you will get “gold stars” (in the form of promotions, bonuses, raises etc). If you mimic their beliefs efficiently and put on a good show they give you the equivilant of a student leadership position (year book, student council etc). It drives me to exhaustion, just to keep the perfomance going day to day.

Second, my degrees have no function in the jobs I can get hired for. It seems the result is that I went to school for appearances only. I wonder if I will EVER get to use one iota of the education that I spent money on. Its not that I don’t like the people I work with, but I have to compromise everything I believe in to keep the total situation civil. If I had choices in life I wouldn’t likely associate with any of them other than acting cordial for the limited periods in which I needed to be engaged with thier company. I know life is not a barrel of monkeys, but I also didn’t expect my working life to have no cognative engagement other than being the equvilant of a reluctant shakespearean actor day in and day out.

By: Clint Carlson

Clint Carlson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:05:08 +0000

“I took a job as an executive assistant. It was just supposed to be a way to pay the bills until I found a “really good” job, but I discovered a way to turn it into a “really good” job and spent the next six years publishing books and journals as an editor and artist for that same company.”

I love that. A lot of people are afraid to made radical suggestions and don’t want to rock the boat at work. I have no idea why. I’d rather have an employee that suggests 9 unworkable ideas and 1 good one than none at all. I started as an admissions advisor here at Herzing University and after doing well playing around in social media (thus getting more enrollments) I was recently offered a Social Media Manager position. I pays to ask and experiment! Just keep trying/reading/implementing!

Clint Carlson

By: Koyich – Alex, attempting to attract retention…er…attention – ideas design thoughts spirit – Edmonton Alberta Canada » School Did Not Prepare You for Work

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:41:45 +0000

[...] The whole article is available here: http://workawesome.com/career/school-did-not-prepare-you-for-work/#more-574 [...]

By: Isabelle C. de Andrade

Isabelle C. de Andrade — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:02:54 +0000

Hello!

This post is just awesome!

It just reflects the situation of ex-students/new-employes from every country around the globe.

Being this the case, I was just wondering: can I translate this article to Portuguese and post it in a blog or something (with the proper credits and links, of course)?

Thank you very much for the read.

Best regards,

Isabelle.

By: Silvia

Silvia — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:45:27 +0000

From what I read in this post, it seems as if you expected schools to prepare people for life, not just work. Schools may prepare you for work (or not), and you could also acquire some skills that you could use in your life, not just at work, but as big a part of life work may be, I think it shouldn’t be expected that people will learn in school everything they need in life.

What I find ironic about schools not preparing people for work (and I mean work specifically), is that some people consider going back to school as an option when they get fed up from their current work and want new career opportunities.

Freedom in school, lack of choice at work? That depends on the point of view; others could say school is too structured and work is more open. I have friends who feel more at ease now they’re working than when they were students.

Regarding the titles you get, here’s another point of view, just for the sake of reflection:
Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior? Your title doesn’t really change during your school years, you’re just a student. Your title in your professional life could change as you said, from Junior researcher to Assistant Developer, and even to some other type of profession; it could change as you make choices.

On the other hand, I totally agree that when you’re a student there’s a sense of assurance that for at least some years you won’t have to trouble yourself with decisions on where exactly you want to go next.

Bottom line is, the subject is too complex to make loose statements.
By the way, I loved Ann Teeter’s reply