4 ms·

You make a valid point and I'd do the same if I were in your shoes. I'm just worried of wasting too much time pursuing rabbit holes when I already know where I

by zatara 16y ago

You make a valid point and I'd do the same if I were in your shoes. I'm just worried of wasting too much time pursuing rabbit holes when I already know where I want to go. At the same time, I've been more than once surprised with things that seemed unimportant before. The question then is how to filter out the "rabbit holes", while keeping the ignored interesting stuff.

huherto 16y ago
"you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
- msg 16y ago
  "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." -- Kierkegaard
thesethings 16y ago
One thing I'm doing, is NOT pursuing a degree program. This enables me to do lots more "a la carte" class-picking. I've had mixed response from the schools I've talked to about this. The admin folks seem mildly confused/insulted, but the profs are cool usually. It does take more overhead to explain your situation, meet w/profs to get out of prereqs, but it's pretty do-able.
- _delirium 16y ago
  > The admin folks seem mildly confused/insulted, but the profs are cool usually. Hah, yeah. Mostly because of each side's interests: the job of the administration is to sell the idea that $university's degrees are a valuable thing you should want, so it is completely crazy to them that you don't want their degree. But the profs ideally want to teach stuff they think is important/interesting to people who want to learn it, and to them, the people taking the class only because it's required for the degree are sort of the least desirable students, while someone taking it even though they don't have to, because they actually think it's interesting, is great.

4 ms·

You make a valid point and I'd do the same if I were in your shoes. I'm just worried of wasting too much time pursuing rabbit holes when I already know where I

by zatara 16y ago

huherto 16y ago
"you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
- msg 16y ago
  "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." -- Kierkegaard
thesethings 16y ago
One thing I'm doing, is NOT pursuing a degree program. This enables me to do lots more "a la carte" class-picking. I've had mixed response from the schools I've talked to about this. The admin folks seem mildly confused/insulted, but the profs are cool usually. It does take more overhead to explain your situation, meet w/profs to get out of prereqs, but it's pretty do-able.
- _delirium 16y ago
  > The admin folks seem mildly confused/insulted, but the profs are cool usually. Hah, yeah. Mostly because of each side's interests: the job of the administration is to sell the idea that $university's degrees are a valuable thing you should want, so it is completely crazy to them that you don't want their degree. But the profs ideally want to teach stuff they think is important/interesting to people who want to learn it, and to them, the people taking the class only because it's required for the degree are sort of the least desirable students, while someone taking it even though they don't have to, because they actually think it's interesting, is great.