I never went to college (high school dropout with a GED). My "formal" schooling was a 2-year, intensive EET (Technician) course, at a trade school. It had both

I never went to college (high school dropout with a GED). My "formal" schooling was a 2-year, intensive EET (Technician) course, at a trade school. It had both good and bad traits. It was very structured and rigorous. When you graduated, you were ready to go directly into full-time work at almost any organization (the NSA and CIA used to recruit from our school). It stressed practicum, over theory, though, so you came out more as a "doer," than a "thinker." All of my theoretical stuff, I learned on my own, after getting my first job. I did OK with that, as I was fairly quickly promoted into engineering (and was introduced to "exempt" pay).