3 ms·

"Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you've got / Till it's gone" Most college students comes directly from High School. To them (or at leas

"Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you've got / Till it's gone" Most college students comes directly from High School. To them (or at least to me at the time) it was a "natural" continuation. We have been in school for over a decade. That's all we've known was to sit in a class room, jot down some notes, and then take some test. I totally agree, fast forward 10 years, and you realize how much of a privilege it is to do that. I'm doing very well for myself, but most folks aren't. And its because life takes over. You have kids, relationships, bills to worry about. It take an act of Congress to be able to have 30 mins to yourself a day. Sometimes I joke around and say "Let the kids work first then have them go to school". I would love to see such a program that did that. Perhaps, when I have kids and they grow up, I'll have my kids work for a couple of years, then send them to college. I'm betting that they would appreciate it. Sometimes you need that break to realize what you want in life.

VLM 13y ago
"I would love to see such a program that did that." I did that. Takes forever. Its called join the .mil in the reserves (ideally while not in an eternal war on multiple fronts, may not work so well in 2013), then get an associates degree basically for free with the GI bill, then get a "real" entry level job with tuition reimbursement, then night school the bachelors, etc. Just keep on upgrading till you're sick of it or lifestyle incompatibility. It helps to have actual experience in computers / electronics / RF before you take the classes. How weird it must be to first use an oscilloscope in a classroom, or first run a compiler as a school assignment, or first solder something after you're old enough to drink. I never got to experience that, which must be stressful / interesting.
- angersock 13y ago
  I second the .mil route, circuitous though it may be. One of my best friends went that route, and when we attended college they were really squared away. As much petty bullshit as professors and graders throw at you, it'll be a drop in a bucket compared with whatever you survived in the service.
cbhl 13y ago
> Sometimes I joke around and say "Let the kids work first then have them go to school". I would love to see such a program that did that. Not quite a 1:1 mapping, but the co-op program at the University of Waterloo has students alternate 4-month paid work terms with 4-month school terms over the course of five years.
wizzard 13y ago
I am strongly thinking about encouraging my kids to take a break before college if I think it could be beneficial to them. If they're rocking it in high school and eager to dive into four more years, then maybe I won't bother, but that seems _highly_ unlikely. Maybe they'll be great students and just need a break, in which case I might suggest a backpacking trip and/or internship. Or maybe they'll be unmotivated students barely scraping by in which case I might send them into The Real World to earn money towards their education (and find out why an education is important). I've thought a _lot_ about why I didn't do very well in college (beyond the obvious procrastination), and what might have helped, and filing those thoughts away for my own kids. The only problem is that kids want to be with their friends, and if their friends aren't taking a year off then it might be hard to convince them to break away from the pack.
- lizard 13y ago
  I was "rocking it" in secondary education, to the point that I was opted into a engineering-oriented college track despite declining to take the aptitude test. When I looked back on the time I spent working on my Computer Science degree I regret not taking time off. Even more so now that I've been working for a while (and re-entering eduction on my own terms). But I went straight into college after high school because a) I was "college bound" and that's what college bound kids did, and b) I would not be eligible for my scholarship if I took time off. I was pretty broke at the time so I needed the scholarship (and couldn't afford a backpacking trip anyways). I did fine in college but not as good as I could/should have. Like you, I thought a _lot_ about why and in particular I thought about why some people were doing better than me. This is what stood out to me: When the professors introduced a new data structure these classmates would talk about how they wish they knew about it for a previous project or how it got them thinking about a different way to build something they were working on. The people who were doing better than me had a reason to learn. I was just learning what the professors told me to learn. If they talked about a new data structure I learned about a new data structure. If they talked about when to use a data structure I learned when to use the data structure. I was "gifted", "college bound", and all sorts of other labels that presumably light the path to success. But I didn't understand my "gift" and I figure most my early educators didn't either, because they just kept encouraging me to keep doing what I was doing. Which was basically nothing. Moral of the story is don't let your kids' success blind you to the fact that they really need opportunities to explore themselves and their world. Whether they are "rocking it" or not, you should encourage them to seek these opportunities and help them get to them as much as possible.

VLM 13y ago

"I would love to see such a program that did that." I did that. Takes forever. Its called join the .mil in the reserves (ideally while not in an eternal war on multiple fronts, may not work so well in 2013), then get an associates degree basically for free with the GI bill, then get a "real" entry level job with tuition reimbursement, then night school the bachelors, etc. Just keep on upgrading till you're sick of it or lifestyle incompatibility. It helps to have actual experience in computers / electronics / RF before you take the classes. How weird it must be to first use an oscilloscope in a classroom, or first run a compiler as a school assignment, or first solder something after you're old enough to drink. I never got to experience that, which must be stressful / interesting.

angersock 13y ago
I second the .mil route, circuitous though it may be. One of my best friends went that route, and when we attended college they were really squared away. As much petty bullshit as professors and graders throw at you, it'll be a drop in a bucket compared with whatever you survived in the service.

cbhl 13y ago

> Sometimes I joke around and say "Let the kids work first then have them go to school". I would love to see such a program that did that. Not quite a 1:1 mapping, but the co-op program at the University of Waterloo has students alternate 4-month paid work terms with 4-month school terms over the course of five years.

wizzard 13y ago

I am strongly thinking about encouraging my kids to take a break before college if I think it could be beneficial to them. If they're rocking it in high school and eager to dive into four more years, then maybe I won't bother, but that seems _highly_ unlikely. Maybe they'll be great students and just need a break, in which case I might suggest a backpacking trip and/or internship. Or maybe they'll be unmotivated students barely scraping by in which case I might send them into The Real World to earn money towards their education (and find out why an education is important). I've thought a _lot_ about why I didn't do very well in college (beyond the obvious procrastination), and what might have helped, and filing those thoughts away for my own kids. The only problem is that kids want to be with their friends, and if their friends aren't taking a year off then it might be hard to convince them to break away from the pack.

lizard 13y ago
I was "rocking it" in secondary education, to the point that I was opted into a engineering-oriented college track despite declining to take the aptitude test. When I looked back on the time I spent working on my Computer Science degree I regret not taking time off. Even more so now that I've been working for a while (and re-entering eduction on my own terms). But I went straight into college after high school because a) I was "college bound" and that's what college bound kids did, and b) I would not be eligible for my scholarship if I took time off. I was pretty broke at the time so I needed the scholarship (and couldn't afford a backpacking trip anyways). I did fine in college but not as good as I could/should have. Like you, I thought a _lot_ about why and in particular I thought about why some people were doing better than me. This is what stood out to me: When the professors introduced a new data structure these classmates would talk about how they wish they knew about it for a previous project or how it got them thinking about a different way to build something they were working on. The people who were doing better than me had a reason to learn. I was just learning what the professors told me to learn. If they talked about a new data structure I learned about a new data structure. If they talked about when to use a data structure I learned when to use the data structure. I was "gifted", "college bound", and all sorts of other labels that presumably light the path to success. But I didn't understand my "gift" and I figure most my early educators didn't either, because they just kept encouraging me to keep doing what I was doing. Which was basically nothing. Moral of the story is don't let your kids' success blind you to the fact that they really need opportunities to explore themselves and their world. Whether they are "rocking it" or not, you should encourage them to seek these opportunities and help them get to them as much as possible.