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Quitting College and going to Cosmetology school...

Is there any branch of academia that isn't above reproach?

19th century art history maybe?

I think we all understand that some disciplines have more of a practical application than others. Maybe we need a, "my education is better than yours" thread. Although science has an unfair advantage, what with being an understanding of how everything in the world works, as opposed to things we make up in our heads.
 
Heuristic said:
^ Maybe there's a little defensiveness there? I remember being mildly surprised to learn that you left college after reading some of your posts in the Science forum; and then I reflected that my surprise may in itself betray a certain kind of prejudice. If you do encounter it, then that prejudice must grate sometimes.
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I'm not EXACTLY sure I understand what you're saying: After all, I'm actually HAPPY to hear that some people prejudge me as "educated" (I mean, it's a lot better than people prejudging me as a complete dumbass, right :D).

But I have heard that some people take offence to "positive" prejudging. And to some extent I can understand that. Imagine being an Asian guy at an office, and people constantly ask you math questions.
 
satricion said:
French social theorists were instrumental in politicising epistemology in the social sciences, working against a tradition of racist and sexist social scientific practices which had been used by both academics and governments since the beginning of modernity. Conceptual tools which come from this kind of thinking have now filtered down into mainstream undergraduate teaching, and I recently read a report on Australian Aboriginal deaths in police custody which had a few concepts in it which recognisably come from theoretical traditions that originally come from France. These concepts were used in a way that made sense to practitioners on the ground, as well as academics. This report has had a major influence in the way that Aboriginal people in Australia are treated in jail, probably because it was able to recognise the way that race and gender combine to produce emergent forms of disenfranchisement and marginalisation, meaning (hopefully) less deaths in custody and less degradation in jail.

So maybe you should get over your anti-French theory thing as well.
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:) I was teasing Satiricon. Just a little friendly ribbing.
 
I'd say finish the degree. If you end up deciding you don't want to do cosmetology anymore, you'll still have that degree to back you up. Unless of course you have no interest in journalism anymore, then you might as well quit because you probably won't put your all into it and it might end up being a waste of money. I definitely think you should eventually pursue cosmetology school though. It's fun, and you get to learn a lot of cool tricks to do to your own hair. I just didn't like the people. The thought of screwing up someone's hair had me terrified, and as a social phobic, it just didn't work lol.
 
Update: I got into the Paul Mitchell School for cosmetology and the program at Florida State College of Jacksonville. I have a meeting with Paul Mitchell on Friday. It seems like it will be a great fit for me. :)
 
^My sister went through Paul M. training and ended up doing very well for her self. She did end up going back to school to finish her Associates degree, but she seemed very happy and good with her job as a beautician.

You seem to be a very social person so I am sure you will fit in that community very well.
 
Cyc said:
I think we all understand that some disciplines have more of a practical application than others. Maybe we need a, "my education is better than yours" thread. Although science has an unfair advantage, what with being an understanding of how everything in the world works, as opposed to things we make up in our heads.
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when was the last time science helped people act like, you know, ethical beings?
 
^All the time, as a better understanding of the world lets us make better informed ethical decisions.
 
Cyc said:
I think we all understand that some disciplines have more of a practical application than others. Maybe we need a, "my education is better than yours" thread. Although science has an unfair advantage, what with being an understanding of how everything in the world works, as opposed to things we make up in our heads.
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I kind of think Cyc was being funny here, but i'm not sure.

How do you make the distinction between "everything in the world work[ing]" and "our heads?"

i mean, you really, REALLY see the hard sciences as ACTUALLY explaining or forming the foundation of how "everything in the world works"?

science is really your final vocabulary?
 
gloeek said:
I am currently getting my degree in jounalism, mainly because I'm a good writer and it interests me, but I have no clue what I am going to do with the degree. Teach? I mean, it interests me, but before I started college I really wanted to go to cosmetology school. However, I didn't because everyone was saying how it was such a waste of my intelligence and how I wouldn't really be giving back to anyone. It's what I have wanted to do for a long time though. I'm good at it, it pays a lot, and I love doing it. I have been doing hair on myself forever, cutting and dying and before that I did it on my barbies. It's really what I want to do, so I feel like I am wasting my time in college.
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Keep in mind that, with an Associate's degree, you can do substitute teaching. Depending on where you live and the demand there, you can make anywhere from $75 to $100 and change per day. It is a college degree you can fall back on and it will improve your job options. You can do cosmetology school later. It is a good idea to get into the service industry, and cosmetology falls into that category. That kind of work is never going to go away and there will always be a demand.

Still, the Associate's degree will help you in a wider range of fields.
 
^^
Hah! Less academics in universities? You obviously have no idea what the workload of the average academic is nowadays. All these stories of tenured professors sitting around on their arses doing nothing is complete rubbish.

My supervisor, for example, is a tenured professor. She gets up at 5am every morning to do her academic writing. Then she comes in to work. She runs a research centre, serves on a number of university committees, oversees a huge longitudinal research project, teaches two courses, supervises me and other PhD students. Then she goes home and does her academic writing. She has, at the absolute most, one day a week in which she doesn't have to do more than a couple of hours work. A lot of academics think "me time" is "time I can work without being disturbed."

The number of academics to students at universities has been declining dramatically over the last decade. Tenure is fast becoming a thing of the past, increasing numbers of people are on casual contracts and having to constantly reapply for their job, workloads are up, class sizes are up, and there is more pressure on academics to publish than ever before. And you want less of them?
 
Damn it, satricion, now I have to break out the red ink. On a Wednesday morning, of all times 8).

^^
Hah! Less academics in universities? You obviously have no idea what the workload of the average academic is nowadays.

I know I haven't posted much about my academic background, but yes, I DO have some idea of the academic workload

All these stories of tenured professors sitting around on their arses doing nothing is complete rubbish.

By all means, and without any sarcasm at all, I am well aware of the stressful life of a scholar.

My supervisor, for example, is a tenured professor. She gets up at 5am every morning to do her academic writing. Then she comes in to work. She runs a research centre, serves on a number of university committees, oversees a huge longitudinal research project, teaches two courses, supervises me and other PhD students. Then she goes home and does her academic writing. She has, at the absolute most, one day a week in which she doesn't have to do more than a couple of hours work.

What you're describing sounds to me like a "labor of love", so perhaps you can see why, whenever someone says "Oh man, school is so stressful I just wanna kill myself", my recommendation is to QUIT said school.

A lot of academics think "me time" is "time I can work without being disturbed."

Just an old joke: A mathematician is lying asleep on his couch. His 4 yr old daughter comes in the room and says "Daddy daddy, look, I painted a picture". Then mommy says, "Leave daddy alone. Can't you see he's working?"

The number of academics to students at universities has been declining dramatically over the last decade.

Sounds to me like another argument for FEWER STUDENTS ;)

Tenure is fast becoming a thing of the past, increasing numbers of people are on casual contracts and having to constantly reapply for their job, workloads are up, class sizes are up, and there is more pressure on academics to publish than ever before. And you want less of them?

I can only imagine that some of the associated stress of professorhood would therefore be reduced by doing away with students that overflood their office hours with complaints about how they don't get the homework, it's too difficult, they need to schedule extensions because the course projects are interfering with their precious drinking/drugging time, and so on.
 
Or maybe we could just have adequately staffed universities with appropriate workloads so that everyone who wanted to go to university had the opportunity to get a good degree, and had good enough relationships to their professors that teaching styles could acknowledge the genuine issues that people have during the three (at least) years that they're at university.
 
^But where does the money for that come from? Society at large shouldn't be forced to subsidise the higher education of every whimsical Tom Dick or Harry who feels like giving it a crack. Education is already damn expensive, and funding it publicly is unfair and unworkable in practice (I'm looking at you France).
 
Um what do you mean every whimsical Tom Dick or Harry? People don't just go to university on a whim. A university degree is an increasingly important thing to have in contemporary society. The material gap between people with and people without a degree is growing constantly, and people who don't have a degree are more often relegated to low paid, insecure casual work with few chances of progression and low job satisfiaction than people with a degree (not always, but more often, and increasingly so). Also, with an increasingly specialised and technologically sophisticated labour market focused on an increasingly highly skilled set of professions, a highly educated population is a must for any industrialised nation.

This opportunity should be provided to anyone who wants it. If it isn't adequately supported by state subsidies, higher education becomes something that only those privileged enough to have the money to pay for it have access to. That means that it will essentially contribute to inequality rather than providing opportunities for social mobility and increasing the level of education (and thus productivity) of society as a whole. People who are not suited to university will drop out when they get bad marks (the number of people who drop out of university at the end of their first year is very high.)

Universities used to be funded much better than they are now, particularly in Europe, UK and Australia (America has always had a highly class-stratified higher education sector related to the historically higher prevalence of free market thinking in all areas of social policy). Pressure on academics is increasing, and the quality of education is decreasing, because state support has been reduced. This means higher fees and more inequality. It also means larger classes, more stressed academics, and universities oriented to staying financially viable rather than providing good education tied to cutting edge research practices. Academics who constantly have to reapply for their jobs are unable to do any decent research, since this takes years. They're also unable to teach well, since the amount of effort required to update courses and deal with students is too much in comparison to the amount of effort required to write, and publishing is the thing that keeps academics in a job.

The money to run a decent higher education system which is not class discriminatory comes from motherfucking taxes, and the view that subsidising education with taxes is just society subsidising people to fuck around and do nothing is completely ignorant of the role that higher education has played in the history of industrialisation, and will continue to play in the future. If you don't subsidise education you reinforce inequality and increase poverty.
 
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