University Is Not For Everyone

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A man I am acquainted with and I were having a dialogue/argument about higher education’s real import only a while back. We both came from conflicting standpoints. He along with a load of his dearest friends have secured positions in businesses where it is not required to possess a degree so he was reasoning that university is a waste of time. From my point of view, I am of the opinion that a degree is truly a requirement to find work in specific businesses; in my case, science. The chat kept coming back to a handful of crucial factors, and these are:

“Uni is pricey and there’s no surety that you will be given a job once you accomplish your degree, while if you sign up for an apprenticeship you will be paid to train. So if the typical university degree demands 3 years full time to accomplish then a university graduate would be economically 3 years behind someone who’s just completed an apprenticeship over a similar amount of time and that isn’t even taking the price of tuition in to account.”

Uni might be expensive, however, for the duration of my degree I participated in work experience and paid casual employment that was applicable to my eventual job which not only offered me a bit of spending money but bolstered my probability of being employed as soon as I had graduated. You also possess the opportunity to network with prospective employers at university; ‘it is not what you know, it’s who you know’, as they say.

My significant other finished her degree without needing to acquire student loans by simply taking on seasonal work. I on the contrary did have a few debts to settle which caused a smaller salary to start with but it was under 5 years before I had my loans settled and by that stage my pay had increased over twofold since graduating so I did not think myself behind in any case.

You just need to select your degree astutely, if you wish to improve your probability of acquiring work following graduation. Obviously, not all unis are created equal, and you can say the same of degrees, too. Too often I am privy to tales of students who end up working in fields that are in no way related to their degree because their specific field offer too little job prospects. Fields which are are in strong demand ought to be your focus. I studied Information Technology and didn’t feel as worried about finding a placement after university in comparison to many of my fellow graduates in arts degrees.

“For many courses the curriculum is too broad and not on par with industry requirements and by the time you have acquired your degree what you’ve studied is already out of date.”

What was covered in the curriculum was not the only thing that I gained from university. Not only did I boost my computer expertise with the empirical learning, my communication skills were polished, too. Five years later, I may just be making use of 5% of the things I studied at university, but with the incessantly progressing benchmarks and technologies of the IT sector, that isn’t at all surprising.

“University is demanding. Numerous folks disliked studying in school and aren’t eager to subject themselves to much of that stress and anxiety.”

Of course, hard work is demanded at university, but to be able to do well, we should put a bit of pressure on ourselves. Despite this, one my life’s finest experiences is attending uni. Running around like a headless chicken on campus is among my most cherished recollections up until the present. I met so many great folks, plenty of whom I’m still friends with today.

Ultimately, the choice to attend university needs to focus on what is best for you. Make sure that you possess the right reasons for doing so. Going to uni because your parents told you to, or because all of your peers are going are not appropriate reasons. Your indecisiveness shouldn’t be a huge aspect in your choice either. Not knowing what else to do is not a reason to go to university. Taking a sabbatical is a better option, if you’re uncertain. Get a job and put money away, then you can enjoy yourself by taking a vacation abroad. You will actually discover what you truly want to do by taking a little time off for soul-searching. Another amazing plan is determining your likes and dislikes, as well as your weaknesses and assets with a career advisor. They can then give you many recommendations on what sort of career would be best suited for you. Maybe you could take a few short courses to determine if school is something you like, and to discover whether or not you are interested in the topic. At the end of the day, work to get on the route that takes you to the job you want.

Insights Into Immersion, Indoctrination, and Intellectual Opportunity

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The future of education will be grand, but there probably won’t be rows of students sitting at desks rote memorizing fact and submitting to the authority of a teacher with an apple on their desk (an organic one). It’s time for the education community to grow up and get moving into the future. Indeed, it appears to me that we will have a blurred reality scenario of teaching in the future, an electronic immersion of sorts. Okay so, let’s talk, because that future of education will change everything.

Okay so, one example I like to use is George Washington crossing the Delaware, with all of the walls of the classroom becoming giant screens. The kids sit in the middle of the classroom with their desks shaped like a couple of small boats, and they listen to George Washington talk to his men during the crossing. In this case they are in full immersion, and they remember those words spoken, because it will be as if they were there. In a way they are, in augmented reality that is, as they are completely immersed in the activity.

Now then, this has incredible benefits for human memory, because when reading it’s hard to retain all the information, when learning things visually it’s a lot easier, and when you are immersed, not only do you learn faster, you remember better, much better than any other way of informational input.

Perhaps there’s only one problem with this. It’s that we keep teaching a false history, and we are continually indoctrinating our next generation. We aren’t teaching them to think. That’s not to say the teacher in the classroom couldn’t after engaging in this scene which I described above have a discussion with the students about where they were going, and what they were about to do, and how they would become a part of history.

However, the ability to indoctrinate our children better, is not necessarily the best for our future. They say that those who don’t learn their history are doomed to repeat, but I would submit to you that those who learn their history incorrectly are guaranteed to repeat it or make worse mistakes with the future of humanity. The future of education will have incredible intellectual opportunities, and immersion is obviously the fastest way to learn, but until we get over this challenge of ours of continual indoctrination, maybe we shouldn’t bring about this new technology, or do it very wisely so it isn’t misused.

You see, many of us who are intellectual thinkers have to relearn, and un-indoctrinate ourselves after our schooling. That can take years. Indeed, rather than calling this criticism of our past periods’ education, let me call it a warning as we march into the future. It’s not that I am against these new technologies, actually I love them in fact – it’s just that I want them to be used properly, and for the right reasons. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

6 Steps to a Better Research Paper

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Step 1. The first step in any research project is deciding what you want to research. For example, you may want to research China. Whoa, that’s a big topic. You’ll need to narrow it down a bit.

What exactly interests you about China? Let’s say you’re interested in the History of China. That topic is as enormous as the Great Wall, so let’s narrow it down to something more manageable:

  • History of China–>Women’s roles –>Tang Dynasty (June 18, 618 – June 1, 90)

Step 2. What you need to do now is consider the purpose of your research:

  • Will you compare and contrast the roles of women during the Tang dynasty with some other country?
  • Will you make an argument for or against the treatment of women during the Tang Dynasty?
  • Do you have an original theory you would like to propose about women’s status during the Tang Dynasty?

Let’s pick option 3: An original theory regarding women’s roles during the Tang Dynasty.

Step 3: Now you must formulate a thesis. A thesis is typically a one -sentence summary of your topic. For our topic, the thesis may be:

Thesis: Women’s status in the Tang Dynasty was relatively liberal.

Great! We’ve got our thesis statement.

Step 4. Now, the fun stuff: let’s come up with a hypothesis. Admittedly to do this, you must already know something about your topic. But, essentially a hypothesis is an attempt to explain the state of something-it is to answer the question of why.

Women’s liberal status during the Tang Dynasty was a result of relative stability and prosperity of the time.

Step 5. Our next step is the literature review, which will help us back-up our hypothesis. A literature review is a survey of the research that already exists on your chosen topic. You will incorporate this into your results, most likely a research paper. There are several different ways to incorporate the literature review.

Below are two commonly used methods of incorporating a lit review:

  • Compare and contrast the existing research
  • Present the existing research in chronological order

In our case, we’ll compare and contrast the existing research, to figure out where our thesis fits in. For example, we’ll look at the roles of women in China and compare times of peace with times of war, times of prosperity with times of leanness.

Step 6. After our lit review, we should have a broad understanding of our topic. At this point, we must begin the writing phase of our research project.

Before you begin, here are a few tips:

Your research paper should consist of:

An introduction

  • Clearly states thesis and hypothesis
  • Gives some indication of the topics to be covered (i.e. war, peace, prosperity, poverty)

Paragraphs

  • Each paragraph should have a topic sentence-something that tells the reader what is to come. And, each paragraph should transition smoothly into the next.
  • How many paragraphs will depend entirely on the required length of the paper, but as a general guide:
  • One or more paragraphs for lit review
  • One or more paragraphs for each issue addressed in hypothesis
  • One or more paragraphs synthesizing the work with previous research-both the areas where it coincided and where it contradicted

Conclusion

  • A conclusion should make mention of your thesis/hypothesis, results, and conclusions.

Bibliography/Works Cited

  • Here is where all your sources used in the research should be listed.
  • The format will depend entirely on the requirements set forth.

Good Luck and Happy Writing!