Great book title
I found this book Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School
over at a blog post on why not to go to graduate school (via Instapundit). I had to laugh at the great title and went over to Amazon to check out the book and found it to be pretty straight forward on the downsides of a graduate school education. The book deals with:
I would have given other tips and advice about grad school such as staying out of the department or the school for that matter, even for free food--who wants to hang around with professors and others that are already making your life miserable? Spend your time away from them and give yourself a break. Anyway, the book looks good. I wish I had read it before considering graduate school years ago.
over at a blog post on why not to go to graduate school (via Instapundit). I had to laugh at the great title and went over to Amazon to check out the book and found it to be pretty straight forward on the downsides of a graduate school education. The book deals with:• advice on maintaining a veneer of productivity in front of your advisor
• tips for sleeping upright during boring seminars
• a description of how to find which departmental events have the best unguarded free food
• how you can convincingly fudge data and feign progress
I would have given other tips and advice about grad school such as staying out of the department or the school for that matter, even for free food--who wants to hang around with professors and others that are already making your life miserable? Spend your time away from them and give yourself a break. Anyway, the book looks good. I wish I had read it before considering graduate school years ago.
Labels: interesting books
posted by Helen at 11:51 AM
5 Comments:
Sleeping upright is a KEY skill! In 7th grade I learned to sleep with my head on my hand while the other hand holds a pencil. Killer!
Nice to see a book with such practical application!
Trey
Grad school being useless aside, it seems that regular college isn't doing anyone much good either. Kids who spend their parents money or their own trying to get a degree aren't having much success learning anything:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41136935/ns/us_news-education/
But it is a small wonder it took universities this long to stop making sure the students learn anything. If your customer is paying for a piece of paper then it is up to the paper provider to give them the paper diploma. These customers aren't paying for a rigorous courseload, excessive work, deep thought, writing exercises to make them better people, but a line item on the resume they hope will mean something to future employers.
I enjoyed my time in graduate school. Learned a lot, had some great professors. But then I studied Romantic poetry, medieval literature and the Humanities.
Today I sell real estate. Family owned business, you know.
I have two graduate degrees, an MA in Space Systems Management and an MS in Software Engineering. Both have generally proved useful for my line of work, although the software engineering is the more useful of the two.
Most of my classes were pretty good but one class in space telecommunications systems was horrid (terrible instructor). We met for 4 hour sessios one night a week for 9 weeks. By week 3, I was seriously considering hanging myself during break so I wouldn't have to go back to class. Fortunately, that class came to an end, eventually.
I spent about a year in grad school before I finally decided I'd had enough education in my adult life already. I now enjoy more time with my family, and have a career in a field that gives me satisfaction. I will not return to grad school, but instead focus on the gifts I already have.
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