Preview

A Proper Education and Vocabulary

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1265 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A Proper Education and Vocabulary
A PROPER EDUCATION

1. I left school and university with my head packed full of knowledge; enough of it, anyway, to pass all the examinations that were put in my path. As a well-educated man I rather expected my work to be a piece of cake, something at which my intellect would allow me to excel without undue effort. It came as something of a shock, therefore, to encounter the world outside for the first time, and to realize that I was woefully ill-equipped, not only for the necessary business of earning a living, but, more importantly, for coping with all the new decisions which came my way, in both life and work. My first employers put it rather well: ‘You have a well-trained but empty mind,’ they told me, ‘which we will now try to fill with something useful, but don’t imagine that you will be of any real value to us for the first ten years.’ I was fortunate to have lighted upon an employer prepared to invest so much time in what was, in effect, my real education and I shall always feel guilty that I left them when the ten years were up.

2. A well-trained mind is not to be sneezed at, but I was soon to discover that my mind had been trained to deal with closed problems, whereas most of what I now had to deal with were open-ended problems. ‘What is the cost of sales?’ is a closed problem, one with a right or a wrong answer. ‘What should we do about it?’ is an open problem, one with any number of possible answers, and I had no experience of taking this type of decision. Knowing the right answer to a question, I came to realize, was not the same as making a difference to a situation, which was what I was supposed to be paid for. Worst of all, the real open-ended question – ‘What is all this in aid of?’ was beginning to nudge at my mind.

3. I had been educated in an individualist culture. My scores were mine. No one else came into it, except as competitors in some imagined race. I was on my own in the learning game at school and university. Not so

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    4. I grew up with values instilled in me and knowing the difference between right and wrong.…

    • 412 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Student Debt

    • 1379 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Yet once we have reached the ripe age for broadening our minds, we are met by a problem. We have had our taste buds whetted only to find that our achievements are costly, expensive and out of reach. The only way that we can progress to is work long hours in menial and badly paid positions. These jobs distract us from the very things that we wish to learn. The alternatives are costly loans and spiralling debt.…

    • 1379 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    QTLS

    • 3336 Words
    • 9 Pages

    I can clearly remember from a young age trying to help my younger family members with their school work. I enjoyed helping people, as I progressed through life, I liked coaching members of my team but never pursued it any further until one morning I woke up and decided that I no longer wished to work in a bank. I longed for a change and whilst I was on maternity leave, I looked into the possibility of entering teaching. I cannot afford this I thought, I must be mad wanting to leave a perfectly good job and go back to university, oh well I'll just apply and see what happens..... 6 months later and I'm holding an acceptance letter, was I really going to do this.... YES.…

    • 3336 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Lonely Wolf

    • 1179 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Having a hard time finding a job because you are “over qualified”? Well, not to worry, you are not the only one. According to Statistics Canada, one in every five people in the work force who have a university education are “overqualified”. Overqualified is defined as,” more experienced and educated than you need to be to do a particular job”(macmillan). In other words, all those hard years, and those thousands of dollars spent on higher education, won’t always pay off. In Adrian Wooldridge’s article”Dr. Dole Queue”, he claims that degrees have lost their value. Not only are students being ripped off financially, but, according to Wooldridge, they are also being stripped of their “best years”. For example, In 2008, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, over 10,500 Americans with PhDs or professional degrees were employed as “cashiers”, over 27,400 as shop assistants and over 4,700 as hairdressers, hairstylists or cosmetologists. In other words, Students spend many years and thousands of dollars trying to achieve their degrees, BA’s and PHD’s, and in the end, there may not even be a worthy pay off. With, more and more students receiving these degrees they are not befitting themselves, rather they are just simply neutralizing each other’s qualifications. Wooldridge argues that spending time in the workforce, rather then enrolled in higher education, it will benefit a person alot more due to the fact that the on hands experience is what will help you to succeed. In my essay I will demonstrate how Wooldridge argues that the problem with students spending more time enrolling in higher education is that they diminishes the value of their qualifications, which in turn causes it to become more and more specialized. It is clear that higher education is no longer as respectable as it has been in the past.…

    • 1179 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Explain how emerging Adults make the transition to higher education and work (Papalia, Feldman, & Martorell, 2014). When I initially thought about going to college, I was fifty years old. The truth is I am a License Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC), and have been in the counseling field for about eighteen years at the time. My manager and I were completing my annual review I was told without a degree my salary could not increase. My first thought was I am too old attended college. My manager educate me on something I was not aware, they could take my license however, my degree cannot. That did change the fears of returning to school since it had been thirty two years.…

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Adam Corolla Usc Lecture

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages

    One of the basic tenets of life is that greater opportunities will appear to individuals that actively pursue and know how to recognize them. Since the majority of us do not have the luxury of being born into wealth or power, the choices that we make ultimately shape our successes in life. Adam Carolla begins by using examples to highlight the concepts of consistency and residual income. He explains that it is easier and more useful to understand how to sell something and continue selling it again and again as opposed to figuring out how to simply make a large amount of money. As a student that had performed poorly in high school, he worked a variety of jobs including carpet cleaner and boxing trainer before entering the media industry. Lacking a career support system, Carolla explains that it took him a long time to discover his path. The significance that he takes away from this lesson is the importance of “shooting for the stars” and finding a job that you can enjoy doing as a (pure) living.…

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After the exciting wait of finally getting my first car at the age of 16, I faced one major problem: no money. Searching for an answer, I gradually learned that getting my first job taught me many valuable life lessons and helped me evolve into the person I am today. After almost 4 years of work experience ranging in many different fields, I have adapted new skills and abilities, as well as the value of money. With challenges being faced, the forced me to manage my time, money, and effort in an organized way. This changed my direction, and motives, in life as well as my whole perspective on what is important and what really matters.…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Brown, Dale S. (2000). Learning a Living, A Guide for Planning Your Career and Finding A…

    • 2604 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Journal One, College 101

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages

    2. Write about the areas on the self-assessment in which you had your highest scores.…

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Reflective Practice

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages

    A short essay reflecting upon and analysing aspects of the graduate skills required by the participant’s current workplace and for future personal development.…

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Discovering Books

    • 752 Words
    • 4 Pages

    <br>Coming out of High School, I had in my possession the perspective that I knew everything. So I started, straight off the bat, working in a variety of menial jobs, which would have lead me to a dead end, for as the good jobs in today's society required college degrees. So, after working for two years with a white-collar full of frustration, I decided it was time to take matters into my own ink-stained, carpal tunnel syndrome-stricken hands. I immediately gave my two-weeks notice, and pontificated about going to college.…

    • 752 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Body Shop

    • 4011 Words
    • 17 Pages

    He had investigated a number of job possibilities, but had received no offers and was still unclear about the direction he wished to follow. His strengths appeared to lie in the marketing and human resources area. He had little interest in joining a major retail company: “I’ve been on that treadmill before,” he said. He felt that whatever his eventual career choice would be, he wanted to do “something that will make some differences to me and to others.” The idea of working for himself was appealing: “At least I’d be sweating to put money in my own pocket.”…

    • 4011 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is challenging and refreshing to look back and seek to rediscover the roots of one’s career path. From my earliest recollections,…

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Week 7 Assignment

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages

    3) How do you feel about these types of scores being used to compare you with another person? Please explain?…

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    If I only knew then what I Know now, words of wisdom that often young adults do not appreciate until later in life. As young adults approach graduating from high school, they are faced with having to decide on whether to pursue obtaining a higher education by attending a community college, university, technical school or to forego the education altogether and enter the workforce. Often the decision process may not include considering what the impact may be 15 to 20 years down the road. As the global economy continues to be dynamic, employees are finding employers are demanding more than hard work and good work ethics to be considered for employment let alone career growth. Whether or not one has knowledge or experience in a particular field, employers are demanding academic training, resulting in adults returning back to the classroom, and institutions adapting to how people can obtain an education.…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics