A Letter from a Person with Higher Education
What the hell you've taught me? Adressed to deans, professors, graduates and university/college entrants.
I have graduated from Russia's best linguistic university this year, got a Bachelor's degree, was a straight A student and did my best to meet the demands of professors in Scandinavic literature-economy-philosophy-language history. All my friends and relatives insist on my continuing education and getting a Master's degree to become a real specialist, a top-translator with a safe job in some of Moscow's offices. Buzz off!
The standards of education have changed dramatically and graduates leave university being green and unprepared as hell, so will another two years change at least anything? What are the knowledge I got in the university that are capable of turning me into a specialist? Well, I know futhark (Scandinavic runes) and remember the year when the US Constitution was signed, I can see the inner connections between the Swedish "ting", the English "thing" and the Russian "вещь" and can tell you who Saussure was. All that stuff is extremely interesting though not capable for being used in real life. No-one cares that you can read runes when you can't remember what is Swedish for custody interpreting in court, no-one is interested in language paradigms if you drop articles and mix times.
I began to work as an interpreter on the forth year of my studies, as a translator on the second year and the only course that really helped me to improve my professional skills was my one-year course of translation from English into Russian with a middle-aged military translator who showed us how to analyze the text before translation. A linguist - hah! Who on Earth is interested in the levels of translatability if I can hardly remember long paragraphs of oral speech standing on the scene and stammering? If I had been a good A translator and interpreter I would not suffer from language inferiority complex every time I am invited to translate.
They cried from the scene that they'll format us to create some of the best personnel within translation, they charmed us, university entrants with studies abroad, speaking fluently two foreign languages and earning quite enough to go abroad twice a year. If we're top translators, I feel pity for those from other universities. I feel pity for their future employers. I feel pity for their families who paid for "education". Do you really insist on my getting a Master's degree?
The best thing that my university granted me with are my dearest friends and capability to work much and long. I studied 6 days a week from 8 in the morning and had to wake up at 5 a.m. I came home at about 3 p.m, had a very quick lunch and ran to my students (I have never enjoyed teaching though it was the only way out) or sat in front of the computer translating long passages of instructions and manuals to get something like $5 for a page. On the third course I realized that teaching and translating can give me neither satisfaction nor money and that's why I started my own business though not profitable yet. That gave at least satisfaction.
Actually the only thing that has partly covered the expenses on tutors at school, student books, and which is far more important, hepled to compensate time losses on useless work was Steemit. The platform that would have accepted me without higher education.
I basically lost three years out of four waking up early to get to the university, to spend time on the lectures, to write conspects and to re-write student books. A waste of time. A waste of precious time in your 18-19-20-21 years when you're so full of energy and ideas. The system which demands higher education to praise you with a white-collar job is a degenerating system breeding standard mindsets and plain lifestyles.
Thank's and fuck your Master's degree.
Anastasia
Education is the best investment, but a degree is just a by-product, and sometimes an expensive one at that. The smartest people I know have been primarily self-taught.
Self-education doesn't include the necessity of learning the by-subjects you're not interested in. At school (in Russia at least) we're taught that higher education is a must, a bridge to success and knowledge necessary in our future life. On practice the experience is a much better investment tool tham common knowledge earned through reluctance and lack of motivation.
Yes, that's right we do not depend only at degree
You are not alone. I guess that most of those who graduated from Russia's or Ukrainian univercities have the same feeling, and so do I.
Certainly grad school is not for everyone. But consider that you learned a lot more in university than facts - you gained skills by practicing them, such as the strong writing and clear analysis you showed in this post. Those skills are highly-prized and cross content areas. I sometimes tell my philosophy students that even if they're not interested in the puzzles themselves, they can use them the way weight-lifters use heavy weights: in the end the weights haven't moved anywhere useful, but your muscles have gotten stronger for lifting them, and that's useful.