Your Higher Education.

[RCMerchant]

Did you make it out of high school? Go to collage or a voctaional school?
I never made it out of 12th grade. I almost made it...I quit and hitchhiked to NYC in 1979 when I was 17.
I did take a art class for one year .I won second place in the regional art fest of a pencil and charchol drawing of an aged Gloria Swanson and also 3rd place for a drawing of a hand holding a gun!
I took a class also on how to set up and run a printing press. So I knew how to do that. I don't now. That was over 40 years ago.

[indianasmith]

I graduated HS in May of 1982, and joined  the Navy for four years.  During that time I became a certified Morse Code operator.
After my discharge (no jokes please, LOL!) I went to college.
I got a Bachelor's Degree in 1990 with a combined History/English major, then went straight on in to grad school.
I finished there in 1993 with a Master's Degree in Modern European History.

[ER]

I have undergraduate degrees in European History (with a specialization in Medieval) and Biology, about seventy credit hours of further classroom training at three other universities related to a job, and my Uncle Lark says I am a "Road Scholar" apparently an honorary title more common in Alabama and the rest of the Deep South than up where I'm from, but, hey, I'll take it.

The two biggest lessons I took away from college are that one should never let education get in the way of learning, and libraries can teach you more than classrooms.

[Alex]

2 years college doing electrical and electronic engineering at Kilmarnock, 2 more years college with computer, networking, support and administration at Greenock followed by 14 months at the Defence Aeronautical College Cosford.

[Trevor]

I graduated from high school in 1984, did two more years for the National Senior Certificate in South Africa (1985 - 1986) and then came down to South Africa in 1987 to study here www.tut.ac.za

I graduated in 1993 and studied while working at the archives: not easy but I did it.

[FatFreddysCat]

I graduated from Wagner College in Staten Island, NY (go Seahawks!) in 1992, with a B.A. in English. I had a great time, made some lifelong friends and learned a lot, but when I look back on it all these years later I sometimes wish I'd gone somewhere/done something else.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a f*** up. I went to my classes and got decent grades (most of the time), but I never really had a clear picture of what I wanted to do when I got out. First I was gonna be a comic book artist, then a journalist, then a Public Relations guy, then I wanted to manage bands or work at a record label, or do something in the music industry, blah blah blah. I was all over the place, depending on what my interests were at any given time. I changed majors a couple of times in my first two years, thinking that I'd "figure it out as I went along."

(buzzer sound) WRONG.

I was the first person in my family to ever go to college. My parents had always given me the impression that a college degree was a Willy Wonka golden ticket, and that companies would be lined up outside the campus gates after I graduated, ready to throw the perfect job at me. Of course, since I was young and dumb, my naive ass bought into that fantasy hook, line, and sinker.

(buzzer sound) WRONG AGAIN.

For some reason, it never occurred to me that there were several million OTHER people getting out of college at the same time as me, with the same degree I had, but they all had a f**king clue of where they were going!

Unsurprisingly, I had no job prospects when I got out of college (I hadn't even landed any interviews!) so I ended up working at a K-Mart for two years after graduation -- which if nothing else, taught me a much needed lesson in humility. (it also gave me 20 extra pounds and a drinking problem, and increased my hatred for humanity in general about 1000 percent, haha.)

I finally got my foot in the door of the newspaper biz in 1994 and a quarter century later, I'm still here. It's certainly not the hippest industry to be in nowadays, but at least it pays the billz. I just hope and pray that I can get a few more years out of it before the internet destroys us entirely.  

This is why I've been telling my kids ever since they were old enough to understand, that they need to HAVE A PLAN, because I didn't.

That speech must be sinking in with my oldest son, who just turned 16 (sophomore in high school). He's not interested in college, but he's good with tools and talks about becoming a mechanic, so we're steering him towards tech/trade schools after high school.

(Whew) Sorry, didn't mean for this to turn into a rant. I guess my point is, college should not have been the place for me to "find myself." Maybe it works that way for some people, but I guess I should've had at least some idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up before I started. I wish somebody had told me that back in the day.

[bob]

I earned a Bachelor's degree in English and Communication in 2008. In May of this year I will have an Associate's degree in Foundations of Teacher Education.

[The Burgomaster]

I have a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration (accounting concentration). I also studied broadcasting and film at 2 different colleges (needed about 9 more classes to get my degree, but never finished).

[lester1/2jr]

I have a bachelor's in art history. I got it at a state college back when college was affordable. I like caravaggio and jackson pollock. in other words: I'm more slayer than metallica

[AoTFan]

I've got a Bachelor's In Information Technology, which is a fancy dancy catch all term for various computer stuff.  Some colleges specialize their degrees, focusing on tech support, security, or other stuff, but at the time I graduated (2007) it was just a study in general computer related subjects.  Like Freddy, I didn't really have a plan when i started college, I just went for a two year degree that would help me get a job in the craphole pit I was living in.  TBH, I was most interesting at the time in Web Design, but didn't realize the program was only a _small part of that, consisting of only one or two classes of basic info.  Had I known, I would have just picked another degree and taken the web design classes on the side. 

When I graduated, all the jobs I saw even related to my degree wanted either years of experience, or familiarity with programs I didn't know (and didn't have hundreds of dollars to buy.)   Tried to get help/advice from my professors but they just told me to go to Placement and do research there.  (Gee, thanks, guys, big help.)   So, I took a minimum wage job at a hotel (which I didn't need a degree for) while attempting to find and apply for jobs related to my degree.  Slowly, one year passed, then two, then three, and my information got more out of date.  Now it's eleven years later and I honestly can't help but think college was just a big damn waste of time and money.