Professional People

[annwfyn]

This poll comes from my having had a series of conversations about the future with a variety of people. I'm being quite career focussed these days - I'm training to be a conservator, which I adore - and as such I'm finding myself pondering other people's experiences and outlook on such matters.

As such, I have put together a poll. This poll covers two areas. Firstly, whether you lot like your jobs or course of study. Secondly, the extent to which your degree or lack of one has actually affected what it is you're doing now. I'm kind of assuming that the majority of my readership are over 21 and likely to have finished their first degree, presuming they've done one. If this isn't the case, slap me about a bit and tell me whether you like your degree or not, and whether you're hoping to go into a field that needs it.

My own opinions and ramblings will undoubtedly appear in the comments section of this entry very soon.

Please do fill in my poll if at all possible! I'm a very curious Sally and there are questions in here which need answers!

[Poll #882299]

Comments

for reference

[isalani.livejournal.com]

I did 2 years of a 4 yr degree in BSC Hons Medical Microbiology.

[becky-spence.livejournal.com]

The way it's worded, I'd need to fill it out twice really, I think *wry smile* Boils down to like the MA, dislike the day-to-day job, like the sewing job.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I don't think I really count you as 'working full time'. In my head you're a student. You just have to do extra dull work to pay the bills. Loads of the people on my course are like that.

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

Hmm, difficult to answer Sally!

See where I fit:

Attended 3 years of BsC Hons Env.Geology, passed two and a bit, stopped studying. Worked full time in a variety of fields, none of which pertain to university subject. Unable to get graduate entry programme posts by dint of not being a degree graduate, just a HnD equivalent. Not able to get entry level posts anywhere due to being overqualified.

I do not think my social groups, any of them, are bothered by uni or non-uni attendance/education but then I tend to hang out with people who have. I think my older college friends may have a different opinion on this than I do. In the workplace I think it does matter sometimes, especially in light of present HR doom relating to 'experience' and when you can, and cannot apply the request for degree level education. Ahh, Job Evaluation, how I loathe thee.

I don't particularly enjoy what I do, but this may be because I have not found anything I really want to do that I can achieve.

Interesting questions, what is percolating in your brainmeats I wonder?

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Mostly I've had a bunch of conversations with people about such things and it has gotten me thinking. A bit of it is that I'm very prone to worrying about my friends, and I was told recently that I'm a bit daft for so doing - most people don't like their jobs, but get on fine and that's just life. I, on the other hand, have this Dream (tm) that everyone should be working towards doing something Worthy, which I think comes from my own very financially stable and spoilt upbringing, combined with a lot of familial pressure to be putting that privilege to good use and doing Something Useful. It's probably a very very spoilt attitude to have, and I try and keep it in check, but I am aware that I worry about folks and maybe am just being rather Marie Antoinette about this.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

I think society - taken as a whole amorphous blob - has a very odd and ambivalent attitude to University. There's a certain point of view which divides students into two groups - obvious wasters (people who do meja studies) and boffins with no commonsense (everyone who does something that was being studied in around 1930). It's a derogatory attitude peculier to the British, I think.

Of course, most people *also* want their children to go to University.

Only slightly relevantly - there was an programme on Radio 4 a few weeks back about University. One of the points that was made was that widening access had not, in fact, meant more places for the disadvantaged, but instead more places for the daughters of reasonably well-off families. Not necessarily a bad thing, but interesting, I thought.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

That is quite interesting.

Honestly, as far as can tell the current structure of university education doesn't really make it accessible to an awful lot of people. In order to make it through without having to work a lot of crazy hours and combine job + degree, or get a LOT of debt, you need financial support from your parents. And that required financial support seems to run into the thousands over the course of a degree quite routinely.

As far as I can tell, university is becoming more middle class than ever!

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I think when I say 'my current social circle' I maybe mean 'me'.

I'm very aware that whether or not someone has a degree, and what kind of degree that was (2.1, 2.2, from an ex-poly, from an old uni) is somehting I am prone to let influence my opinion of someone. It isn't the only thing I'll judge people by - at the end of the day I think Andy and Hugh are two of the cleverest people I know, and neither of them have degrees - but if someone doesn't have a degree I tend to look for reasons why not, whereas someone having a degree I rather accept as the norm, which isn't necessarily reasonable.

On the job front, I'm also quite aware that to a certain extent I think I project my own attitudes towards jobs (ie - it's important to be doing something you find mostly worthwhile in some area of your life, and job is most often it) onto other people and worry about them if I can't quite see what they are doing.

This isn't to say I view all my friends as wasters if they aren't barristers. It's more that I've noticed that if someone is doing an admin job that they don't like much, then I do worry, and wonder if they are trying to get out of it, or what they have in their life which makes up for it. It's not so much sneering as worrying, which I suppose in some ways isn't much better.

In general, I think I'm being deeply influenced at the moment by the fact that I do have a course I really love, that I couldn't have got into without a degree, and am very focussed on this new and exciting feeling of having a future, and as is often the way, am becoming slowly and vilely evangelical about Having Life Goals.

[adze.livejournal.com]

I'm very aware that whether or not someone has a degree, and what kind of degree that was (2.1, 2.2, from an ex-poly, from an old uni) is somehting I am prone to let influence my opinion of someone.

I've bitten down a comment about this before, either on LJ, or face to face - I can't remember which.

You know the reasons behind my poor degree grade - basically, I didn't want to be doing it anymore, but didn't feel I could switch degrees at that point, and once I realised how badly I was doing, put in a lot of effort not to fail a degree I didn't care about.

But that's not what I didn't comment on. It's the whole ex-poly thing. I went to the University of Hertfordshire, an ex-poly. I was attrated to it because it was one of the best Universities in the country for my degree - Aerospace Engineering. It had long standing connections with De Havilland, which later became British Aerospace, while it was a polytechnic, and a degree from there was apparently quite prestigious in the field.

Even as an ex-poly, the name and reputation of the place counted for a lot. Just being an ex-poly doesn't make it a bad University.

----

Frankly, when I meet a lot of the people I know, and they tell me what degree(s) they've done, I often wonder what the point of it was- what possible use can some of the degrees I know my friends have taken have? It doesn't change my opinion of them, it just makes me wonder.

My apologies if any of this comes across as ranty. I'm still trying to work out whether it should...

FYI

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Do you feel your current social group are too focussed/judge people too much on what they do for a living?

In answering 'no', this means I don't think they judge people on what they do anything like enough. "You work in PR for the Labour Party? get a real job."

Re: FYI

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Dear god! I think I'd be very impressed by anyone who works in PR for the Labour Party. It implies they have principles, care about what they do, and have the initiative to get a job in a competitive field.

I mostly just worry about all the really bright people I know who got 2.1s in Modern Languages, or History, or Classics, and then proceeded to get admin assistant jobs which they use to fund a D&D habit.

I respect pretty much anyone who is trying to do something they really like/want to do, however peculiar that career choice (Lib Dem MP, in the case of one schoolfriend of mine) might be.

[castorpollux23.livejournal.com]

Most of the others would come under "I don't know" as to fully get a true answer I'd have to do research and be a little more in touch with things...

I dunno, I find that I'm super over-qualified, and am competing with EU and British citizens for employment... I'm not content with the current situaiton, but I'm making the best I can out of it. I WANT to be a productive member of society and do more than I am now... I am the sort that needs to be occupied all day or insanity starts to set in.

Erm, not sure if that answers your questions.

[baldurs-voice.livejournal.com]

Well i have spent 10 years getting to the job I am in and I am only now starting out on what I wanted to do and I find that I am working with people that all have degrees and are doing the same job as me but on more money and tend to get the breaks more in work as the management know that they are at a curton level of knollgde were I have to realy push to get anywere

I also remember what it was like when I lost my job and was out of work for 6 months I could not get an interview as I do not have any quilifcations.

One thing I have learnt is that Quilifcations get interview and experiance gets the job it is catch 22 and I have neather but I have found a company that was willing to take a change and well now I have to work hard to show that I am just as good as anyone with a degree

I tend to not think if weather people I know have degrees but I do always ashume that most people I know will have a higher level of education than me.

I have in some way always regretted on going to uni (or making a go of collage instead of quiting) but I have always had problems with learning.

[davedevil.livejournal.com]

Degrees actually mean squat! They were one of many lifestyle choices many of us took in our life and one very few people I know actually work in the field they studied in.

Passion is what actually seperates us there are many people I know who did not go to uni but have apassion in life which excepes that of many graduates. Take a look at some of the people you know, souldesdruction for instance, and aks if he could be more accomplished in his field if he had done a degree?

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I don't think degrees are the be all and end all of life, by any means. I know so many people who have done amazing things with their lives without a degree, and I think passion is far far more important.

I do disagree that degrees mean squat. I think this is entirely because in my case, this has not been true at all. I could not be doing what I am doing without the degree (or a similar degree) to the one I did. It is actively and directly relevent, and I love what I do. For me, it matters and doing the degree I did, and my masters has shaped me to a huge extent.

For a lot of people, that's true. I am aware that I have a lot of rather not-nice academic snobbery in my brain that I need to generally kick into torpor occasionally. I'm from a hideously academic family, however, and for many of the people who raised me, their degree and their academic experiences had almost entirely shaped the person that they were. My grandfather, for example, judges people hugely on their academic experiences/qualifications. That's because he spent his entire working life in academia as a very successful meteorologist. He was a professor at three different and very important universities. That's what he put all his life into. Of course it matters to him how people fit into that world or whether they don't.

I'm not quite like that, but I do think it can be a very formative experience for many people, and can say a great deal about them.

[huggy-pixie.livejournal.com]

As my current social group is mostly role-players, I have not noticed a need for university as a priority or concerns involving job issues. Other non-roleplaying friends have been to university and are working in careers which do focus their attention to a degree but not in an unhealthy way.
As for my own career options I have no idea what to do with a Theology degree once I have it. May try a Masters.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I thought you were going to set up a cult?

*grins*

[alasdair.livejournal.com]

I like my job. Were I working for the right company, I would come in without pay, because I love building tools to help people communicate, but them tools I am building now are basically for corporate use, and so they're less exciting.

Given the choice between someone who went to uni, and someone who dropped out to teach themselves, (with otherwise exactly equivalent skills and experience) I will choose the latter. Partly because that's what I did, but also because I want people who teach themselves, not those who need to be taught.

And I don't think people are judged *enough* by their job. This is the single biggest block of time in your waking life (unless you're a deeply unusual person) - I can't think of any other thing I do for 40 hours a week, aside from go to work. Anyone who is not doing something they at least enjoy, if not outright *love* has made a serious mistake somewhere, and if they're not wasting their life, then they're certainly wasting a lot of their limited time.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I don't know; going to a decent university doesn't mean you just sit there and soak up knowledge like a sponge.

University for me really wouldn't have had any point if it weren't for the challenging discussions and occasionally downright arguments that tutorials consisted of. Any viewpoint you held you had to be prepared to defend. Any viewpoint that you found in the lectures or the reading you had to be prepared to argue against.

Learning things by yourself I approve of totally. I've taught myself a hell of a lot of things in a lot of random subjects. But I do miss the cut and thrust of intellectual debate, of the other minds around me questioning my conclusions, leading me down paths I hadn't noticed. I really do think that without that, you miss out on a lot.

[riksowden.livejournal.com]

I quite often get people assuming i have a degree, not really sure why, and its my own snobbishness which means i get embarassed and somehow feel like i'm a total failure due to the fact i don't have one.

Frankly if i'd known at 16 what i know now i'd have taken different A-levels and gone to University. However, knowing now what i do there is no way i can see myself ever getting a degree - for a number of reasons, including that what interests me isn't very employable, so i'd get myself free from debt just to get into more and likely doing the same sort of work.

[commlal.livejournal.com]

I kind of agree and disagree with some things that you say.

I went to uni, and I did love it, but I did it to get away from home with my mothers support. She is very snobby, or was, she has mellowed now. At the time I wanted to be a pharmacist and I had to do a degree. The degree was horrid and flawed but they have changed it now, it did teach me important skills that I still use now. The only reason I got a 2:2 was due to being ill in my final year and not going to lectures, see, I still passed.

However, I now hate my job. Sadly I like the pay check and sometimes my job is quite rewarding. So....

...I'm doing a second degree in my spare time which I should finish in about another 2 1/2 years in Computing and Information Technology with the Open Uni. Thats not easy, I can tell you, but you know having worked and studied at the same time.

[imagesandwords.livejournal.com]

I initally wanted to get away at the end of 5th year to escape the probable break up of my parents marriage, thankfully that didn't happen and I mostly enjoyed 6th year.

I didn't see any alternative to going away to uni coz there was nothing there to do. We should be soooo glad we escapted!

[kathminchin.livejournal.com]

I started a degree in teaching, but I failed when it came to the psychology behind teaching. I also fled the massive amounts of paperwork that teaching was beginning to rack up. To sit in a lecture and be told, “this is the National Curriculum. The year you pass your degree it’ll be replaced” was incredibly depressing and is yet another reason I didn’t want to carry on. Couple that with I was an independent student; and despite having a student loan, all fees and an overdraft I still needed to work a huge number of hours in order to pay my rent meant I couldn’t actually concentrate on it.

My problem with doing an Open Uni course would be time and getting round to do it. I don’t have the self-discipline at all.

I’m an admin monkey, and I enjoy it. I kept on getting pushed towards management, which I would hate. I’m happy to spend 08:30 – 18:00 pushing pieces of paper around and then go home and quite literally be able to leave work in the office. I look at the uber qualified people in the office (we have a solicitor, a paralegal and three pharmacists) as they struggle to use a fax machine and come to the conclusion that we’re actually role play characters; and the more you pour into “law”; the less you have to go “fax machine is bleeping. Message says run out of paper. Replace paper” or “this is how you un-jam a printer – you open the drawers and pull the paper out…” Yes my job has a lot of dull bits such as filing; and I could certainly do with more money but right now it suits me just fine.

[wildrogue.livejournal.com]

Time to enter the fray.

As you know, I have a very similar upbringing to you and by and large I'm aware of similar prejudices. With the greatest of respect to all my friends who don't have degrees, or got them at places that aren't ancient bastions of education, there is a bit of my brain that still goes "Ex-poly? Not a proper university."

I am well aware that that particular opinion is a couple of decades out of date and that current prejudices lean towards the course rather than the university as a whole. To cite one example already given - there is an ex-poly out there that is the best in the business for aerospace. My piddly little college was 4th in the country for History (damn you Warwick and your vast amounts of funding).

I have a very odd headspace about degrees in general. For some bizarre reason I tend to assume that everyone I know has one, which is mad, and get very surprised when they don't. At the same time I am violently opposed to the idea that 50% of the population should go to university. I have huge amounts of respect for people that don't go, or make the choice to drop out because it doesn't suit them and then make something of their lives.

What this is all rambling towards is that in my opinion you should always aim for something you really want to do. Like you I worry about friends who seem to be in jobs they hate. Much as I may whine about my own job I actually love the industry and the field I work in. I'm thrilled that I managed to fall into this job almost by accident. On the other hand my view is severely tempered by the fact that one of my oldest and dearest friends works in Sainsburys cafe and loves it. I used to think she must be mad and she'd come to her senses, but she's worked there for almost four years and wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I think enjoying what you do is the most important thing, not what you actually do.

A quick correction

[adze.livejournal.com]

there is an ex-poly out there that is the best in the business for aerospace

Was. There was an ex-poly.

Last I'd heard, they'd closed almost the entire engineering faculty. Years of history, shut down.

This makes me sad.

[xambrius.livejournal.com]

Some thoughts from across the Pond (not to be taken as representative of anything other than the experiences and opinions of the thinker)...

For some people, a degree genuinely represents an education at least insofar as their major (and occasionally minor) field of study is concerned. Those people were genuinely interested in a particular discipline, paid attention to their studies and retain much of what they learned (which can arguably mean they actually learned instead of memorised for a test).

For other people, a degree represents nothing more than a "get a better job" ticket. Those people were never interested in education so much as employability, and they retain little knowledge from their studies beyond that which has helped, is helping or (they believe) will help them on the job (or in getting a job).

The first people usually (but not always) go on to graduate study in their discipline whether they need to or not with regard to employability. The second people usually avoid graduate study unless it is a de facto requirement to be competive in the job market for their desired profession. Simply put, the first people view education as an end itself whereas the second people view education as a means to an end.

Of course, not everyone fits neatly into one of those slots. Some people would fit into the first category if they felt free to get the education they want, but various pressures push them into the second category by default. Imagine someone who would much rather study medieval music but feels bound by family tradition to get an MBA and take over Dad's business. On the other hand, I'm sure more than one bored middle-management office zombie stuck on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder regrets the youthful bohemianism that motivated him to get a degree in philosophy and religious studies.

I am routinely infuriated by how the higher education system in the United States is moving further away from being an education system in the liberal arts sense. Arts and humanities are chronically underfunded compared to business and hard sciences. I don't begrudge hard sciences a share of the pie, but I wish more of them were becoming doctors, surgeons and medical researchers rather than disappearing into US DoD think-tanks.

The most insulting (and degree devaluative) thing I routinely see in various job listings is "Requirement(s): Bachelor's Degree or higher (any field)." Yes, you read that correctly: any field. In other words, your degree is irrelevant to the job, but someone decided that requiring a degree as a prerequisite to hiring was more cost-effective than actually interviewing you critically to judge your intelligence, creativity and competence.

There are plenty of people in the world who are more intelligent, more creative and/or more competent than many of the degree-holding professionals in this world. I consider it an outrageous tragedy (and a tragic outrage) that they are so chronically underemployed while their mental inferiors are being paid fortunes for mediocre achievements.

Don't get me started on the whole "I am my job" self-identity phenonemon. I'll be ranting all day. :)

--
Tim Harris
The Seeker
Time Lord

And now, a comment on the actual poll...

[adze.livejournal.com]

That last question is kind of tricksy, for want of a better phrase.

See, I don't think the 'society' judges people on whether they went to University or not, as a whole, but repeatedly, when I've started a job, and told people that I've got a degree, I've immediately been asked "What are you doing here, then?"

People seem to automatically assume that having a degree opens doors for you straight away, even though it doesn't...

[imagesandwords.livejournal.com]

Working FT in a job that's totally pointless to me, wishing I had enough money to throw it away on a year or two studying music...

[silverclear.livejournal.com]

In answer to your question about relevance of degree to career, where I ran out of space in the text box...

My undergrad degree is not at all relevant to my career.

I would have liked a career in my undergrad subject, but after six months of desperate job hunting I gave up. Edinburgh alone was churning out several hundred graduates of one sort or another every year from the School of Biology, and there were just not enough jobs for everyone.

My postgrad is totally relevant to my career, which I carefully chose when I couldn't get my first choice of job. I would say, though, that I could do my job without having done any specific higher or further education. The skills of my trade can be learned as you go. I did the degree to get recognition of skills I already had, and to fill in any gaps, and to present myself as a good bet for prospective employers.

[windzswept.livejournal.com]

I love my job but hate aspects of it.

I also wouldn't do it if I wasn't getting paid for it.

Although in the same breath I do do about twice the hours I should do each week and only get paid for half of them (damn marking and prep time).

:o)

[anonymous-james.livejournal.com]

Generally less strong in most of my answers...
q2. I love some bits, i.e. programming, the rest is rather dull.
q3. Having a degree in Computer Studies has helped, but I could have got to a similar place without it.

Last 4 questions, well I think most people in our social group are intelligent enough to not judge people because they don't have a degree. Personally I'm fascinated as to what degrees people have / have studied bits of. What career / job they have is usually less interesting.

I'm pretty sure that there are companies out there, and hence people who believe it, that if you do not have a degree you are not worth hiring. A degree just proves that you can apply yourself, and do some level of independent / self study etc. A degree in the subject field means that you've been given the absolute basics and foundation of what you're to do, but not usually a practical knowledge of what is required.

I'm not entirely convinced I'm making sense, but... meh.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

To clarify, were I able to do the job I love, I'd work for free. My issue in Japan is to have the life work balance I want I don't want the head of department type jobs that require no technical Japanese language skills, and at the level of business analysis where you work a lot with users I need both extremely good technical written and spoken Japanese, and cultural awareness. Most of the time I get turned down flat and / or ignored outright because I am not a Japanese national.

My first degree in Psychology does not have direct relevance to my job, but I think it taught an awareness that things aren't black and white - the practice of psychology and formation of experiments is very much about shades of grey. I did, however, value my time at university a lot, it's where I read most of the feminism I've encountered, for example, and I got a lot out of simply being let loose in the University library :)

My two postgraduate banking qualifications were relevant to the sector I work in, and my MBA certainly contained elements of study that will be helpful in the future, particularly the more practical courses such as influencing skills. But the vast amount of my competence at what I do has been learnt on the job through trial and error.

I miss it :(

Experience counts

[mangochutney04.livejournal.com]

I rarely think about my degree anymore and I certainly don't mention it to anyone. In fact, nowadays I positively keep it secret even when people tell me they went to the same University. I can't even be bothered to get into that discussion. I prefer to be judged on my ability in my career without people knowing my academic background.

I don't use the subject that my degree was in but I do use the skills in research and writing. But after seven and a half years work experience I no longer consider it that relevant a factor in my life anymore, just a past achievement or education of which I am proud but along with others that have occurred since.

I've not entered the poll because to be honest I think happiness and fulfliment is individual and so many things contribute to it - not just your career but your family home life too.

I don't worry about any of my friends and their careers because I trust that most of them are happy and if they are not then I rather assume that they will find something new soon because I've always moved on when I've wanted to after a while and most of my friends have done so in the end too.

When it comes to work there are a lot of other factors involved than simply whether you are happy or not as well - you may be sticking with a job to gain a certain number of years experience for instance or because you have an opportunity in that role to gain some new skills you want. Just like with studying.

Or it may be the money but sooner or later, at the right time, people will decide if money or happiness is more important to them. And that must be an individual decision.

As it happens, for me, I'm very happy and rewarded in my job which certainly stretches me. Though I may have made a 'peculiar career choice' in working for a Lib Dem MP I have found that experience and those skills (project, event, campaign management) incredibly useful in my current management as role Head of Production on an international posting out to Singapore for a multi-national company and I'm happy with that.

Certainly, it has done me no harm. Diversity can be a good thing on a CV - my husband's boss regularly asks everyone 'What else can you do?' in team meetings.

Incidentally, as Annwfyn will know, I went to Oxford but I have to say that I make no distinction in my friendship groups. My husband is one of the most intelligent people I have ever met and the person who I respect the most and he did not go to Oxford.

I can think of some of my 'friends' from Oxford who would be academically snobbish about our marriage but I also cannot think of any of them that are as happy in their relationship as I am in mine. If I'm honest, most of them seem to be a) single b) anorexic c) on Prozac....sadly, I am not making this up.

Some of my best friends went to Oxford, some didn't, some have degrees, some don't. I can relate to all of them equally well. After seven and a half years of working, I just don't think it matters anymore.