Education

[pegkerr]

Gacked from klig. I'd be interested to know what the level of formal education is among my LJ friends. I'm not snobby about education - I'm very well aware that a piece of paper is only part of the story.


[Poll #349908]

Leave details of your areas of study in the comments if you so wish.

Edited to add: I'm sorry I didn't have choices that fit some of the experiences that you have recounted, i.e., still in junior high, still in high school, finished some college but have no plans to complete, etc.

But I just wanted to say that you are all pretty damn impressive. It's been very interesting reading about the wide variety of your education and experience. Thank you, and congratulations to all those of you who have recently completed degrees!

Comments

[klostes.livejournal.com]

Ah, but you left out those of us with college/university experience (five year's worth) and no undergrad degree to show for it. Unless I can count an A.A., which was my sop to my ego so I would have *something* to show for the investment of time. ;-)

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Double major in computer science and English. Didn't love either enough to go on to grad school; never regretted it.

[tenebris.livejournal.com]

Currently working on a MA in Linguistics at UNM. If all goes well (and I can produce something publishable), this may become "working on a Ph.D in Linguistics" by next fall.

[perigee.livejournal.com]

I dropped out of Post Graduate education, but I'm not currently planning to finish that program.

I didn't vote

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

Because there was no choice that said, "I never completed high school."

Because, you know. I didn't.

[msisolak.livejournal.com]

BA in English. Advanced work for two credentials (elementary and early childhood education) and a certificate to teach in a Montessori program.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

I have a traditional BA in French (well, Modern Languages, strictly speaking, but I only really studied French, with a semester of Spanish), but my masters is really cool. It was done via distance learning, through SUNY Empire College and I designed the program myself. Technically, it is a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, but the entire concentration was Ancient Celtic History.

I was thinking this morning about how I'd really like to be back in school. I think I'd like an English degree.

[rvrjoe775.livejournal.com]

National Merit finalist, high school valedictorian, top GPA in college graduating class. Bachelor degrees in English and Computer Science. Will possibly someday leave the business world to teach.

[aynjel.livejournal.com]

I've got a BS in English... which sounds strange until you know that the college I went to, at the time, had the option of a BS if you took a certain number of science credits, or a BA if you took a certain number of foreign language credits. I'm wretched with foreign languages and was initially going to get a BS in Biology. I decided to double-major, then wound up one class short of the Biology requirements and with no motivation to make up that class worth of credits while I was in Australia my last semester, and so I have a BS in English.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

Ph.D. in English, with Old English literature as my main field and Old Icelandic as my cognate.

Which makes me another one of the lapsed medievalists infesting the sf/fantasy field.

[ctrinity.livejournal.com]

I did really well in high school, but i wasnt allowed to go to school out of state...which left Iowa State U. and U of Iowa. Which were about as interesting to me as turnips. I went to ISU but i didnt apply myself, fell into depression, my funding was cut and I had to leave. I wanted to go back when I lived in Minneapolis, but I got into a car accident which...this story just gets worse and worse so I'll stop here. the point is that I want to go back, desperately, but after my ISU debacle, no one will let me in!

All of you that finished school, even if you doubt whether it was worth it, be grateful you got the life experience it provides.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

How about a category of "lots of college credits, no degree"?

At this point in my life, I'm quite taken with the idea that I have no college degree whatsoever, yet I edit the writing of Big Names who have lots of letters after their names and run universities and chair departments and write esoteric scholarly books--and they all think I do a helluva good job, as does a curmudgeonly SF writer who once did an annotated edition of one of his books just to show how badly editors and copyeditors screw up. The whole situation just appeals to my working-class, eschew-conformity, question-authority worldview.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I put "undergraduate degree" because my one year of Nuclear Physics grad school will never, ever, ever have any other years to go with it, so I'm not in the middle of anything that way. I was very happy with my undergraduate physics degree from Gustavus (minor in English, to give me a formal excuse to devote time to writing in given semesters), but I was also ready to be done with both physics and formal education by the end of my first year of grad school.

I take reading suggestions in all fields from anyone who wants to bother, and I have a Friends of The Library card up at the U of M that I use pretty regularly. But I can't conceive of a degree program that wouldn't interfere with my reading, my writing, or both, to say nothing of the rest of my life.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I'm in the last semester of my undergraduate degree. I'm majoring in History, concentrating in Medieval History, and minoring in English Lit. I'm also picking up an Associate degree in Judaic Studies, which is kind of nice.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

Strictly speaking, I am ABT (all but thesis) on my master's (computer science, emphasis in artificial intelligence). So, no, I don't actually have one. But I did all the work, including the damned thesis (my professor kept wanting more changes, I was too busy with my new job to do any more revisions, and I didn't take advantage of a friend's offer to transfer and get my degree signed off by her). And I've relied on that work in my professional life, which is why I count it as completed.

Someday I wanna be Dr. Pig, but that's looking less likely as I make other life choices.

[eeyorerin]

I just finished my Ph.D. in English, with a specialization in rhetoric and composition, in May 2004. (So it still feels weird.)

[harpie84.livejournal.com]

BS in music therapy but no job due to Reaganomics when I graduated; puttered around for a while and discovered I was really good in public relations. I went back to college ten years later and got an MS in public relations.

I'm now working as a journalist, which is a lot more interesting than doing PR. I started working on a master's in public administration but abandoned it when I discovered I had zero interest in finishing the degree or ever working in the field.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

I picked "completed an undergraduate degree" though I don't have the piece of paper. I spent three years at the U of MN figuring out I didn't want to be an Electrical Engineer. Since then, I figure my 15+ years of employment are enough to qualify me as having a degree. I just wish people looking at resumes thought so.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Degree in English and History (and inevitably, I work in the computer industry, because there's no jobs for people like me!). I keep toying with the idea of going back and getting an MFA in creative writing, but I suspect I'm tempermentally unsuited for an MFA program. :)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I did almost a year's worth of community college, but that was while I was in high school so I don't have an AA degree. But I have a BA in theatre and an MFA in playwriting, so I think I've got the three main types of colleges covered.

I'd love to go back to school to study Japanese, because that's probably the only way I'll ever get fluent, but that's a pipe dream at the moment. I just don't have the time. But that's why I started watching anime, and when one of my bootlegged episodes didn't include subtitles, I was mostly able to follow it anyway.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

Having been a National Merit Scholar and my high school's valedictorian, and other various things, including a Board of Regents Scholarship, a Presidential Scholarship, I'm in my fifth year (unplanned) in undergrad. My degrees are in music history and literature and music theory. What am I going to do with these degrees? Why, go to law school, of course! As much as I adore musicology and music in general -- and despite the fact that I'm actually pretty good at analysis and stuff -- I decided (a couple months ago) that music academia is too in-the-head for me and I'd like to go out and be involved in things, rather than in my own tiny little world. So, law school. It's a good generic degree, I guess.

(Although I'd like to point out that the average starting salary for Ph.Ds in musicology is over $10K a year higher than the average starting salary for a lawyer. So, by going into a field that is supposedly more marketable, I will be making less money. Explain that one, please.)

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I've got an Associates. Going for the Bachelor's now. (the bachelor's I started working on in /1991/. Ahem.)

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Have a BS in language arts education and a Masters in Library and Information Science. As additional info, my husband has a BS in both physics and electrical engineering and a PhD in astrophysics.

MKK

[kinetikatrue]

I have attended five colleges for varying lengths of time and managed, so far, to all-but-achieve an associate's degree in general studies(I'm there but for the paperwork). I was, for part of that time, a Comp Sci major, but gave that up when I decided that, really, I didn't want to program for a living, thankyouverymuch. Now, I noodle along taking a class or two at a time(currently: Ancient Greek. Whee!), though I have continual ambitions along the lines of going back to school full time and just doing those final two years of a BA in something. Classics. Linguistics. Cognitive Science. History. Mathematics. Anything. Well, maybe not anything, anything. I also have sneakier ambitions of grandfathering my way into an MLIS program without getting a BA first, but I'm not sure how well that would work in practice, so it tends to get to be the pipe-dream option.

[silme.livejournal.com]

BA English, minors in theatre and psychology. With the BA, I also earned my first Colorado teaching license (it's renewable every five years). Eight years later, whilst teaching secondary English full time, I earned my MA in Education -- K-12 Reading and Writing. It took four years since I was working full time.

Last summer, I earned Qualified Teacher Status in England. I moved here in 2000 (British husband) after having taught in Colorado for 17 years. I first spent two years at an American school near London, but the commute was too far. Therefore, in September 2002, I started at an English school. With my degrees, experience and having observed a lesson I taught (in England, they make you teach a half hour lesson as part of the interview process), they hired me. In order to earn more money, though, I needed to obtain a teaching license here, and I finally jumped through those hoops.

Btw -- good luck with Planned Parenthood. When I was still in Colorado, I moonlighted for seven years (from '93-'00) at a women's health clinic aimed at low-income women. I loved working there.