On Balancing Career & College... 433
An anonymous reader asks: "Hi folks. Some advice please - I've been in university twice already and quit both times - the first due to lack of interest in the course and the second a combination of lack of interest and work pressures. The second time round, I started a tech company and it's now three years old and doing OK. I am now seriously thinking about going back to Uni to get a degree (for real this time ;-). Is anyone out there successfully juggling running a company and studying at the same time? How do you juggle the two without hampering either due to lack of the right amount of attention?"
Hmmm (Score:2, Informative)
Yes you can do it! (Score:2, Informative)
It is hard work but i enjoy it. I am studying multimedia and think its great!
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Re:All I know is . . . (Score:3, Informative)
Great if you already have your skills and just looking for the degree. (I say that like I have learned anything.) I have learned a lot, mostly from other classmates in the same field. I don't regret it though. 4 hours on Tuesday night for class and 5 hours more for study groups. Study group never lasts that long though. It's worked great for me so far. Just be prepared to do a lot of research and speaking. By the time you finish you will not have any fear of public speaking!!
They also have all online courses but I didn't like the atmospere there. They're accredited...so they say! Boeing and Microsoft send many employees there. Great place for networking. check it out.
Sounds like a recurring problem (Score:4, Informative)
Long hours and determination (Score:3, Informative)
It can be done, just set that diploma as your goal and sort of coast along in the work -- doing your work, but not the "I'm working for a promotion or to expand the business" kind of work.
Play the game (Score:3, Informative)
We are all hired, appraised and rewarded based on personal ability and skill, not by a sheet of paper that says we got a degree.
What Really Happens:
Eventually, it does not matter how long it takes, a hard working, smart-as-hell, self-trained individual will get stepped over due to a lack of a proper degree.
The Smart thing to do:
Teach yourself what you really want to know well. Then do a double major. One half is going to be the stuff you really want to learn, the other half is something that you will find so easy that it will not be a burden.
Why?
You still get your degree, you are still an expert but you did not have to work like an animal to finish it. Since you taught yourself more than half of it, and since you had to spend the money anyway you are going to come out ahead of the game.
The important thing is that you need that degree (no matter what the field) because eventually you will be discrimminated against because of the lack of it. Certain management types expect a bachelor's degree at a level and can't visualize a person that teaches himself stuff that for all he cares can only be learned in college (duh).
The other alternative is the "basketweaving" degree. Get a BA in anything you think is cool, then use your experience to build on top of your education. I had to run interviews literally every week at my previous job and almost nobody was applying to a job for which their original degree would apply to. I work now in a very small shop and I was joking with my president that with my BS in Manufacturing Engineering I was the most poorly educated person in the company. His reply: " I got a BA in History and here I am..."
This discrimmination against non-college educated people is a complete disgrace, but if you already have a job you should start making plans to finish your degree even if it is a bit at a time. When I was in the Army I knew lots of people that little by little finished their A.S. and B.S. degrees just by taking one and two courses at a time.
Re:And I know (Score:4, Informative)
Only the ignorant says that knowledge is irrelevant or obsolete. That was never true, even though ignorants has said it for centuries. Knowledge is not a burden to carry, and there are always domains where it is applicable. Without the knowledge, you will of course not see the applications, hence you should not judge its usefulness without it.
The next step is to fear knowledge.
With fear for knowledge comes a society where people burn books in public.
Reality bites, go take a history class.
Correspondence (Score:3, Informative)
Anyhow... might want to browse the websites. Can't hurt to poke around. Feel free to e-mail me personally if you want to know more about it (or anybody can e-mail me if they want).
Re:All I know is . . . (Score:3, Informative)
In my case, I'm well paid where I work at the level I have. Unfortunately, I can't move up here without a degree and I'm paid more than folks with my job description outside of my company. My next logical move is into a junior management position (Director or equivalent). However, the executive recruiters I have spoken with all same the same thing:
I could place you with half dozen companies today, if you only had a degree.
Like it or not, the lack of degree is a limiting factor in advancement opportunity, unless you work for yourself. People outside IS (i.e. the financiers and backers of the company you work for), don't know anything about your skill set, they only know the suffixes attached to your name.
Re:Don't give up the day job (Score:3, Informative)
There's programs like that here in the US, too. Degrees via the internet are becoming quite popular.
I honestly question the value of an "at home" degree. Sure, you get all of the knowledge, but you miss out on most of the other benefits of a traditional program. Like getting to know your professors personally. I'm in an evening MBA program right now, and there are some professors that I have broken through and established a relationship that will outlast my time at the school.
You miss out on the classroom discussion. If the bulk of your degree is in a canned format, then you don't hear the life experiences of your fellow students in regards to various problems. This is particularly true on the graduate level.
You miss out on networking with people. An old proverb says, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." This is very, very true. You might have degrees and referrals out the yin-yang, but that big consulting contract is still going to go to the interviewer's dorm mate from college.
Finally, you miss out on class lectures, some of which is of more value than the course material because it's coming from the professor's real-life experiences, sometimes things that he/she might not want to type down and leave a record of.
Yeah, they'll tell you that all of those things exist in at-home degrees in some form or another... but there's no substitute for face-to-face contact with other people. You miss a lot with an at-home degree.
Get the right education (Score:3, Informative)
There is a difference between difference schools, state vs. private universities, two and four colleges, polytechs, and distance education vs. correspondence. Research the options, and pick the right one for you.
In this day and age you do not need to attend classes in person to earn a meaniful degree, in UK, the Open University [open.ac.uk] leads the way, and in Canada there is Athabasca University [athabascau.ca], I am not as familiar with US schools, but there is the University of Phoenix [phoenix.edu] as well as many others.
Define your goal(s) of attending a post-secondary school. Also an idea for your career goals might be useful, but you need specific education goals. Write them down. I said, write them down. This is how you will evaluate schools, programme and course choices.
Is it just to have a degree? Do you want more a fundamential understanding (i.e. theoric) of computing? Do you want business skills? To become a better rounded software engineer? Understand business, so you can grow your own business? Get a MBA? Meet women? For technical training? To earn more money? Continue doing what you already do, or so you can do something new? Certification?
An university degree is suppose to be based upon a theorical understanding, which while being less specific (i.e. more abstract), is more lasting and will not be outdated every 3 years. That is the #1 source of frustration and confusion I see from young computer science students. An university degree is not a career training programme. You get to do the career training in your own time.
Make use of your electives, do not choose courses because you think they will be easy like "Rocks for Jocks" and "Clap for Credit", find introductary courses you will be interested in, and will benefit you either personally or professionally.
Most schools have some means of providing tours of their facilities, especially in the summer. Since this is an investment that will cost approx. $40,000, you should research this investment as being right for you. If possible, arrange a talk with someone from the department that you are looking at majoring in.
Bone up on time management and planning skills, and study skills if you find studying difficult. University is about learning, but unfortunately very little is taught about how best to learn (for you). Read Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People [franklincovey.com] it will help in setting your priorities, and planning. To help learn about learning, John L. Adams [stanford.edu] book Conceptual Blockbusting: Care and Feeding of Ideas, and George Polya's How to Solve It.
Practice reading, seriously if you do not do a lot of non-fiction book reading, start doing some more. A list of books any
Some advice from someone who knows (Score:3, Informative)
Is anyone out there successfully juggling running a company and studying at the same time? How do you juggle the two without hampering either due to lack of the right amount of attention?
Well, I've done it, and I work with a lot of engineering students that are doing it now. It's not easy. In my case, it nearly cost me my education, my company, and my state of mind. Now I help others avoid running into the same situation.
The problem isn't the hours or the motivation - it's not really a problem of juggling. It's the fact that you've made a commitment to your business, and now you're making a new commitment to your education. When the day comes - and it will come - when you need to pick one or the other, figure out now how you'll choose. A day will come when the business needs you and an exam is coming up. Will you let your staff solve the crisis without your intervention, or will you blow off the exam. Regardless of what you choose, you need to be okay with your choice the next day. These are things to figure out now. If you do this, and stick to it, you'll probably be okay. Juggling implies that you can run and do one, then run and do the other. You *will* hit a day that you can only do one and not the other. Be ready for that day.
If your business doesn't require you to have the degree (that is, you're getting the degree for you) then make the business your first priority. That'll mean that you fail an exam or a class here and there. Be prepared for that, and be okay with that. If you aren't, you'll find yourself overtaxing yourself and the result often is that you fail to meet any of your commitments.
This advise is pretty flexible. Got a family? Care about them? That's your commitment. They win over school as well.
It works in reverse. Got a commitment to Everquest? You have to choose between being a kick-ass Everquester or a person with a degree. At top universities about 15% of students stick to their gaming commitment and get kicked out. Trust me, I do it all the time. We work with students with jobs and families and medical conditions to help them through. The students that refuse to treat their addictions, we cut them loose. Sorry to say, but we don't want to be a $30k/yr gaming club.
Last bit of advice. Don't focus on Princeton or Stanford or MIT. They're not geared towards flexibility. That't not to say it can't be done, but it's much harder. Look for a large, state university that's got a strong continuing education program. You won't get the top school cache (which really doesn't matter anyway) but you'll get a good solid education. They'll be more understanding of your competing commitments, they'll have better course schedules (evening classes, etc.) and they'll have more frequent offerings of courses so you can stay on track.
Good luck.