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?"
Degree (Score:1, Interesting)
You've Got To Want It (Score:2, Interesting)
I tried to balance school and work for a couple years, it didn't work. It hurt me in school and I was over stressed at work from my school demands. I finished college and quit working to do it.
Your mileage may vary.
It depends what country you are in... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now here's the fun part...I ran my own company too! (As well as dj'ing both over here in the U.K. and in Brussels, Belgium) It IS possible, it just requires that you have a timetable and STICK to it.
The worst thing you can do is mix up your social time (and remember university IS about meeting new people) and your work time. Have a set time for uni work, for work work and for play (all work and no play...etc.).
It's possible...just make sure that you give university the same attention that you do your company and socialising and you should be fine.
Good Luck! It's hard but rewarding.
You might wanna try... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Forget college (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why do you want a degree so much? (Score:0, Interesting)
Colleges are overrated. They are BUSINESSES designed to generate money for the university. Whether or not the students actually learn anything of value is not a concern for many professors. Like any good advertising agency that fools people into thinking they need a gas guzzling top-heavy SUV prone to roll-overs to attract the sexy girl, a university needs to make prospective customers feel like they NEED to have a degree at any price to "fit in" socially. Hence the manicured lawns, the pomp and circumstance of graduation, the list of "successful alumni" (who most likely have succeed IN SPITE OF, not BECAUSE OF, the university), the roar of the crowd at a nationally televised football game -- all subtle ploys to coax George Washington and Ben Franklin out of your wallet.
Remember the lesson of the "Wizard of Oz." The scarecrow went to the wizard in search of brains. At the end of the movie, the Man-Formerly-Known-As-The-Wizard admits he can't give the scarecrow brains, but he can give him a diploma! Voila -- the scarecrow can now instantly rattle off a mathematical formula!There's a biting social commentary in that scene that I missed as a kid, but I now understand.
I went to Stanford. Many of my classes were taught by non-professors, because the professors were too busy working on their research projects. In fact, there is actually an army of "consulting", "research", and "courtesy" professors who never see undergraduates, yet grossly distort the US News and World Report teacher-student ratio. The professor I chose to be my advisor refused to sign my study list, with a blunt "I don't advise undergraduates!" I recently found out that the guy who taught two of my core classes in computer science theory (CS 109A and CS 109B) had not even earned his master's degree during the time I was taking his classes -- and he was a poor lecturer and turned me off to computer science. Years later, the CS department would get rid of those courses, and the lecturer would never never earn a doctorate... but too late for me. $30,000/year tuition for poor instruction and lack of focus on the part of the faculty so that they aren't even sure of what courses should be offered to undergraduates? A lousy advising system wherein only 78% of the professors currently participate in undergraduate advising? Forget it. It was a total waste of money.
And that's Stanford. Similar horror stories abound at other universities-- just read The Boyer Commission's Report at
http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf/,
or "Profscam!" by Charles Sykes.
The rapid pace of technology is making the modern university obsolete. In this day of Amazon.com, you can find out which textbooks to buy on your own. With the Internet you can find the resources you need. Newsgroups provide chatter that is far more candid and honest than the phoniness of a classroom setting with 50 students sitting silently in an auditorium. Sophisticated computer hardware -- digitizers, graphic boards, and computers -- is so affordable nowadays that you can buy better stuff than what the university would allow you to touch, and a lot of good software is free for the taking.
Remember the saying, "Your college is only as good as your first job." Well, you already have a first job, which is the busines you founded. You're way beyond graduation, and could probably teach classes based on your experience.
Or if you have a compelling story, write a book about it, and tell us how you did it. You'll make even more money from the revenue. "Chicken Soup for the Soul" was a self-published book that went on to become a best-seller.
And your book just might end up in the bibliography of some sucker's -- er, student's -- dissertation.
Re:Degree (Score:2, Interesting)
This is what I thought.
Unfortunately, after two years doing Computer Science, it didn't turn out like that; the most expensive book I was expected to buy was "Learning to Program in Visual Basic 5"; ok, so it's a book I wouldn't have bought myself, but it certainly didn't teach me anything.
C: two semesters of writing tools to read in tsv's and calculate averages from the values, and another semester doing a RPN calculator. No look at libraries, no dynamic allocation, very little on pointers -- the second semester was effectively a clone of the first, only we were "allowed" to use * and &.
Java: we did a bit of UML, and proceeded to use it to develop a Counter class with methods increment(), decrement(), reset() and getValue(). We then got some C&P code to plug a GUI into it.
Web development: we did some old-sk00l tag-soup, and got told to write our own site using frames. Nobody came out of it with the slightest clue that HTML was actually specified anywhere or followed any significant rules.
Databases: The week before, I'd designed a (normalised) database with over 20 tables. It took me a few hours. The semester involved creating a database from a pre-written specification which had about four.
Assembler: Something I'd never normally look at, but through the semester we never got past a few loops and conditionals.
I did enjoy a couple of the modules (the math ones, and B Notation of all things, even assm was quite fun when we actually moved on), but most of it was slow, slow, slow and ultra basic. Even my A-level computing went into more detail.
Needless to say, I was on anti-depressants by the time I dropped out
Re:Forget college (Score:2, Interesting)
That is usually the exception to the rule, especially when dealing with IT industry. To many people assume that because in IT you can do that, other professions are the same way.
Do you think anyone is going to hire you if you have never taking an accounting course, that just some experience running a lemonade stand is going to count? How about management, experience counts alot but a degree is often needed to get your foot in the door in the first place, noone is going to consider you for management just because, they need something to back their decision up.
Face it, IT is alot like manual labor, it is just putting your nose to the grindstone and just work. Someone willing to put in the time can make something of themselves, especially a smart person, but they are not going to turn into the CEO of a big company, you need that degree
No back on the subject at hand, if you really are looking to get a degree, ask yourself why, you have been to school twice and what ever reasons you had for going to school then were not enough to keep you there. You really need to understand why your going to school instead of is it possible. If you have a good enough reason, you can make it work
Consider on-line programs (Score:2, Interesting)
If you go for an on-line program, make sure it is from a bona-fide accredited university - no degree mills. Also keep in mind that your instructors are used to teaching "regular" courses and dealing with full time students much younger (and more naive than you). They will make unreasonable demands of your time, and many will treat you in the condescending fashion notorious at universities (and distasteful to anyone with actual professional accomplishments)
Real world experience makes understanding the concepts much easier - you may be given some abstract topic and think, "oh yeah, I worked on something like that on project XYZ" while the topic will be entirely unfamiliar to your typical 19 year old with no real work experience.
Last point - if you are running your own company, you will have some time flexibility. If you are an employee, make sure your company buys off on the time commitment. There's nothing like having to drop a class because you employer sends you to Timbuktu a week before final exams.