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Writer's Block: School Ties
Feb. 3rd, 2012 03:57 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
If, by "it," you mean the major itself (or its embodiment, the diploma), then the answer would have to be "not all that often," because aside from wielding my diploma as a credential to jump through a given hoop, what was of real use to me in my careers—I've had four or five of them, depending on how you look at things—was putting to use the skills I developed in college in learning how to learn.
I left school as a double major, in Engineering Science and Russian Language and Literature. And while there were courses you had to attend to pass, and courses you wanted to attend because the professor had a certain knack for explanation, most courses could easily be passed by keeping track of handouts, doing the homework, writing the papers, and taking the tests. Developing efficient study habits reduced the drag of class attendance and increased time available for other pursuits. I came out reasonably well, with GPAs of around 3.4 in both majors.
During my first trip to the Soviet Union, though, I could barely express myself in Russian and my knowledge of Russian culture and literature was rudimentary at best. I was blind-luck fortunate with my Russian, as I got a job that planted me in Moscow during the era of détente, where I lived as an expatriate whose only real contact with other Westerners took place once a week at the Marine Bar in the U.S. Embassy.
In all other respects, it was either learn Russian, or hide in my hotel room and become a troglodyte.
So I learned Russian, by immersion and by trial and error. Did my degree help? A little. Knowing that "Russia" was not the same thing as the "Soviet Union" and having haltingly read a few chapters of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago in the original Russian put me ahead of most other Americans, but far behind my Moscow acquaintances, who were listening to bootleg tapes of Vladimir Vysotsky, attending underground art exhibits, and buying editions of Sergey Yesenin's poetry not with rubles (as I tried to do, once, to the horror of the bookstore clerk), but with the prescribed coupons received in exchange for recycled newspapers.
Some time later, once I finally did get a job as a junior engineer, the first couple of years were spent basically learning the ropes of the business, as opposed to applying any design or technical skills. Did my degree help? A little. I was drafted to participate in a project because I had taken a course in BASIC programming in college, but I learned to program in C on my own, and exhibited initiative in using a computer to generate documents and build spreadsheets.
Over the years, I've come to understand that learning how to learn—on my own, if necessary—was the most important skill I acquired in college, and I use "it" every day of my life.
Cheers...
If, by "it," you mean the major itself (or its embodiment, the diploma), then the answer would have to be "not all that often," because aside from wielding my diploma as a credential to jump through a given hoop, what was of real use to me in my careers—I've had four or five of them, depending on how you look at things—was putting to use the skills I developed in college in learning how to learn.
I left school as a double major, in Engineering Science and Russian Language and Literature. And while there were courses you had to attend to pass, and courses you wanted to attend because the professor had a certain knack for explanation, most courses could easily be passed by keeping track of handouts, doing the homework, writing the papers, and taking the tests. Developing efficient study habits reduced the drag of class attendance and increased time available for other pursuits. I came out reasonably well, with GPAs of around 3.4 in both majors.
During my first trip to the Soviet Union, though, I could barely express myself in Russian and my knowledge of Russian culture and literature was rudimentary at best. I was blind-luck fortunate with my Russian, as I got a job that planted me in Moscow during the era of détente, where I lived as an expatriate whose only real contact with other Westerners took place once a week at the Marine Bar in the U.S. Embassy.
In all other respects, it was either learn Russian, or hide in my hotel room and become a troglodyte.
So I learned Russian, by immersion and by trial and error. Did my degree help? A little. Knowing that "Russia" was not the same thing as the "Soviet Union" and having haltingly read a few chapters of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago in the original Russian put me ahead of most other Americans, but far behind my Moscow acquaintances, who were listening to bootleg tapes of Vladimir Vysotsky, attending underground art exhibits, and buying editions of Sergey Yesenin's poetry not with rubles (as I tried to do, once, to the horror of the bookstore clerk), but with the prescribed coupons received in exchange for recycled newspapers.
Some time later, once I finally did get a job as a junior engineer, the first couple of years were spent basically learning the ropes of the business, as opposed to applying any design or technical skills. Did my degree help? A little. I was drafted to participate in a project because I had taken a course in BASIC programming in college, but I learned to program in C on my own, and exhibited initiative in using a computer to generate documents and build spreadsheets.
Over the years, I've come to understand that learning how to learn—on my own, if necessary—was the most important skill I acquired in college, and I use "it" every day of my life.
Cheers...
