The Joys of Graduate School

[Kichae]

Continuing the discussion from Life Update (Reunions thread?!):

Life Update (Reunions thread?!)

I’ve begun to realize recently that math skills really do pay bills. I never would have guessed when I was younger that it would be this way, but more and more often I’ve found that I’m able to snag decently paying tutoring jobs around the university because I know math and can teach it. Just landed another one that I’ll probably have until I graduate working with a local community college tutoring math and physics.[/quote]

I currently make between $30 and $80 per hour tutoring. If I could rack up a reasonable number of hours throughout the week, I’d be making a ridiculous amount of money doing, in my mind, essentially nothing. It’s currently my main source of income.

Hell, I tutor classes I’ve never taken before. I’ve recently started to tutor first year stats, because I got sick a couple of weeks ago and watched some stats videos on YouTube. I’ve never taken a proper general stats course in my life (and no, statistical mechanics doesn’t count). Business students don’t care. A lot of them can’t seem to look at a number without trembling.

It’s just not what I expected because when you’re growing up through high school you’re peppered with the idea that during college and after most college degrees only land you a minimum wage job working as a secretary, fast food, or something of that sort when you graduate.

There’s a hell of a lot of educational elitism tied up in that kind of thinking, though. Also, trend following. I was in high school from '98 - 2001. Everyone was talking computer science, and saying that if you went into anything else you were stupid. Then the bubble burst. It’s not the degree you get, it’s what you do with it that counts in the end, and given enough preparation and work a person can spin a philosophy degree into some serious bank.

I think that’s something everyone should be telling the youngsters coming up through high school, because I certainly wasn’t. I never knew I wanted to make a career in STEM until my soph year of college.

The thing that people really need to have drilled into them is that university isn’t career college, and a degree isn’t job training. It’s skills development, and employers are always looking for people with demonstrable skills. An English Lit degree will teach you communication skills and attention to detail just as much, if not more, than an engineering or chemistry degree will. A philosophy degree is a signal that you’re a shrewd critical thinker. Most importantly all university degrees suggest that you’re a capable learner, and the ability to learn and adapt isn’t as common as you might think.

Yes, some degrees may start you higher on the ladder than others, and a few even throw you on an escalator, but none of them limit you in the end. It’s better to study something you’re deeply interested in and passionate about at university, because you’ll learn those skills faster and practice them more, than to misidentify university as a giant game of Let’s Make a Deal: Career Edition.

[quote]Roger. The benefits you stated are more or less the reasoning I had why it was worth going to grad school. I think you’ve also solidified my pursuit of a PhD as well. I’ll curse you later for that. I’ve been on the fence arguing with myself whether the extra years of school was worth it, even though(from what I hear) you can get paid by the uni to get a PhD through TA’ing or research, but you have to pay them for a masters. Something of that sort.

It entirely depends on the school. I was paid a salary for my MSc, and I’ll be paid a larger one when I go back for my PhD. You pay tuition either way, but some programs at some schools pay you enough to cover your tuition plus (a grotesque underestimate of) your living expenses.

[Skyentist]

I currently make between $30 and $80 per hour tutoring. If I could rack up a reasonable number of hours throughout the week, I’d be making a ridiculous amount of money doing, in my mind, essentially nothing. It’s currently my main source of income.

Do you work through a university of tutoring company? Or is it just you finding people and soliciting yourself

There’s a hell of a lot of educational elitism tied up in that kind of thinking, though. Also, trend following.

It was not my intention to sound elitist at all, how does it sound that way?

To clarify: I was just speaking from experiences from where I grew up that a higher level education is either the shit, or shit. Depends on who you talk to - and this is true due to the reasons you’ve already said. It isn’t what degree you get but rather if you enjoy it and how you use it. However, it seems like a lot of what I’ve heard is that while it can be beneficial, it’s a waste of money because "even if you(r kids) do get a degree, you(they)'re still stuck coming home jobless and are forced to work entry level/minimum wage jobs. If anything I felt I was painting education in more of a negative light because of that stigma. I suppose interpretation could be lost, or I could be wrong.

[Kichae]

Do you work through a university of tutoring company? Or is it just you finding people and soliciting yourself

I’m purely independent. I could get more hours through the universities services, but they restrict what I can charge to $15/hour. The school pays me $27 for teaching labs, so I do t see why I should get less for 1 on 1 tutoring.

It was not my intention to sound elitist at all, how does it sound that way?

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were being elitist. It’s the very idea that we, as a society, have that certain (or even most) education paths are worthless. It’s a damaging idea that’s propagated by the system as much as it is held by individuals (because the system is made up of individuals).

It doesn’t hold to just “worthless” degrees, either. I went to a job fair 6 months ago or so, and every time I told people I had an astrophysics degree they kind of looked at me with shock and immediately told me that they didn’t have anything for me (well, except for the atomic energy guys; they showered me with pamphlets) . They assumed I wouldn’t be interested in anything that they had to offer. They didn’t know of what to do with me. They made certain assumptions about my skills, desires, and needs that weren’t true. I just wanted a job that paid out every two weeks. I think they thought I wanted to build space ships.

[JB47394]

The thing that people really need to have drilled into them is that university isn’t career college, and a degree isn’t job training. It’s skills development, and employers are always looking for people with demonstrable skills.

Well, remember that having a degree in your chosen field is a means of demonstrating your skills. My family treated our state university as a jobs program. Electrical engineering, software engineering, nursing and accounting. Those were our degrees and those were our professions.

If you want to walk into the world of the unwashed masses, having the standard check marks next to your name can carry you a long way. If you lack those check marks then it’s time to fall back on raw talent, personal connections and an employer with some insights into people. A clod of a boss is going to look for the check marks whether he knows you or not. A creative, insightful boss is going to be looking for a mix of talent in a bunch of people who can operate as a team. Bosses occupy a bell curve of competency just like the employees.