I know your fear and I once had the same fear too. Until I opened up to a Professor in my department that once worked in an engineering company before becoming an academic and what she told me was that, in the Engineering profession, every entry-level engineer has this same fear and that no one is going to expect you to know how the company works in details. General knowledge, gained from an undergraduate degree, is all that’s needed. They will work you through their standards when you become an employee. So my suggestion would be to talk to people already working in your field and ask them how they prepared themselves for the work environment.

Great post. But we have to also ask the question of what the student hopes to gain from a school. Some just want to explore the theoretical limits of some field regardless of financial gain while others see it as a necessary step to making a lot of money. But schools are not designed to be fluid and meet everyone’s needs hence the problem of most schools being setup to cater to a few ideal students while the rest drone along.

So true! I joined college because I needed a degree to make money. This idea of course changed over time as I started to understand the impact I can make on society. I feel that a key idea is for students to realize that they can make a difference in the way we live and they can take part in the efforts to improve our quality of life. School is just a place where one receive training of thought to innovate ideas that make their small community or society as a whole a better place.

Great post. I understand more the need for Liberal arts and humanities major now more than ever. As part of the Preparing Future Professoriate class, we did one session where we learnt theatre techniques to improve communication skills. I found the class very rewarding as it teaches us to learn, listen, and focus on the people around us. As an engineer, I feel like each engineering student should take this class. It really helps you understand society and the world we live in outside our small engineering bubble.

I think it’s a great initiative. While I understand the critics of such a move and their argument (that low income students need more help), I also think that the prison system will be better at reforming inmates if the inmates have an access to quality education. The overarching question still will be – ‘Should inmates be preferred over low income students?’ but dignity of a person, incarcerated or not should not factor into an argument for or against this move.

I think it’s a great initiative. While I understand the critics of such a move and their argument (that low income students need more help), I also think that the prison system will be better at reforming inmates if the inmates have an access to quality education. The overarching question still will be – ‘Should inmates be preferred over low income students?’ but dignity of a person, incarcerated or not should not factor into an argument for or against this move.

I totally agree with you! I also feel that I was not challenged enough to thinking outside the box during my undergraduate education. I feel like we need to link our undergraduate curriculum especially towards these new ideas of innovative thinking where we produce new generations of critical thinkers rather student taught to conform to the norm and be passive about the ideas presented before.

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I like your post because I’ve had to think about my research not producing significant contributions before. I think bias in research is here to stay without a comprehensive shake up of our educational system. In my department, I have to publish at least four papers to have my diploma and I’ve been doing experiments for the past two years not knowing whether my results will be publishable or not. I mentioned my fears to my PI and she said, ‘if we end up with nothing then we know what not to do’! Not many students are as lucky as I am though, and at the end of the day many try to bend their experiments to give meaningful results.

I agree with parts of what you said about Palmer and his “ideal” educational system. I think it is one thing to point out the problems and make suggestions about what to do, but it a whole different thing to put those suggestions into action. However, personally, I think the best point you make is about making the system “function on the real.” There are plenty of ideal and wishful thinking that people want in their work or lives, but it isn’t always realistic. Solutions have to be practical and applicable to what is available. You have to work within the resources available to you. You can suggest how to be more aware or more inclusive in the classroom, but you can’t be everything to everybody. Sometimes what you think is the correct response to help someone, but it won’t be. We have to be aware of the balance between what the reality of the situation is and what the ideal situation would be in order to work within the confines of the resources we have available to achieve it. We don’t have unlimited resources in the workforce or educational environment, but most of all we don’t have it within ourselves. Yet, we do have the ability to embrace the reality of our situations and be creative with working to achieve best case outcome for ourselves and others.

I really enjoyed your post. I think for this entire semester I have struggle with the question of why I came to graduate school. I didn’t come to make more money; I came to find a path to a career, but it gets hard to keep that in perceptive at times especially when I’m a struggling students. Education and learning can sometimes be tricky to keep in focus and perceptive, because there is a lot of pressure and expectations. And nowadays, there is no guarantee that you will leave college with a job. Sometimes, I look at higher education as a gamble and that’s why people find themselves going to college for the wrong reasons. They didn’t think about the whole picture before they came to school and there are times in education when the concept of “making more money” isn’t going to work because there is no guarantee. That’s why it’s important to remember the reasons why you love to learn or consider what is it beyond the money that is pushing you through school.