• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Social mobility among Wake alums compared to other institutions

Ayo said:
yeah, i did mathematical business. in hindsight, wish i had done math econ, instead. so many of those business classes are just a huge waste.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, and I'm totally using "African Politics" course knowledge on the regular.

So many majors, pretty much with the exception of the sciences feeding into specific, related fields, are full of fluff that serves little purpose other than to keep you engaged and thinking critically. College teaches you how to learn and think and apply information a lot more than it actually teaches you useful facts and information. B-school is at least focused (as opposed to spanish or poli sci where you're basically just collecting credits), but it's the same thing.
OTAB is dumb (I ended up taking it for my masters degree), but there were also some kids in there that had never given real thought to the concepts being taught and what seemed like absolute common sense to me was actual new information to them... I do think the average Wake student is a bit more astute than a lot (not all) of public school peers in a similar program, so the fluff classes stand out that much more as exactly that. Non value add classes to a WF person might be critical to someone else.
 
palmab03 said:
Aside from being lawyers what are you referring to?

And wait, we offer Spanish as a major? For what godly purpose? To be a translator? Supposedly we have a selective admission criteria and yet people choose this?
Click to expand...

I was an English AND Spanish major. I'm actually finally using the latter since we have factories in Mexico and offices in South America. Need dat Portuguese ability for our Brazil factory doe.
 
lbE08 said:
Oh yeah, and I'm totally using "African Politics" course knowledge on the regular.

So many majors, pretty much with the exception of the sciences feeding into specific, related fields, are full of fluff that serves little purpose other than to keep you engaged and thinking critically. College teaches you how to learn and think and apply information a lot more than it actually teaches you useful facts and information. B-school is at least focused (as opposed to spanish or poli sci where you're basically just collecting credits), but it's the same thing.
OTAB is dumb (I ended up taking it for my masters degree), but there were also some kids in there that had never given real thought to the concepts being taught and what seemed like absolute common sense to me was actual new information to them... I do think the average Wake student is a bit more astute than a lot (not all) of public school peers in a similar program, so the fluff classes stand out that much more as exactly that. Non value add classes to a WF person might be critical to someone else.
Click to expand...

i'm actually pretty confident african politics course had more of impact on you as a person than intro to Marketing
 
lbE08 said:
Oh yeah, and I'm totally using "African Politics" course knowledge on the regular.

So many majors, pretty much with the exception of the sciences feeding into specific, related fields, are full of fluff that serves little purpose other than to keep you engaged and thinking critically. College teaches you how to learn and think and apply information a lot more than it actually teaches you useful facts and information. B-school is at least focused (as opposed to spanish or poli sci where you're basically just collecting credits), but it's the same thing.
OTAB is dumb (I ended up taking it for my masters degree), but there were also some kids in there that had never given real thought to the concepts being taught and what seemed like absolute common sense to me was actual new information to them... I do think the average Wake student is a bit more astute than a lot (not all) of public school peers in a similar program, so the fluff classes stand out that much more as exactly that. Non value add classes to a WF person might be critical to someone else.
Click to expand...

The argument is that these fluff classes do not appropriately engage some folks to think critically, where other upper level courses in other areas could have.
 
In this thread graduates from a liberal arts school complain about liberal arts curriculum.
 
I personally found my political science degree to be pretty useful. Predominantly took courses about American politics and use it on a regular basis to debate rubes on the Tunnels.

In all seriousness though, I found it pretty helpful in a solid number of law school courses as well as at my current position where a knowledge of policy and ongoing current event issues is a definite plus, if not a flat out requirement.
 
leftcoastdeac said:
In this thread graduates from a liberal arts school complain about liberal arts curriculum.
Click to expand...

Eh I'm slow at work, might as well debate courses that 10 years ago me would have never taken out of laziness. I hated writing papers, good luck forcing me to take an upper level history.
 
I am glad that my liberal arts education taught me how to be a passable writer. I'm blown away at how bad most of my colleagues are at writing.
 
BarcaDeac said:
I was an English AND Spanish major. I'm actually finally using the latter since we have factories in Mexico and offices in South America. Need dat Portuguese ability for our Brazil factory doe.
Click to expand...

Are you picking up Dutch to speak the other language of South America? :)
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
I am glad that my liberal arts education taught me how to be a passable writer. I'm blown away at how bad most of my colleagues are at writing.
Click to expand...

I JUST had this conversation with a coworker; she says she felt like she didn't have a real handle on her writing until after her masters degree (public school all the way).
I think I came into Wake with a pretty decent ability to write, Wake certainly developed that further, but yeah... there are some terribad writers out in the professional world.
 
leftcoastdeac said:
In this thread graduates from a liberal arts school complain about liberal arts curriculum.
Click to expand...

I liked the smorgasbord aspect of it, but probably could have ended up with a more objectively-useful degree if I'd done things differently.
 
i think the take-away is that we should probably all go to college starting at age 25 or so rather than 18
 
Writing in the professional world also depends on the channel, audience, and objective. Banging out ad copy is different than drafting a strategic plan, which is different than blog writing, which is different than an internal MOU on proper microwave etiquette.

I parlayed a double major in English and Politics into a first job as a no-name outside sales cog in a corporate machine, so I had to learn on the fly that blue book college writing was not a valuable skill.

That said, as my career progressed, reaching back to the ability to make clear, concise, and persuasive written arguments definitely came in handy.
 
CantStandYa said:
Writing in the professional world also depends on the channel, audience, and objective. Banging out ad copy is different than drafting a strategic plan, which is different than blog writing, which is different than an internal MOU on proper microwave etiquette.

I parlayed a double major in English and Politics into a first job as a no-name outside sales cog in a corporate machine, so I had to learn on the fly that blue book college writing was not a valuable skill.

That said, as my career progressed, reaching back to the ability to make clear, concise, and persuasive written arguments definitely came in handy.
Click to expand...

Absolutely, but my coworker would have written your first blip like this:

"Writing in the professional world also depends on the channel audience and objective. Banging out ad copy is different, then drafting a strategic plan, which is different than blog writing which is different than an internal MOU."

Maybe not that bad, but I routinely proof her documents for her and find errors like those I just created.
General syntax issues and word choice, both of which make a huge difference in how a message comes across.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
i think the take-away is that we should probably all go to college starting at age 25 or so rather than 18
Click to expand...

Not all but definitely some. High schools should better prepare kids to get a job or create a job rather than to go to college. And some people should work for a few years and maybe take a few community college or tech school courses and figure out what they're interested in before starting a bachelors degree program.
 
How many schools specialize in the Conservative Arts? How about the Dark Arts?
 
yeah it's amazing to me how many of my foreign colleagues can write in English better than many of my American colleagues.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top