College Vs Self-education

I found this to be an interesting topic. In high school and growing up everyone really pushed college college you want the college experience you want to live in a dorm you want to experience all that college has to offer don't worry about the price just go for it.

I would say I went the compromise route. I went to a community college and managed to get an associates of applied science degree in marketing in 3 years it was an interesting time I managed to graduate debt-free and I think it showed I could commit to post secondary education and graduate.

I got my first job in the industry that I've worked in that first semester at the community college with their career fair.   I can see how people would say college leads to networking and opportunities. Because 4 years later that job that I was hired to do originally from the career fair led to another job that I worked for almost four years. And even the current job I am working ties into the original job from the career fair. So it's interesting to see how just one event when  networking  kind of snowballed into a decade or so of a career.

I thought about dropping out of the community college and working full-time I could have scaled  back and just done some classes on the side. But I'm glad I focused and got that associates knocked out.

I've always been an autodidactic person. Always interested in learning a lot from different people, different ideas, different experiences etc and that's always kind of fascinated me and even at the community college I was able to facilitate that type of learning and experience. 

With YouTube and the public library and a lot of other online and remote learning educational opportunities I don't know if one really needs to spend much money beyond an associates degree to get an education. And for some people high school maybe enough but I think the associates shows more of a commitment to growth and learning.

With self study you have to have the self-discipline and focus to really look into what you want to study have some understanding of it see what you can figure out. I've never done an online class before I did a hybrid or two it community college.

 This fall I'm going to take an online only class at the University of Iowa. I spent the $40  and applied. I spent another $7 and had my official transcript from community college sent over to the University of Iowa. Applied and was accepted into the bachelors of applied studies program at the University of Iowa.

I've always wanted to say I attended the University of Iowa it was kind of a culturally significant institution and one that it always fascinated me growing up. I spent time at the student memorial Union and at the library. They have a huge library there over 5 stories tons of academic and intellectual books. It's been interesting so far to see what it's like to be a student again.

After I graduated from the community college I took another class from them back in the fall of 2017 it was a networking plus class. I learned a lot from that class. It was interesting it was one night a week for several hours at night. I had used the professor Messer CompTIA Network plus free training videos online I'd watch through that whole series and with my job I did a lot of customer support IT help at the time so I was fairly familiar with it from an applied Hands-On perspective and I still found the class fairly challenging it was harder than most of the business courses and the other ones that I taken.

My employer at that time did not want to pay for that class even though they had a tuition reimbursement program and I dealt with a lot of the stuff that the class dealt with. But it was okay I completed my employment about six months later and I learned a lot from that experience. The amount of BS I will put up with individuals bosses coworkers etc is a lot lower now then it was before that. So I appreciate that experience.  That employer they always said we were paid to think but then they never really wanted to put money towards fixing any underlying problems that that for-profit organization had or invest anything in their employees.

Somehow the CEO managed to get on the board of directors of a small "non"-profit college that basically serves the oligarch  elite in furthering their education that is subsidized by their corporate overlord employers. So it's interesting to think about the culture and the economics of that. I am glad that all my formal education has been secular and not dogmatic or religious-based indoctrination.