Exam results

[den]

Passed User Interface Design
Failed Java (again)
Have to resit the Online Multimedia exam in August. (Marginal fail)

I can't believe I got an AE on Online Multimedia! I thought I did okay in that, apart from not being able to work out the MB size of a video given the time and sample-rate. A 30 minute video at 250bps... My answer, "Too large for on-line multimedia. Put it on a CD", was the wrong answer.

It appears that this degree in Information Technology doesn't have a lot of stuff that applies to Real World IT. Their basic assumption in Online Multimedia is that every home has a fibre optic pipe into it, and all my effors to create small-MB web pages* and graphics leads to a lowering of my marks. In one assignment I had to write a paragraph about the hardware required. My system was going to require a keyboard, mouse, monitor and printer. I had to write a paragraph for each device.

Write a 50+ word paragraph about a standard mouse. Make it interesting. I lost marks on that.

At a recent job interview (which I can't talk about due to the nature of the company) the boss asked me "Are they teaching you anything relevent to the IT industry as it stands now?"

I had to answer "No."

In the past every employer didn't care that I've worked with computers since 1985. They were concerned that I didn't have that bloody peice of paper called a "degree." So I'm going for the degree and it is irrelevent to the industry that wants me to get it.


*www.fleetwash.com.au has a total HDD footprint of 1.7MB

Comments

[tatterdemalion.livejournal.com]

Bugger indeed.

[weibchenwolf.livejournal.com]

To put it bluntly, very few degrees teach you anything you need to know for their intended RL applications. For the most part you discard most of what you learned as soon as you hit the real world. I think if I did only those units which helped me in the real world it would have been a 6 month degree. One year absolute tops.

[bobbain.livejournal.com]

If you look around you may discover sites where you can print your own (degree). All you need is parchment paper, some wax, a good printer and some templates.

[cynicaloptimist.livejournal.com]

Yeah, unfortunately a degree is a measure of how good you are at studying and staying power, not useful information. It is important to have one though, because its an easy indicator to a prospective employer that you actually have half a brain. You'll almost always lose out to a graduate. Silly, but it makes life easy.

My degree has nothing whatsoever to do with computers and I work with them. I meet new graduates with computing degrees all the time and the first thing we do is disabuse them of the fact that they know anything useful really. You're lucky, you know what they teach you is useless - all too often they tend to think that the IT industry is really like that.

University Curriculi

[ursuscal.livejournal.com]

Alas, much modern education has little to do with the real world, especially things that change so much as IT and communications.

After working as a senior technical writer for many "Fortune 100" companies, including Hitachi, IBM, and Synoptics, I had to challenge the "basic computer literacy" requirement when I returned to University. I got in an argument with the instructor over a question of what path was the most common way for viri to infect a PC. He actually said "floppy disks that are shared." *Buzzer* Thanks for playing. I made the argument for modems (this was before DSL and other high-speed connections were widely available, but floppies were already falling into disuse in favor of commercially copied CDs) and gave him an ANSII report that said so. He was actually dumbfounded.

The problem is that by the time you are taught what they try to teach you, it could be 10 years old, and the professor out of the technical profession for even longer!

[http://users.livejournal.com/crossfire_/]

The paragraph about the mouse question was actually on the exam? How...well, stupid.

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

About the mouse, look on the bright side, you didn't have to write a military spec manual on it. I forget exactly how many pages United States military specs are required to be, but its somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 PAGES.

My mother used to write them for an engineering firm. Each component needs to have one of these specs. Can you write ten pages on the operation of a standard on-off switch? Not even an electronic switch, but a standard metal flick it up and down switch no less. Not even how it functions with the device on the electronic level, but how to USE it.

Apparently the troubleshooting section was hilarious.

As to degrees, they are a whole load of crap, and have only gotten more so with time. Mother wrote military specs and did circuit board design at a firm that worked on the lunar landing module for NASA. Mom had a degree in MUSIC THEORY. Yeah... so relevant. But they got it to the moon, so I guess when you're on the edge of any new technology, the background really doesn't matter all that much, except to the bean counters that dot the Is and cross the Ts at the place.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Time to look at another course maybe, it certainly seems oddly designed - though haveing said that a lot of uni IT courses don't seem up to much, I was looking at the Open University one and they teach OOP with something called SmallTalk, which is for kids.. daft :(
Sorry you did so badly, at least it looks like its the subject matter and their expectation which suck rather than your abilities *hugs*
So what *can* you write about mouses that's so interesting, I wonder?
And a 30 minute video at whatever size, on dial-up for me comes to "nah, not interested, it can stay where it is."

[bobbain.livejournal.com]

A degree won't necessarily get you a job in the IT industry. There are people with Master's degrees in Information Technology writing in the Australian Computer Society "New South Wales" mailing list asking if undertaking a "Microsoft Certified" course will help them find employment !

The Australian Computer Society magazine notes that many members - many of whom have advanced degrees in Information Technology are now long term customers of Centrelink, and are offering courses at a discount to such members.

In a recent Australian Computer Society "Making Experience Count" seminar there were several hundred unemployed "IT Professionals" with credentials that would make your eyes water.

The presenter noted that these days "computers are ubiquitous" and that computer literacy has risen to a point where computers, and the people who claim expertise with computers, are simply seen as tools to get a job done (often expendable). Secretaries (sorry "Personal Assistants") in offices design web pages. Many managers are computer literate to the point that they don't require sophisticated IT expertise. To "make it" in the industry you have to have some specific quality or skill.

It's also true that if you exhibit expertise beyond the norm jobs in IT won't require a degree.

It's also worth noting that in *any* job interview those who make negative comments "lose out" - however friendly the interviewer may appear. I was taught interview techniques by the people at "worklife" http://www.worklife.com.au/ where "mock interviews" were arranged.

Whenever I made any comment or uttered any word that contained negativity - even as simple as uttering the word "no" it was pointed out that this a stumbling block to employment. Only positive words. Only positive comments.

The answer to the question shouldn't have been "no".

It should have been along the lines of "They are teaching me a variety of IT related material much of which is extremely relevant to the position I'm applying for".

Good luck with Java. From memory it's a version of "C++" but without the need to "manage memory". It's also constantly changing. I did a very short course in Java but features were constantly being "deprecated".

Have you considered a "career change" ?

It seems to me you like working with animals. How about "Veterinary Science" ?