Send Ken To College

Everyday I find myself sitting in a classroom wondering why the hell I even bothered spending $10,000 a semester on my undergrad education.  At the very best I may have gotten $5,000 worth of education and the majority of that was NOT in Computer Science.  The value came from the gen-eds that I had to take and maybe some of the math courses.  I suspect that I learned more at the community college than I did at Mt. Mercy in regards to computer science.

The really sad part of it is that even with new faculty, it is not know whether the department is anymore worthwhile.  They may need a few years to get on track however they can get a start by hiring adjuncts that have the remotest clue about what they are doing.

My stepdaughter recently took a Visual Basic class where she learned almost nothing.  She spent a few hours with me and learned as much as she had in the 10 weeks of class.  Did they pay me for doing their job?  Hell no!  She filed a complaint with the provost and the department head.  Her complaint was pretty much dismissed because she got an A- in the class.

Quite honestly an a good grade does not mean much if you don’t learn anything.  I have a transcript full of good grades to prove it.  Everyday I sit in a graduate level class and find out just how much I never learned.  This is not stuff that was above and beyond my classroom learning, things I could have pursued on my own.  This is stuff that I presumably paid to learn when I signed up for the class.

The sad part of it is that of the $40,000 or so that I spent on getting the degree, I could have spent a few thousand on books and some more on another computer and I could probably have come out with at least as good of an education.  I suspect it would actually have been better.  With a decent printer I could have even managed to churn me out a piece of paper attesting to my smartness and not had to spend all of that money.

If I could figure out how to sue and get back some of the money that I wasted, I most certainly would be doing that.

…and now we begin ‘The Kirkwood Years’.

The Kirkwood years started ca 1992 and lasted about one semester, maybe not even that, since I only paid attention until I got my student loan check.  Needless to say the partying was not out of my system yet.

Fast forward 11 years and you will find me with my partying days well behind me.  I was working at Broderbund, which became The Learning Company, which became Mattel, which again became The Learning Company before finally ending up as Broderbund.  I survived 12 rounds of layoffs, and they got me in the 13th.  To get rid of me they sold off the entire education division to Riverdeep.  I just happened to be working schools/network tech support at that time.  The funny things is about 6 weeks after laying me off, Riverdeep bought the remaining pieces of Broderbund.  By that time about all that was left was the Printmaster and Printshop programs.

Now I am about 36 years old and unemployed.  I had my severance package, 197 hours worth of vacation time that I was paid for and 26 weeks worth of unemployment.  Time to figure out what I was going to do.  I ended up going back to Kirkwood.  This time I ended up with an Associate of Applied Science degree only to find out that this two year degree was not going to get me a job.  I ended up spending another year or so taking Computer Science courses with plans of transferring to University of Iowa to finish a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.

My Computer Science instructor was an alum of Mt. Mercy College and she had spoken highly of it several times.  There also were conversations with my slightly dubious aquaintance, Bob, which led me to believe that Mt. Mercy would be the place for me to go.  I bit hook line and sinker!

Next up, the Mt. Mercy Years….