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On Balancing Career & College...
An anonymous reader asks: "Hi folks. Some advice please - I've been in university twice already and quit both times - the first due to lack of interest in the course and the second a combination of lack of interest and work pressures. The second time round, I started a tech company and it's now three years old and doing OK. I am now seriously thinking about going back to Uni to get a degree (for real this time ;-). Is anyone out there successfully juggling running a company and studying at the same time? How do you juggle the two without hampering either due to lack of the right amount of attention?"
It all depends on how much time your business needs. However if you can't fit in a large ammount of time for the course then there's always distance learning for example Open University it all depends what you wish to study. Or if you're only in it for the social life.
I've been working full time and studying for the last three years. I was intially full-time study and work for two years. My relationship with my GF died as a result tho. I took a year off study the following year and now have a deal with my employer to work 4 days a week on full salary, allowing one day a week to study part-time. The flipside of this is that i owe them i year of work after i finish study next year.
It is hard work but i enjoy it. I am studying multimedia and think its great!
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I refuse to have a sig... dammit!
I agree with this, I haven't regreted it so far either, but I am not done though. I am currently going to school at the University of Phoenix. They cater to the working student, requirements: fulltime job, 23 years old, have deep pockets...like most educational institutions.
Great if you already have your skills and just looking for the degree. (I say that like I have learned anything.) I have learned a lot, mostly from other classmates in the same field. I don't regret it though. 4 hours on Tuesday night for class and 5 hours more for study groups. Study group never lasts that long though. It's worked great for me so far. Just be prepared to do a lot of research and speaking. By the time you finish you will not have any fear of public speaking!!
They also have all online courses but I didn't like the atmospere there. They're accredited...so they say! Boeing and Microsoft send many employees there. Great place for networking. check it out.
From what you said, lack of interest is what keeps coming up. I'm guessing that this is either lack of interest in the subject matter, or that the quality of education you're getting is insufficient to hold your attention. Either way, I think you're going to be a lot better off if you address either of those first. I'm in your position, and what I'm finding is that the classes I'm taking now (as opposed to then) have real-world applicability, and so I'm a lot more motivated and excited by the material. I can tell what is more likely to be useful to me and what isn't, and I can ask questions based on what I've seen and what I want to do in the future. If this isn't happening for you, perhaps that's the real problem to fix...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I got my whole bachelor's working during the day and going to school at least four nights a week until 10 p.m. plus odd weekends (and sometimes having to drive 70 miles for the classes).
It can be done, just set that diploma as your goal and sort of coast along in the work -- doing your work, but not the "I'm working for a promotion or to expand the business" kind of work.
Only the ignorant says that knowledge is irrelevant or obsolete. That was never true, even though ignorants has said it for centuries. Knowledge is not a burden to carry, and there are always domains where it is applicable. Without the knowledge, you will of course not see the applications, hence you should not judge its usefulness without it.
The next step is to fear knowledge.
With fear for knowledge comes a society where people burn books in public.
Reality bites, go take a history class.
I went to the university once, started working as a software developer and I quit school. Now I'm going back to school but doing it all through correspondence work. It's all on my own time, on my own schedule. I am enrolled at The American College of Computer and Information Sciences. Also the University of Phoenix does online degrees too as far as I know. ACCIS is fairly easy but you have to keep on doing it. It's easy to stop when you don't have due dates for anything. Right now I'm in 3 classes and you only have to turn in 1 assignment from any of your classes every 2 months minimum. Obviously you'll want to turn in more than that.... else computers will be obsolete when you graduate. :)
Anyhow... might want to browse the websites. Can't hurt to poke around. Feel free to e-mail me personally if you want to know more about it (or anybody can e-mail me if they want).
For those stating that it only takes skills, be careful. You are correct that it only takes skills, to reach a certain level. But if you have any desire to move into higher levels of a corporation (you may not want to be a PHB while your young, but that may change later), then you hit a glass ceiling where not having the degree is a problem.
In my case, I'm well paid where I work at the level I have. Unfortunately, I can't move up here without a degree and I'm paid more than folks with my job description outside of my company. My next logical move is into a junior management position (Director or equivalent). However, the executive recruiters I have spoken with all same the same thing:
I could place you with half dozen companies today, if you only had a degree.
Like it or not, the lack of degree is a limiting factor in advancement opportunity, unless you work for yourself. People outside IS (i.e. the financiers and backers of the company you work for), don't know anything about your skill set, they only know the suffixes attached to your name.
Secondly in the UK there are Open University courses which allow you to get a degree at home - You do about 90% of the work at home and attend the actual university for some workshop type courses - I'll be very surprised if there isn't an equivalent in the US (or wherever you live)
There's programs like that here in the US, too. Degrees via the internet are becoming quite popular.
I honestly question the value of an "at home" degree. Sure, you get all of the knowledge, but you miss out on most of the other benefits of a traditional program. Like getting to know your professors personally. I'm in an evening MBA program right now, and there are some professors that I have broken through and established a relationship that will outlast my time at the school.
You miss out on the classroom discussion. If the bulk of your degree is in a canned format, then you don't hear the life experiences of your fellow students in regards to various problems. This is particularly true on the graduate level.
You miss out on networking with people. An old proverb says, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." This is very, very true. You might have degrees and referrals out the yin-yang, but that big consulting contract is still going to go to the interviewer's dorm mate from college.
Finally, you miss out on class lectures, some of which is of more value than the course material because it's coming from the professor's real-life experiences, sometimes things that he/she might not want to type down and leave a record of.
Yeah, they'll tell you that all of those things exist in at-home degrees in some form or another... but there's no substitute for face-to-face contact with other people. You miss a lot with an at-home degree.
I am surprized that I haven't seen others mention this, but make sure you are getting the right education for you. People learn different, and you may of had a problem with the learning / study methods used at university.
/.er should enjoy is Steven C. McConnell's Top 10 Reading List.
There is a difference between difference schools, state vs. private universities, two and four colleges, polytechs, and distance education vs. correspondence. Research the options, and pick the right one for you.
In this day and age you do not need to attend classes in person to earn a meaniful degree, in UK, the Open University leads the way, and in Canada there is Athabasca University, I am not as familiar with US schools, but there is the University of Phoenix as well as many others.
Define your goal(s) of attending a post-secondary school. Also an idea for your career goals might be useful, but you need specific education goals. Write them down. I said, write them down. This is how you will evaluate schools, programme and course choices.
Is it just to have a degree? Do you want more a fundamential understanding (i.e. theoric) of computing? Do you want business skills? To become a better rounded software engineer? Understand business, so you can grow your own business? Get a MBA? Meet women? For technical training? To earn more money? Continue doing what you already do, or so you can do something new? Certification?
An university degree is suppose to be based upon a theorical understanding, which while being less specific (i.e. more abstract), is more lasting and will not be outdated every 3 years. That is the #1 source of frustration and confusion I see from young computer science students. An university degree is not a career training programme. You get to do the career training in your own time.
Make use of your electives, do not choose courses because you think they will be easy like "Rocks for Jocks" and "Clap for Credit", find introductary courses you will be interested in, and will benefit you either personally or professionally.
Most schools have some means of providing tours of their facilities, especially in the summer. Since this is an investment that will cost approx. $40,000, you should research this investment as being right for you. If possible, arrange a talk with someone from the department that you are looking at majoring in.
Bone up on time management and planning skills, and study skills if you find studying difficult. University is about learning, but unfortunately very little is taught about how best to learn (for you). Read Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People it will help in setting your priorities, and planning. To help learn about learning, John L. Adams book Conceptual Blockbusting: Care and Feeding of Ideas, and George Polya's How to Solve It.
Practice reading, seriously if you do not do a lot of non-fiction book reading, start doing some more. A list of books any
Is anyone out there successfully juggling running a company and studying at the same time? How do you juggle the two without hampering either due to lack of the right amount of attention?
Well, I've done it, and I work with a lot of engineering students that are doing it now. It's not easy. In my case, it nearly cost me my education, my company, and my state of mind. Now I help others avoid running into the same situation.
The problem isn't the hours or the motivation - it's not really a problem of juggling. It's the fact that you've made a commitment to your business, and now you're making a new commitment to your education. When the day comes - and it will come - when you need to pick one or the other, figure out now how you'll choose. A day will come when the business needs you and an exam is coming up. Will you let your staff solve the crisis without your intervention, or will you blow off the exam. Regardless of what you choose, you need to be okay with your choice the next day. These are things to figure out now. If you do this, and stick to it, you'll probably be okay. Juggling implies that you can run and do one, then run and do the other. You *will* hit a day that you can only do one and not the other. Be ready for that day.
If your business doesn't require you to have the degree (that is, you're getting the degree for you) then make the business your first priority. That'll mean that you fail an exam or a class here and there. Be prepared for that, and be okay with that. If you aren't, you'll find yourself overtaxing yourself and the result often is that you fail to meet any of your commitments.
This advise is pretty flexible. Got a family? Care about them? That's your commitment. They win over school as well.
It works in reverse. Got a commitment to Everquest? You have to choose between being a kick-ass Everquester or a person with a degree. At top universities about 15% of students stick to their gaming commitment and get kicked out. Trust me, I do it all the time. We work with students with jobs and families and medical conditions to help them through. The students that refuse to treat their addictions, we cut them loose. Sorry to say, but we don't want to be a $30k/yr gaming club.
Last bit of advice. Don't focus on Princeton or Stanford or MIT. They're not geared towards flexibility. That't not to say it can't be done, but it's much harder. Look for a large, state university that's got a strong continuing education program. You won't get the top school cache (which really doesn't matter anyway) but you'll get a good solid education. They'll be more understanding of your competing commitments, they'll have better course schedules (evening classes, etc.) and they'll have more frequent offerings of courses so you can stay on track.
Good luck.