f13.net

I know a lot of folks are in school, and I thought it'd be cool to find out what everyone is studying, where, and what you plan to do after you graduate.


I just started school again at Regis University (a Jesuit university) here in Denver, going for my BS in Computer Info Systems.

Only have about 2 years left since my on-off-on-off again from my previous school. Regis has a great 'working adult' program where classes are all accelerated at 5-8 weeks and you typically only take 1 or 2 at a time, with classes in the evenings or weekends.

After my BS I plan to get my MBA, probably also at Regis. How this will affect work/job, no idea.

The only thing left for me to do school-wise is go the PhD route.  I'd have to find a professor willing to sponsor me, get accepted at their university, and then re-learn how to study and take tests all over again (tires me out just thinking about it).  Would be neat, electrical engineering or higher level math.  Not sure it would make a bit of difference in getting a job though.

Polysomnography right now. Then when done going to do respiratory care. Plan on going to school for RC degree while working as a polysom tech.

From Wikipedia:

Polysomnography or PSG is a multi-parametric test used in the study of sleep and as a diagnostic tool in sleep medicine. The test result is called a polysomnogram, also abbreviated PSG.

Interesting. Is this undergraduate work or self study or ?

Organizational Behaviour - two weeks left before the final. Taking a business course at my age has taught me something - 90% of kids right out of highschool do not have the slightest clue how to speak in front of a room full of people, or give a presentation..

Math major.  I'm finishing up Cal3 and will be taking Diff. Equations and Linear Algebra in the Fall.  Would like to teach college math, at the college algebra / pre cal level, but I'm working for some high school teaching first, because that shit only requires a Bachelors.

My wife is going to get her Masters in Educational Administration so she can move up to Principle (or open a Charter School as she hopes) in a few years and I will be going to either get my Masters in English or in Library science.  Have not honestly figured out which I would prefer to do.

Officially 3 weeks left until I graduate with my BS in Accounting & Information Management, going to University of Texas at Dallas. Next fall I plan to continue on and get my master's in finance.

BSc in Biology, MSc in Bioinformatics, now doing a PhD in Bioinformatics, specifically investigating the evolution and population genetic structure of bacteria, particularly ones causing infectious disease. Have another 3 years of sitting in my office eating cake, reading papers and making models of organism dynamics and loving every bit of it so far.

You guys make me want to go back to school.  God, I loved being a student.

Weird, I loved being a turtle.

Doing honours year in English at the moment, doing my minor thesis on the construction of identity in the letters of Malcolm Lowry. No desire to go on to further study after it. Currently applying for grad postions in government actually, though not sure if I want to do that either. But there's not a whole lot of options for people who are interested in policy or commentary outside of government (it's pretty much government, academic, private thinktanks as far as I can tell), especially straight out of school, and journalism or more administrative jobs are death.

We need more dirty accountants on this board.  :oh_i_see:

Honestly, I'm not sure if there's a more recession proof job out there.  The tax code isn't getting any simpler, and auditing (both financial and fraud) keeps getting more time intensive.

Taking a break at the moment, but lately I've been doing a bunch of mucking about with scheme and reading up on lisp/scheme compiler/runtime design.  Just because -- I've never done any "real" projects with scheme, but find it somewhat fascinating and am toying with building a lightweight JIT-compiled environment for ARM based embedded systems.

My day job and Demon's Souls have gotten in the way of this recently...

Hoping to be fit enough to do the 2nd year of a Photography A level starting in September. Only part-time and using it really as a portfolio builder and for teaching myself how to photograph subjects not of my choosing.

Will be odd though, I'll be a 40-yead old in a class of mostly 18-year olds. Doing the first year also gave me quite an insight into the shitty state of education in the UK now. I knew it was getting bad in universities but the HE colleges... wow... they really are crap now :/

You got it, they also feel entitled to marks if they do work. Even if the work is completely and utterly wrong. They type up reports using chat style typing, don't use spellcheck and complain that "no one will care how I write." Keep in mind I'm in a business program.

On that note, Business Administration - Human Resources. Final semester. Wish I knew what I was doing after I graduate.

Yeah I've seen this a lot too. The ability of the teenagers on my course to write coherent English with decent grammar and spelling is abysmal. The education system here is turning out kids who simply can't write, have almost nonexistant maths skills, very little personal confidence (which contributes greatly to the inability to give public presentations) and, surprisingly, awful IT skills too. Of course these are mostly kids from poor backgrounds - the rich kids can afford to go to university, but even when I worked at Leeds Uni I was continually shocked by the poor skills of postgrads I was training.

Couple this with the almost complete lack of remedial support made available by the college, the overworked, underpaid and extremely demoralised staff and you have a recipe for some serious skill shortages here. Not good when you're in the midst of the worst global recession, well, ever.

Instead of getting PhDs in math and philosophy from Harvard, I've decided to go back to the convent and finish my nun degree.

I'm studying guitar. About twenty-five years, on and off.

I'm teaching freshmen this semester after having taught MD and PharmD students for the past 6 years.  It's pretty sad to see how poorly prepared most college freshmen are these days.  Most of them can't do simple algebra (isolating one variable).  You can be sure that they all expect to get A's without ever studying though...

I have many asking me for extra credit.  Extra credit?  In college?  You have to be kidding me!

PhD in political science and cultural studies, working on technology in a broad sense, using Facebook and 4chan as case studies.  That's the idea, anyway.  I'm more interested in the philosophical background (Heidegger, Derrida, and Stiegler especially) than the "material" side of things.

I suspect that the only thing that I'll be able to do with this is teach, and jobs in the academy get harder and harder to find.  It's incredibly tempting to quit and take up computer science or law.

That was my experience my first semester in college.  I was forced to take calc1 again because the computer science department deemed it "considerably more complicated than the same course you already took last year."  So I wound up in calc1 and was essentially sleeping through class and knew all of the material right off without issue, while the sheer amount of students complaining about how unfair the TA was, how hard it was to get up for a 9AM class, and why there wasn't any extra credit was ridiculous.  First year chemistry was the same way, 600 students in the class (4 total classes that semester) and maybe half made it to the end (lots of failures too).  And all you had to do was show up, do your homework, and take tests.

I had to take a natural sciences course in my 2nd to last semester as an undergrad (doing 2 bachelors in 4 years) and was surprised at the complaining and whining that went on in an secondary level geology class too.  The instructor pointed me out and used me as an example of how the material isn't unreasonable since I was doing it *and* getting A's *and* wasn't even a physical sciences major so it's not like this was a passion or interest to me.  And lots of bitching about extra credit not being offered.

Law might be a very good fit.


Speaking of which, I was going to attend Law School part time in the fall, but funding fell through in our Graduate studies program, no money - no school.

So I'm thinking about enrolling myself in a couple of 'life betterment' classes: spanish, french, arabic, maybe salsa.  Trying to fire some new connections in my brain. 

Don't let money be your determining factor.  You're your own best investment.  If you want a JD to pursue a career that will make you happier, then do it.  You can always borrow.

I am working on a teaching degree for English and History.

During my studies I try to focus on antique history and English Literature of the Middle and Early Modern English period. Also linguistic studies. Love 'em.

The fact that we are trying to emulate the bachelor/master degrees of other countries fucks with that goal though. Using a system that got developed over a few decades was not good enough for our glorious leaders...  :uhrr:

This term I will attend classes about Chaucer and Shakespeare with a focus on linguistic studies.  :awesome_for_real:

Um, just turned in my thesis for my Computer Science Master's -- currently waiting for the rest of the committee to kick the tires on it and bitch about it, and force me to make weeks worth of changes in like...three days.

My wife's got about a year left in her Master's (Education, specialization in teaching writing in a cross-curriculm manner) and is planning to immediately start a doctorate. Mostly, in her words, so she can use the hefty weight of her titles to shut other teachers up and let her do it her way. My wife would use a degree like a bludgeon. :)

I'm taking at least a year off, but then considering getting another bacherlor's in Math. I don't see taking the doctorate route with Computer Science, at least not at the moment.

In the interim, I continue my job with a NASA contractor.

If it weren't for all the undergraduate crap, I'd really like to go back to school for a law degree. And growing a debt I'd never be able to repay.

But if there is a big push for higher ed stimulus in the near future, I'd definitely consider it.

Then I'd get into politics.

It was less "I want this to be my career path" and more "if they're going to pay for it, I might as well get a JD".

This was the main motivation for me switching from CS to accounting. Job prospects seemed much more stable. My dad is the director of internal audit at Belo Corp. and he's got extensive connections at all the major firms here in DFW(nepotism FTW) so hopefully I can get into public accounting and audit work pretty easily once I get my CPA cert.

Scheme is my very favorite language that I would probably never write a real app in.  It's used for the intro-level CS courses at UCB, and is a really fantastic language for introducing students to a lot of programming concepts very quickly without having to learn a lot of arcane syntax to express them.

I graduated a year and a half ago from undergrad with a B.A. in English Literature.  After taking this year off from school, I'll be going to law school in the fall, with the goal of working in environmental law.

I've been taking Spanish classes for quite a while now and I hope to start Russian in the next week or three.

Having a "full-time job" that only takes 25 or 30 hours a week is pretty damn nice  :awesome_for_real:

Why are so many of you interested in law? Get off my cash cow!

Yeah, but aren't you a lawyer in some mythical country or something, Itto? 

Good sir, one can always have unrestricted and completely unrealistic ambitions.

:-D  I know the feeling.

Medtech type job. Hook you up to the machines and watch you sleep all night. I am actually just doing a cert program at the local community college. Only three quarters long and since being laid off her shortly the speed of the program + it being interesting is a good combo. Just finished my first quarter of school which were my prereqs to get into the program. Weird experience (but loved it actually) since I'm 30 years old and never went to college other then running start in high school.

I'm working my way toward a MA in Computational Linguistics.  Right now, I'm taking the math and the programming courses I need to qualify.  Prior to starting this, I hadn't taken a math course for 16 years! 

Barring being accepted into that, I'll likely do an undergrad in CS, or I'm considering math.  Math is cool.  Math is sexay.   :thumbs_up:

(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/computational_linguists.png)

CompLing seems to have worked well for Goog

Thirty marks of our group project were for spelling and grammar. As in, she would remove one of those thirty for every mistake. She implemented this after recieving too many reports that looked like they'd been texted in from a mobile.

This is a year one course, generaly considered a gimme course. I scored an A- on the first midterm with about four hours of studying. Over 40% of the fucking class failed the first midterm.

I'm in my last semester at the university of utah as a philosophy major.  I went to school simply because of my parents in the first place, and honestly, it was almost entirely a huge waste of time.  Partially my own fault for wasting a few years failing classes as an retarded alcoholic.  But I guess I'll have a degree.  A useless degree with a terrible GPA.  But a degree nonetheless.

That said, philosophy has been enlightening at times.  Everyone should read Plato and Aristotle at some point in their lives.  They may not have the answers, but the questions they ask are pretty huge, meaning of life type stuff.  All of philosophy is a footnote to Plato.

I plan on continuing my current illustrious career post graduation.  That is, playing poker for a living.

If anyone has any ideas on what to do with a philosophy degree with no connections whatsoever, let me know!

Graduated in 08 with Greek and Latin BA. I am getting a pointless certificate right now that says I spent the last year doing the same thing as undergrad but with less financial support.  Next year, I am going to graduate school to get my M.A. in Lit.

Basically, what I hope to do through understanding Greek and Latin is apply disability theory (or make up theory) to how the Greeks and Romans perceived and wrote about disabilities in their literature.

I am a horribly anti-social and introverted person.  However, for group projects, I take the lead.  I want to make sure what the teacher gets comes directly from me after I've had time to strip out the stupid and the retard.

In high school, on every group project, I did _everything_. Thank god there were no presentations. Relying on other people that you have no say in involving yourself with sucks. I can work on a capable team just fine. I did so many times in college. But high school? No way, it was my way or the highway. Also, I got As. Every goddamn time. And so did they. I don't think I got thanks once, except from one person - who happened to be my best friend and I wanted him to get an A. God, people are just unreliable.

Awesome!  That solidifies it!  If it's mocked in xkcd, it's ok with me! :) 

It'll be just like those "Russian?  Why are you studying Russian?  That language is going to die soon!" and "Linguistics?  What's that?  Are you one of those people who is trying to make Ebonics a real language?" questions I fielded throughout undergrad!

An update on the amount of progress I have made on my PhD dissertation after passing my comps a year and a half ago:  ummmmm, nil.

<------Orthodontist.

Don't plan on doing any "studying" any time soon :grin: after having spent 11 years after college getting here.

I'm considering taking classes again. Mainly because my employer offers tuition support and my wife's job (college professor) lowers tuition for me. It's essentially going to be close to free and I can pick and choose things.

I am considering courses toward a business degree, but that is countered by me not wanting to deal with the stupid that is college again. Not the kids in the classes, my gray hair will ensure that they avoid me; but professors with agendas that have nothing to do with learning the subject. I didn't do well with them as a young man and am much more cranky these days.  :grin:

Can you only take business/skills oriented classes or do you have a broader scope? If you can do pretty much anything, why not just take something you enjoy and learn more about it?

I have to be able to show that they are tangentally related to my work for tuition reimbursement; same as anywhere.

I don't see that as a huge problem. I could use another run through a technical writing course just to get the chops back up; etc.

Plus, if I want to study anthropology and can't justify it, my wife's employment makes it cheap enough for out of pocket if I save smart.

It's a good thing.

AS, BS, MS in Computer Science.  My master's thesis was a game. 

I have been toying with going back to school for about 3 years now. Problem is I don't want to finish my M.F.A, as I don't plan on ever going back into the scenery building business, so anything I would be interested in would effectively require starting over from scratch in a new bachelor's program. Yay for 15k in loans for 1/3 of a degree I will never finish.

Right now I can't afford the extra debt load, so it will probably stay put off until at least the spring.

I go to law school in my hometown, just trying to get a BA and see where it takes me, but most likely taking the extra two years for an MA. Will try to avoid becoming a future bloodsucker. It really is one of those things you go to study if you're unsure what you like. So far I've gotten the basics thrown at me about sociology, philosophy, ancient history, psychology, economics and linguistics. Actual legal subjects have only touched the surface mostly, but I have one course right now which basically talks about violence and violent behavior. Pretty awesome.

The most interesting thing about it is how I got into university in the first place, so this is more of a "Cool story, bro." from here on. When I was in high school the part geek in me got me sent to different state-wide science competitions, but somehow I managed to make it to the national Finnish language competition. Twice. First year I just got to know what it was like and I had no chance of beating the older kids who at one part lived in Finland or had Finnish parents. My biggest weakness was that I had no ability to actually speak the language, not having any Finnish friends or relatives. Hell, I knew as much as I did from watching a lot of Finnish TV and studying the language for a year.

Next year a Finnish guy I had met in an MMO (saved his Dark Shield from looters once) tells me he's coming to visit my town and he would like to meet me along with his friend, who happened to be a foreign exchange student and staying very close to where I live. We become friends and the exchange student agrees to occasionally get together on weekends to help me learn to speak this strange "orcish" language - this means grabbing some drinks and staying up late in a dorm room talking about whatever. Time passes and I take part in the language competition again. Thanks to spending time with my new finnish friend I ace the verbal part of the test and beat some girl with a Finnish surname by two points, coming in first. Since the whole thing was held by the top university in my country it lands me a full scholarship if I had decided to study there, which I did.

After that I've always valued every person I've gotten to know online and sigh a little when people claim video games are useless wastes of time.

About to finish my BSc in Physics. Applied for MScs in all sorts of random environmental and sustainable stuff.

I'm in my second attempt at a Bachelor's degree.  First time, I went to a small liberal arts school in central New York (Colgate) on a full academic scholarship.  I was very indifferent towards classes, changed my major about 6 times in a year and a half.  Got really poor grades.  I went off to Colorado for a break that was supposed to last a semester and a Summer, ended up staying for 10 years.  After working a ton, and having some good times, I finally decided I wanted something different, and that I needed to go back to school.  My Mother had a stroke, and my Father was planning to retire, so I moved back to my hometown.

I'm Hoping to finish BSc in Biomedical Science at the University of Buffalo in about 3 more semesters.  I'm actually enjoying school now a lot more than I did 10 plus years ago.  Then, the plan is to move to Texas, establish residency, and apply to Med Schools, taking advantage of their Academic Fresh Start Program.  It lets you drop grades/ credits that are more than 10 years old in applying for programs.  It's basically the only feasible chance I have to get into an M.D. program with my earlier shitty academic record.  If that doesn't work out, maybe apply to Master's, PhD, or possibly PharmD programs.

Yeah, I'd be 35 -starting- medical school, but there are always a few older med students, and even if I take 10 years to graduate and finish a residency, that's still 20 plus years of practicing.  Not having a wife or kids (thank God) makes this doable.

I was studying for my Masters in Accounting. Now, I'm studying the CPA exam sections.

As long as you enjoy what you're doing, when you start it doesn't matter.

I dropped my Ph.D. candidacy to go back for a second Bachelor's when I was 25.  It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

I've granted admission to many people just like you that ended up being at or near the top of their respective classes.  Maturity and experience matter. 

Advice: Don't screw up the MCAT. 

Yeah.  I take tests reasonably well, and I'm planning on taking it in my "year off" from school while getting Texas residency.  I'm aiming to have a 3.6- 3.8 GPA in my new 90- 100 hours of coursework.  If I had to count all my old grades, I'd be looking at below a 3.0.

I may speak to some admissions committee members here in New York next year to see what my chances are -here-, given my "upward trend", but I have a feeling the old grades are going to hurt me too much.

I've researched this pretty thoroughly, and Texas is the only state that has a program like this.  It's part of their using the TMDSAS, versus the AMCAS for admissions.

They won't if you have a) good MCAT scores, particularly verbal and b) some healthcare experience.  The last 2-3 years are the most important in the admissions decision.  Being a state resident will help your odds immensely as well if the school is a state program.  If you've done well the most recent few years because of going part-time, that doesn't help.  It has to show a record of recent success in some tough classes (being at a good school helps).

Yay for forced random groups. I've had to suffer through 4 this semester alone. One of those groups I've had to deal with for 2 semesters straight. My teacher has to praise me in private because only 1 person out of my group of 6 has come to class in the past 5 weeks. She has no idea what's going on in the class and is really only there to ensure I can't peer evaluate her ass to a failing mark.

I'm very bitter about the post-secondary education system. I don't mind the cost, not in Canada at least, the Government has made it very accessible. Too accessible. And by subsidizing it, they've made it profitable for Universities/Colleges to let stupid people coast on through to a diploma/degree.

I'm hoping to hear good things, but not getting my hopes up.  I have about 100 credits at around a 2.0 average from 10+ years ago, and nothing since then until I returned to school last Fall.  I'm hoping the 90+ additional, new credits with a good GPA will outshine the old ones, but with the crazy numbers of applicants, and how many schools auto- decline by GPA based on AMCAS, I'm not very hopeful going that route.  I'm retaking all the pre- reqs, shooting for all A's, and taking some more advanced science classes.  My real test will be taking Orgo this Summer.  I plan to live for the class for 3 months.  I'm kind of apprehensive about doing it over the Summer, but I heard it's much better at my particular school that way.  But, I figure it's a good test for me.  If I can't do well in -one- intense, difficult class, I probably won't do too well in Med School.

In the UK over the last 8 years a whole bunch of new medical schools have been built running what they call Problem Based Learning courses, i.e. much more focussed on teaching medical students the skills needed to, effectively, teach themselves. This is as opposed to the old "rote learning" methods with a strong focus on packing huge amounts of information into their heads. One of the things that's come out of this is that mature students are doing much better at these courses and have been more strongly encouraged to apply than was previously the case.

When I was working at the Derby medical school there were a high proportion of over-40s in the first couple of intakes and they did very well on the PBL courses. They'll be entering actual medical practice by now so it'd be interesting to find out how they've done. My suspicion is that the maturer students will probably have coped with the junior doctor years very well, aided by their experience and confidence.

I'm 39 years old and embarking on a new career myself, so I know how daunting it can seem. Best of luck with it and remember that age is often a positive thing, not a handicap :)