What are you studying?

[Viin]

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.

[Selby]

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.

[veredus]

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.

[Viin]

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 ?

[Bunk]

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..

[Bzalthek]

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.

[Fargull]

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.

[Logain]

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.

[K9]

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.

[Nebu]

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

[schild]

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

Weird, I loved being a turtle.

[lamaros]

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.

[Johny Cee]

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.

We need more dirty accountants on this board. 

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.

[Quinton]

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...

[apocrypha]

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 :/

[NiX]

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..

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.

[apocrypha]

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.

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.

[Signe]

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

[Sky]

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

[Nebu]

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.

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!

[DeathInABottle]

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.

[Selby]

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!

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.

[MrHat]

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.

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. 

[Nebu]

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.

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.

[Der Helm]

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...  

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

[Morat20]

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.

[Sky]

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.

[MrHat]

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.

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.

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".

[Logain]

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.

We need more dirty accountants on this board. 

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.

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.

[Samwise]

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.

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.

[Zar]

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.

[Raging Turtle]

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 

[Hindenburg]

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

[Signe]

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

[Hindenburg]

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