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judging by the way posts are thrown up on here, there seems to be quite a few intelligent fellows that post. i must admit some of the words you use i have to look up.
i left school at 16 with absolute zilch qualifications, still type with one hand, but i've got through life.....and something in common with you lot, support qpr.
would love to know what qualifications you lot have got, o levels, degrees, bachelors of whatever.
IMO qualifications are overrated when judging how smart people are. Some of the dumbest people I’ve met are those with the highest “qualifications” you can get like PhDs, they are so impractical I wonder how they survive (I meet quite a few of them in my job). For me its about being interested in stuff, reading, watching videos, maybe doing the odd evening class and then trying out what you learn. Personally I have a uni degree but almost never use what I learnt there, the “school of life” taught me much more useful stuff.
8 O levels 1 A 6Bs 1 C ( and 1 E(a fail)) 3 A levels ACC BEng (Hons)
...but could not agree more with bongo. They prove I could apply myself through school and the next fes years. I had a very stable happy comfortable childhood. Not rich by any stretch, but happy, secure and encouraged to learn.
Throughout my career as an Engineer, many of the good ones came through vocational on the job training and people who got degrees later in life. A good team takes all sorts from all sorts of backgrounds in my experience. You can also stay in Academia too long...
Got a few O levels, did art and economics at A level, got the drawing one, failed the other. Dental science at college in Tooley Street, Bermondsey; now a graduate at the city of you porn university.
One of those isn’t true.
I did Geography and Music at A level. Music A level is to this day, the hardest thing I have ever done.
I have 11 GCSE's (took mine in 2005), 2 A Levels and 2 AS Levels. I went to Uni but dropped out after a year (wasn't for me) but I am a qualified accountant now with FCCA status (Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants...sounds grand but basically means I kept up with my CPD for 5 years after qualifying).
My GCSE's and A Levels I see as pretty irrelevant these days, its the FCCA and work experience I have that's got me to where I currently am in my working life.
That said I am utterly useless at practical things which really I'd like to actually know a bit more on so when I need stuff doing in the house I can have a crack myself. We've just had a load of building work done on the house including re-pointing and re-bedding of roof tiles and roof bricks. I wish I knew, and had the confidence, to have a crack at some of these things myself. That said he's done it to a much better standard than I would have been able to even if I could do it so swings and roundabouts.
IMO qualifications are overrated when judging how smart people are. Some of the dumbest people I’ve met are those with the highest “qualifications” you can get like PhDs, they are so impractical I wonder how they survive (I meet quite a few of them in my job). For me its about being interested in stuff, reading, watching videos, maybe doing the odd evening class and then trying out what you learn. Personally I have a uni degree but almost never use what I learnt there, the “school of life” taught me much more useful stuff.
In my own personal experience I can relate to this post. I couldn't get out of school quick enough and I ran out of the school gates for the last time at about 100 MPH at the age of 16, my only qualifications were I could read and write enough to get by and do a bit of adding up. First job was as a tea boy on a building site and pretty damn quickly I learnt how to watch tradesmen , how they done things, how they planned things and all the time I would listen to them and learn and try things out myself when they let me.
I retired a few years ago as a Construction site Manager having spent close to 40 years with the same National Construction Company.
I watched people at work, I aked them questions, I learnt my profession that way, If I didn't know something 'tricky' I'd ask.
Yep I done okay.
My Father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic.
8 O levels 1 A 6Bs 1 C ( and 1 E(a fail)) 3 A levels ACC BEng (Hons)
...but could not agree more with bongo. They prove I could apply myself through school and the next fes years. I had a very stable happy comfortable childhood. Not rich by any stretch, but happy, secure and encouraged to learn.
Throughout my career as an Engineer, many of the good ones came through vocational on the job training and people who got degrees later in life. A good team takes all sorts from all sorts of backgrounds in my experience. You can also stay in Academia too long...
Sounds like I have a similar education to you and I agree completely. A lot of the better engineers I've worked on the drawing board then worked towards a degree or diploma. The younger generations (myself included) get dumped into work without the practical knowledge of the industry and have to pick it up as they go. I like to hire people who seem to be more hands on as they're more likely to consider buildabilty in my experience but appreciate that a range of knowledge and experience is important within a team.
Left school in 92 with 2 GCSEs at C grade. Worked bloody hard from the bottom until I earned a bloody load of money! Never went to Uni, but didnt let it hold me back.
Left school with one 'O' level in 1965. Eventually scraped enough to go to Art College a couple of years later. After working as a Graphic Designer for 20+ years I kinda fell into teaching. At that point I figured I needed some sort of qualification, so got an MA followed by a PhD. It's kind of ironic, given my pathetic school record, that my doctorate is in education.
Left school with one 'O' level in 1965. Eventually scraped enough to go to Art College a couple of years later. After working as a Graphic Designer for 20+ years I kinda fell into teaching. At that point I figured I needed some sort of qualification, so got an MA followed by a PhD. It's kind of ironic, given my pathetic school record, that my doctorate is in education.
I know how you feel. Struggled through school and had to do the leaving certificate (HSC in Oz) twice, failing English at the lowest both times. Ended up getting a BA in IT and worked that until I was packaged out in '14. Got involved in the history of local football and ended up doing a MPhil on a football tour of Oz and a few years later started, and eventually completed, a PhD in History. Now I'm just retired and follow some team called QPR.
I was very bright up until about 15 but lost interest in school pretty quickly. Got through some tough A Levels and uni seemed like the only option and was expected of me (parents didn’t go do A Levels let alone uni). As I liked the sound of Economics and I enjoyed but wasn’t very good at languages I did Econ with Spanish which got me an Erasmus year which I loved. Hated the Economics studies but did a dissertation I enjoyed on the Economics of lower league football. Nowadays I read a lot about behavioural Economics and wish I’d gone down that route a bit more but don’t really regret any of it. Lots of my peers have gone on to make £££ in banking etc. but I don’t think I’d have enjoyed it and I’m lucky that I make enough and have a great work-life balance compared to had I done that.
IMO qualifications are overrated when judging how smart people are. Some of the dumbest people I’ve met are those with the highest “qualifications” you can get like PhDs, they are so impractical I wonder how they survive (I meet quite a few of them in my job). For me its about being interested in stuff, reading, watching videos, maybe doing the odd evening class and then trying out what you learn. Personally I have a uni degree but almost never use what I learnt there, the “school of life” taught me much more useful stuff.
I think there's room for both, but society definitely undervalues more "intrinsic" smarts.
At uni I was struggling with an outside module I was doing in politics. My seminar class was full of all these privately educated guys who just debated and debated and seemed to know everything.
I was summoned to see the supervisor, who was like "your essays are great but you never say a word in class", so I explained how I felt.
"Robert, when it comes to that class you're in....the emptiest vessel makes the loudest noise when struck"
Advice that's really stuck with me into work. Working in advertising, there's a lot of extroverted noise machines, so I consider my words hard to ensure when I speak it's succinct and doesn't require repeating
I did incredibly well at school, they were constantly pestering to me to apply to Oxbridge (I think we'd had like 3 students ever go there so would like good on the new parents evenings).
I then went to an incredible uni, where no matter how hard I tried, my work just wasn't deemed 1st quality (I lost track of how many times I came up 1 mark short), so then coasted through my final year to a 2:1, which was probably the single worst life lesson I ever learnt. Took me about 6 years to get it out of my system
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