A student’s learning
Last summer when teaching in Asia, Yue Kang, a student in my Software Engineering courses came to see me for advice. What surprised me was after a short conversation about software career planning, we spent over an hour talking about many things that he had learned and following is what he shared with me:
“In my country today, an educated person must have a college education and at least get a Bachelor's degree. For a wealthy family, they must get the degree from top universities as families are often comparing the education level of their children. Because there are many people who have a Bachelor's degrees, my father wants me to get at least a master degree or a doctorate degree. From the day I entered elementary school until now, my only education goal is to pass exams and get degrees. No one ever told me about the skills that I must learn or how to plan a career for my future until I took your class.”
“As college students, we all know about millions of unemployed graduates but my father always says: “Do not worry, just get a degree, and everything will be taking care of.” Since my father knows many important people, I never have to worry about getting a job. No one ever teaches me about what I can do for my life because everything is already planned for me, including my job, my career, and even my future wife, until I took your class where I learned about career planning.”
“The interesting thing about this arrangement is my father will take care of everything. Like many well-connected families in Beijing, their children only need to get a degree, the higher, the better, because everything is planned until I learn from your course that I need the skills to succeed in this competitive world because even the best plan many not work because things change as we are living in an uncertain world.”
“I agree with you about the need to develop an knowledge society, but what I am seeing today may not be what you taught us about “a knowledge society” because my country has many graduates with high degrees, but their knowledge is limited. Without appropriate skills, they will become bureaucrats than competent people. Many of my friends have grown up with the view that to be successful, they have to have high degrees, work in an office, then be a “leader.” In fact, most believe that advancing in a career means reaching the top positions and managing more people with a big title such as “Senior Manager” or “Executive.” I think our society needs to stop focusing on having a “degree” but valuing “skills and knowledge” because it is more practical and useful which will lead to real productivity. We need to stop assuming that success means having a certain type of job or title but meeting the needs of the society. We need to work hard base on our own talents to do things excellently, regardless of what type of works that we do.”
“I agree with what you said in your lecture a few days ago that if you can find a career that brings joy and happiness, then you are doing well. Even if you work as a manual labor that contributes to the society, you are doing just as well as the person who works in an office. There is no good job or bad job but good attitude and bad attitude about living. If you are wise enough to choose what you can do and cannot do in your career, you will not get frustrated because you know yourself.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
