[Keeping It Gimple]

Originally Posted by Gulasch Noir

Facing your statements about networking, I realize it's not that of a big issue where I live. It has it's relevance, but not to the described extent. My luck, because, I'm not a great networker. On the other side, I know it is beneficial, so maybe I should start becoming one.

for small jobs - like average person mcdonalds jobs - you dont need contacts. for anything above the scale you pretty much do.

understand i am not saying this to be some professional careerist guy. i'm simply saying it because its a fact.

when these jobs become available, they don't want joe nobody off the street. they want someone their friends know and trust. they want someone they can find stuff out about before the interview. they don't want to have to interview strangers, because these strangers can sue them for discrimination if they don't get hired. they are really, really cautious about all this stuff.

so it really is about contacts. and you can't just go out and "make" them like that. most of them time you either have them in your family or your close friends or something. they are either there or not.

there is little advice anyone can really give. all i would say is don't be too proud and plan ahead.

[knox]

if not, you can always suck cock. i've seen it work.

[knox]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiTY0vEd7oI

[Keeping It Gimple]

Originally Posted by knox

you can "make" the contacts.
they offer "networking" courses in most universities now.
if not, you can always suck cock. i've seen it work.

but does that really work?

are all the contacts not just other networkers who don't know anyone?

but yeah the other thing works too.

it worked for john lennon. he was just a nobody before yoko.

[knox]

it does work.

yoko is a goddess.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by knox

Right now, I would say to anyone thinking that going to university is the way to go to get a career and get a well paid job that they're getting themselves in debt for no reason with unrealistic expectations. If money is what they're after, they better invest in starting a business and stop dumbing down classes. Most of my friends who never finished university make the same or more than I do. Usually more, with no debt to pay off. Anyway, if you want to learn something or have some sort of specific career it's unavoidable. It is a lot of fun tho.

I don't know. I went to university with a boy who spent the entire time sniffing glue out of a sock and now he has a high paid job.

I imagine the situation is slightly different where you are, but just a little point on this: something that distresses me no end about uni is how narrowly its value is defined. Something like business studies is generally considered a directly vocational job which translates to a useful and economically viable knowledge/ skill set, but all the high-up business types I've worked with in the past preferred people to have experience. The other side (my side) - arts and humanities - are struggling to define themselves as useful in the economic world because you don't go directly from studying, say, medieval texts to working in the city. These things can be defined by economic values and skillsets (my philosophy degree was indispensable for my old career in IT) but the general value of uni is much more discrete, and often only really applies to the given individual.

Stewart Lee, around the time of the student protests, pointed out an old Thatcher thing where she said to someone studying historical Nordic (or similar) 'what a luxury' - and that's the reduction of uni that worries me. As if knowing some stuff about some stuff is somehow a vainglorious indulgence. Now - the big problem with that, as anyone who's been to uni will agree - is that there are a lot of people treating it like a free ride, a few years away from the 'real world'. So I tend to speak ideologically when I say it's a general good for people to go to uni and learn about stuff. I have minimal sympathy with the 'you can teach it yourself' - while on the one hand I've taught myself enough music theory to pass at about a masters level (I'd guess), on the other there are so many things in my other studies that I simply wouldn't have
come across were it not for the academic environment - and more importantly, coming across people who challenged and interrogated my ideas made for a broader understanding.

[/10 pence].

[knox]

That's kind of what I mean.

University is not practical, it's not somewhere you go to acquire skills for the job market.
They have plenty of technical courses that are incredibly cheaper and will get people employed in no time. If that's what they're looking for, a career and employment, I'd say it's a much better idea.

One of my friends left university and spent two years trying to get a decent job. He signed up for a week learning IT shit and got himself a high paid job in two weeks. Supply and demand. The business studies people are treating university like a technical course, when it should be an academic environment where knowledge is preserved and researched?

The problem starts when a BA becomes a requirement for ANY kind of job. So people who don't even want to study see themselves forced to go to university and get in debt, and it usually doesn't pay off. Not only that but these are people who think not going is not even a choice, and to be frank just steal everyone's time and dumb down the entire thing for those who actually wanna learn.

People are treating it like a free ride, and you often hear people say "I'll study humanities because it's easier". That isn't fair on us, the minority who actually give a shit about what we would supposedly learn.

I've finally learnt that a degree means nothing without the right experience and contacts. It's just kind of a requirement.

But when it becomes a requirement for working in telemarketing you just see all these really shit institutions who will accept anyone willing to sign their name and pay the tuition fees. And that means a degree will mean even less.

[Keeping It Gimple]

i've often remarked how utterly obvious it is to me now that had i continued at school and gone to uni i would have done nothing but fuck about and smoke weed until i dropped out.

of course, after a few years living on your own in real poverty, your attitude changes and now if i was to go i would be studying and telling the partiers to stfu and gtfo.

really, for people who have never been separated from their parents, uni must be like daycare. people who fundamentally don't understand what looking after yourself means. what not having money so not eating actually means. how do you expect people like this to appreciate uni? no wonder half of them just fuck about and abuse it.

some of these people have never before been in a situation where mummy and daddy weren't there with their warm home, money, food, washing machine, etc.

[knox]

Lol. I lived with my parents when I went to University.
It was close enough and I hate people.

[Gulasch Noir]

I have been/am a disciplined student. So are my friends. Most of them were studying "humanities" or "cultural sciences" (communications sciences, sociology, dramatics). None of them would have the job they have now without having the degree.

I got my current job without a single contact and the only two reasons I got it are a) my law degree und b) my job interview. I'm a juristic editor (?), a law degree was a requirement. Same goes for my good friend, who is a clinic psychologist. I think it's clear that it depends on the job you have. Altough I concur contacts are essential, if you want to climb the ladder of success and go for a job with more responsibility and cash for example. When I think about it, networking isn't a bad thing - never too late to start.

If you're studying historic nordic, you are well advised to realize that the demand is pretty low and you'd have to outstand in one respect or another to actually be able to survive in the historic nordic job market. But I'm glad you can study it. Also if it's "just for fun".

[knox]

Like I said, a degree might be a requirement in many cases. A degree in what exactly might not make as much of a difference as your skills, contacts and previous experience.

[EVOLghost]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Gimple

some of these people have never before been in a situation where mummy and daddy weren't there with their warm home, money, food, washing machine, etc.

yup. I've always commuted and I am now.I moved (only to the other side of the city) for schol last semester and I coldn't stand working to live and goin' to school. I'm a wuss.

[Gulasch Noir]

Is anyone studying divinity to become a priest?

[Keeping It Gimple]

glice is studying divinity to be(cum)e (in) a priest (little boy)

[Glice]

In case anyone wants to know anything about that, I have a MA Theology but have no intention of keeping Theology as a research focus, for a variety of reasons that are pretty boring.

[Keeping It Gimple]

unlike your dissertation tho, that shit's fuckin riveting.

[Keeping It Gimple]

i read it to god to lull him into a trance while i was removing my knife from its sheath.

i used the pages as kindling to help burn the fire to turn his decaying corpse into mere dust.

did you know once there's none of his corpse left you christians all have a nervous breakdown and start crashing your cars and cutting your own throats and shit? it's true.

etc.

[Glice]

Oh yawn. You're not into Theology, so it was bound to be boring. I told you this before you insisted several times that you wanted to read it. Dissertations are nearly always boring. Most of academia is inherently boring from a reader's perspective. You probably don't realise this because you tend to read the stuff that's for a more commercial audience. That isn't invalidating the rigour or veracity of the stuff you read, but a simple plain comment that most of the day-to-day, bog-standard academic work is difficult to read if the reader doesn't have a vested interest. I can't put that more plainly. Buy a subscription to JSTOR if you want to see how life-sappingly dull the majority of below-the-surface academic work is. Or you could ask any of the people on SYG who've been beyond BA level. Or have a look at any PhD papers you can get your hands on in subjects you're not interested in - dull-as-piss, I guarantee you.

If you want to continue trying to get a rise out of me, carry on though. Because it really is hil-a-rious.

Oh, and by the way - I'd like to see a substantial writing of yours. Because it's really easy to criticise other people from the perspective of someone who has apparently never produced anything of more substantive merit than picking easy holes in faceless people on the internet. I'll even be decent and forget your drug-addled blog of hysterical, badly-written nonsense.

[Keeping It Gimple]

if you had anything to say, you'd say it.

you don't, thus you produce pointless wankery, deliberate obscurantism. you don't want anyone to be able to get it, because that would rob you of your meaningless ego centric speciality.

guys like you are essentially window shopping hipsters who move references around in order to say nothing. its a purely aesthetic display. like flower arranging. these people just get stuck like that in their mid 20's and then they are fucked, they will never escape. they hit a certain plateau and madness awaited beyond it so they doubled back on their tracks and are just going around in circles. i dont blame them. but its not a good thing.

the people that actually have something to say are already saying it, and it's free. that's because it's written for the purpose of affecting the world, not retreating from it. it needs to be understood, because it is trying to transmit a meaning.

fuck jsotr for suing the guy who released their archives for free.

i'd say that i hoped the tory cuts lost you your job but it's probably worse for you to just be allowed to continue drawing your circles.

and dont pretend i'm trying to get a rise out of you you narcissist. i don't care that much. you are your own reward.

[Glice]

Right you are dear.