Hello my fellow Escapists!
While reading through all the (more or less) interesting topics discussed in our precious forums, I was wondering what kind of background most people have here. A good way to measure this I think, is to see what kind off education you follow. My questions to you are: What kind of education are you following? What motivated you to pursue that specific subject? What are the most interesting subjects you find there? What do you plan to do after you graduated? If you are not following an education yet, please tell us what you plan to follow. If you are already finished, please consider contributing in retrospect.
Since the education systems are different throughout the world, it might be easy to define some basic terminology for the following discussion. I think it would be appropriate if we could mostly discuss college or university, since you cannot distinguish yourself a lot in previous educations (if you could, please say so and mention your direction). If your local educational system differs from the North American system, please give us a short description so we can compare.
Living in the Netherlands, our system differs a bit from the USA. Kinder garden and Primary education is from the age of ~5 to ~12, no real way to distinguish yourself.
Secondary education is from the age of ~12 to ~17, there are about 4 different levels of difficulty. Starting from the fourth year, you can choose a direction you would like to take (nature & technical, nature & health, economy & society, culture & society).
Depending on the secondary education you followed, you have three types of tertiary education you can follow: Vocational education (more focussed on a specific, mostly physical profession), college (more theoretical then the previous, focussed on professions with more mind-work), and university (quite scientific).
I myself am at my final year of college. I chose for the education corporate mathematics (freely translated). I have learned a lot of areas in mathematics, like quantitative mathematics, some spatial maths like geometry, various applications of calculus, foundational maths like various proofs and logics, discrete mathematics, and applied maths, with quite a lot of statistics and optimization methods.
Combined with this all, is a slight measure of programming in applications like Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), JAVA, Delphi, and MATLAB. There was also a bit of economics involved, though only basic (I think they may have misplaced the teacher).
I chose for this education for practical purposes: I was the only one in my class in secondary education with a liking for the art of math, drawing the conclusion that I may have a good chance of finding a job and making lots of money! I am really glad I chose to follow this path, since I learned a lot of interesting things. I am worried a bit for the future though.
I always planned to seek a job after I finished my education. Nowadays though, with the battered economy, that may not be so easy after all... I am thinking of following a masters degree at a university if I cannot find a job, which may take about three years in total. Fortunately as a student, I can take on a cheap and reliable loan, so I can survive during my studies. I am quite anxious to see what will happen. I will be glad with both scenarios, though I think I would prefer to work.
So, how about you? Please share your story!
Ps. the post came out a bit longer then expected, pleas forgive me for the long read
While reading through all the (more or less) interesting topics discussed in our precious forums, I was wondering what kind of background most people have here. A good way to measure this I think, is to see what kind off education you follow. My questions to you are: What kind of education are you following? What motivated you to pursue that specific subject? What are the most interesting subjects you find there? What do you plan to do after you graduated? If you are not following an education yet, please tell us what you plan to follow. If you are already finished, please consider contributing in retrospect.
Since the education systems are different throughout the world, it might be easy to define some basic terminology for the following discussion. I think it would be appropriate if we could mostly discuss college or university, since you cannot distinguish yourself a lot in previous educations (if you could, please say so and mention your direction). If your local educational system differs from the North American system, please give us a short description so we can compare.
Living in the Netherlands, our system differs a bit from the USA. Kinder garden and Primary education is from the age of ~5 to ~12, no real way to distinguish yourself.
Secondary education is from the age of ~12 to ~17, there are about 4 different levels of difficulty. Starting from the fourth year, you can choose a direction you would like to take (nature & technical, nature & health, economy & society, culture & society).
Depending on the secondary education you followed, you have three types of tertiary education you can follow: Vocational education (more focussed on a specific, mostly physical profession), college (more theoretical then the previous, focussed on professions with more mind-work), and university (quite scientific).
I myself am at my final year of college. I chose for the education corporate mathematics (freely translated). I have learned a lot of areas in mathematics, like quantitative mathematics, some spatial maths like geometry, various applications of calculus, foundational maths like various proofs and logics, discrete mathematics, and applied maths, with quite a lot of statistics and optimization methods.
Combined with this all, is a slight measure of programming in applications like Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), JAVA, Delphi, and MATLAB. There was also a bit of economics involved, though only basic (I think they may have misplaced the teacher).
I chose for this education for practical purposes: I was the only one in my class in secondary education with a liking for the art of math, drawing the conclusion that I may have a good chance of finding a job and making lots of money! I am really glad I chose to follow this path, since I learned a lot of interesting things. I am worried a bit for the future though.
I always planned to seek a job after I finished my education. Nowadays though, with the battered economy, that may not be so easy after all... I am thinking of following a masters degree at a university if I cannot find a job, which may take about three years in total. Fortunately as a student, I can take on a cheap and reliable loan, so I can survive during my studies. I am quite anxious to see what will happen. I will be glad with both scenarios, though I think I would prefer to work.
So, how about you? Please share your story!
Ps. the post came out a bit longer then expected, pleas forgive me for the long read
