Comments on: Developing Students for a Competitive Workplace, Request for Comment!

By: Park City Window Cleaning

Park City Window Cleaning — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:10:01 +0000

The stuff you learn in school versus the stuff you actually do to make money are often too very different things. Some things you have to learn by doing. I love the quote, 'All genuine learning is active, not passive. It is a process in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.” Web design, web programming, e-commerce, graphic design, these are skills that you just have to work at over time I think.

By: Robert Merrill

Robert Merrill — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 04:49:46 +0000

WOW. These are awesome comments. Here's a few others I am just noting here that came to me in other ways so I don't forget them. I asked Penelope Trunk of the Brazen Careerist what she thought and she sent over a few blog posts:

Talibanbarbie says she should have married better or gone to medical school. lol Another twitter friend said "be loyal to my family/ myself above all else, a corp 2nd. To never agree to be hired for less w/ promise of a future true-up" Other resources I found at EmployeeEvolution:

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:57:50 +0000

I wish they had taught me how to make money. The business classes taught us a lot about how to keep track of money and people who have made money, but we never were encouraged to go out and get our hands dirty and actually try to sell something. Had they taught me about that in high school, it would have saved me a lot of wasted time.

By: Colin Kingsbury

Colin Kingsbury — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:13:27 +0000

The biggest problems I’ve had with younger workers have nothing to do with technology or higher-level skills. Give them a good reason and these kids will inhale new skills and info at a phenomenal rate.

The most serious problems I’ve had, and the ones that have done the most to damage the potential of fresh grads and the like, are very basic things, like understanding the difference between getting a job 95% done, and 100% done, and learning that avoiding painful tasks now almost invariably means paying the bill later with interest.

Oh yeah, impulse control too. Of course, this affects an awful lot more than work, but it plays a HUGE role in short and long-term outcomes.

I’m not going to inject myself into the millennial brouhaha with this–I was a fresh grad not that long ago, and I certainly had my dumbass moments, and they cost me.

I have a college friend who teaches a class at our alma mater part-time, and one of the things he is bloody strict about is turning in projects on time. He’ll give extensions, but unless they’re for legitimate problems, he takes points right off the top. He has actually gotten into debates with profs over this. His explanation is that in industry, sometimes a deadline is just that, and blowing it means an F, and perhaps a major unplanned life event. Better they learn it now.

Of course, the same thing serves as a parable of sorts for education in this country. Schools are able to pick an arbitrary point and say, “here’s your diploma/degree” and pronounce the student a graduate. While it’s not the school’s job to create perfect little future CEOs–students own responsibility for their lives and choices–schools do sometimes seem content to turn out a lot of 90% finished jobs.