another "rugged individualism" post that some will not "get"

[Ken Herrick]

Do what you do do well. Be yourself - true to your ideals. Never know where it will get you. Be adaptable. AND, every time the sun comes up and you can stand up and suck in some air, take the new day and make something of it.

[MartyNeilan]

What kind of euphonium?

I'll bet it was just a baritone...

[THE TUBA]

So, are we going to add his model to "The OFFICIAL LIST of Trombones/Players that Won a Job?"

[bort]

No disrespect towards Joe's friend, but for all you Simpsons fans, this reminds me of this...

http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/scripts/homers-enemy" target="_blank

GRIMES
Oh, that's my degree in nuclear physics. I'm sure you all have one.

LENNY
Oh yeah, Carl and I each have a masters. Of course, old Homer, he didn't need a degree. He just showed up the day they opened the plant.

HOMER
I didn't even know what a nuclear panner plant was.

[Lew]

An interesting story. There are definitely different paths to and definitions of success. I would not have been able to have the careers that I have had nor achieved the things that I have achieved without the degrees that I have. However, I would never say that having a college degree or degrees is a requirement for success. Getting them was something that I valued and one was paid for by a full fellowship and two of them were paid for by my employers at the time, so only my undergraduate was paid for by my parents, supplemented by my Summer employment. I will say that when I got my first degree, and I am about the same age as "Bloke," the cost of college was significantly less, even in real dollars, than it is today. Given the cost of a college education today, it would seem that people do need to be more selective in determining whether to go to college and in choosing a major.

Depending on what you want to do, there are still some things for which a college degree is necessary. Of course there are plenty of things that you can do and be successful without one and I don't know anybody who thinks that a degree by itself is a guarantee of any sort of success.

[tbn.al]

Not sure if Mozart would have minded....................He might even have been impressed that the piece was still being played. No transcription needed, just play it right off the page................if you are good enough. As one of my old Arkansas heroes once said, "It ain't braggin' if you done it."

[tbn.al]

That's OK, the humor went right over my head. That's not an unusual occurrence however. The older I get the denser.

[Uncle Buck]

As one of my old Arkansas heroes once said, "It ain't braggin' if you done it."

So who said that?

[Mojo workin']

Have thoroughly enjoyed this lecture and finger shaking, Joe.

Damn, how utterly pointless those music degrees were. How dare I pursued and received them, not having won a playing job and all.

Hey, get it? I don't "get it"!

Damn, if only I understood that "success" = wealth and materialism, too. Then I might "get it".

[bighonkintuba]

............

[ginnboonmiller]

I just wish I had ended up half as cool as this anonymous badass. Dammit.

[Trevor Bjorklund]

Why? Just why?
To all those who have been severely and terribly abused by some college or college person somewhere, sometime, hopefully you can heal some day. Perhaps if you listen to some tapes/read some books, and work real hard, you can get past it.

Success ≠ money. Neither does music, usually.

[tbn.al]

As one of my old Arkansas heroes once said, "It ain't braggin' if you done it."

So who said that?

Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean

[ginnboonmiller]

Is this guy single?

[Donn]

Again, many who lean one way sociologically (often, the "it takes a village" types, etc...), and/or who were born in-or-after the 1970's will not "get" (or will make light of) this.

Like a cast of characters that populate your imagination, but so far, from what I'm reading, what we don't get is the anti-higher-education message. If this thread is in any way about tubas, I guess it would be in the sense that some tuba players also face this choice of whether to pursue a degree. That's an interesting discussion that's come up here a number of times, but one example of someone has done well as a power plant manager doesn't really shed all that much light on it. The proposition that you don't need to go to college because you can work that stuff out fine on your own by listening to recordings etc., is interesting but it doesn't seem very thoughtfully framed. I mean, is it no one greatly benefits from a degree for music performance, or is this just within certain limits according to what kind of a career you expect to have, where you expect to fit in the music/entertainment business, etc.? Would you counsel someone who's interested in a technical professional job (is power plant manager a technical job?) to skip the college degree? Can you explain why you can't bring yourself to spell "college" correctly? These are some of the things I gather readers here don't get.

[tofu]

Many jobs today that now "require" a college degree (which often can be in anything) do so as some kind of standard, but in many cases the degree isn't necessary to perform or learn the job. It's just a barrier & prevents a lot of hard working/smart folks with aptitude from even getting a shot at those jobs. Four year colleges have done a good job of selling (and benefiting) from this as an employment requirement for both private and public employers. The disdain for vocational schools is not hard to miss and yet the need for people with aptitude, training and a work ethic has never been greater in many necessary and relevant jobs like plumbers/welders/electricians etc. Think it doesn't take a lot of skill and smarts to be an auto mechanic these days? Just open up the hood of your hybrid and try to fix it yourself. These are great jobs that pay well, can be very satisfying and yet don't need a 4 year degree. But do HS promote this or guide kids with this kind of aptitude in this direction? Not in my neck of the woods. If you're not on a college track or even post college track you are pretty much dismissed as on the road to nowhere. So lots of kids who could be very happy in vocational schools getting the skills for so called blue collar jobs leading to fulfilling productive lives are instead treading water in four year schools accumulating student loan debt getting degrees in things they don't really want to do because the mantra of you gotta have a college degree to be successful is drummed into them and their parents.

I'm not bashing college and graduate schools (especially since I graduated from both and that knowledge was for me indispensable) but I do think a take away from Joe's story is that you can be successful in life without a college degree. And could we stop all the wealth bashing? Most real wealth in this country is not from inheritance and it's also not accumulated by people who just wanted to be wealthy. Wealth is usually the byproduct of being really successful at something. Being wealthy also doesn't mean you are also materialistic. I think you would be surprised how modestly a lot of really wealthy people live. An awful lot of the McMansions and fancy cars are owned by ne'er do wells (and their banks) and not the wealthy.

Success ≠ money.

by the same token:

Success ≠ being poor

Personally I'll take success & wealthy over success & poor

For the top income quintile, gifts and inheritances amount to 13 percent of household wealth, according to research published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the top wealth quintile, they amount to 16 percent. For the “1 percent,” inherited wealth accounts for about 15 percent of holdings. Those numbers have gone down over recent decades — by almost half for the wealthiest Americans. Meanwhile, inherited money makes up 43 percent of the wealth of the lowest income group and 31 percent for the second-lowest.

[Uncle Buck]

FWIW, since the thread is trending this direction, here are my observations as someone who has done a reasonable amount of (non-musical) hiring and firing.

- Generally vacancies generate a lot of applications. Those doing the hiring (individuals or committees) are looking for reasons to throw an application out, not for a reason to keep one in. Human nature being what it is, the initial focus is to try to get the number of applicants down to a small number.
- The honest truth is that for many jobs (pretty much all of the ones for which I've conducted interviews), a particular required degree is one of the easiest ways to reduce an applicant pool down to a more manageable number. Maybe not the most ideal method, but the one most commonly used for the first round of screening. (Remember, "screening" = throwing out as many applications as possible.)
- Lots of individuals with the right degree turn out to be terrible for the job, obviously.
- Some individuals who would be wonderful for the job don't get considered because of a lack of a degree, obviously.
- Past that initial screening, it's all about experience. Not grades, not obviously inflated recommendation letters, but being able to show what you've actually done and accomplished.

Having said that, my general advice is:
- If you're an entrepreneur and want nothing else but to be your own boss, then I'm the wrong person to listen to for advice.
- If your future probably involves applying and interviewing for jobs, don't ever ignore either education or practical experience. You should always be pursuing both together. If you go to college, do whatever you can while there to also be gaining practical experience.

And yeah, Joe's story in the original post in this thread is very cool.

[Mojo workin']

It's about the snowballing of the delay of adulthood by young and post-young Americans.
It's about young (legally) adult Americans behaving as consuming drones, rather than productive citizens.
It's about people trying to decide what to do with themselves while - in the meantime - doing very little.
It's about people living with their parents well into their thirties (or even until their parents' demise).

Q - Why do you give a crap what these people are doing?

Sure is a tuba related thread, I must say.
Would be better placed in the 'stupid gripes' thread.

[bort]

Q - Why do you give a crap what these people are doing?

A- Because they are breeding and making more people like them.

[bort]

Worth reading again.

One thing I've noticed in my part of the business world is that less than half of the time, the CEO/COO of a company does not have an advanced degrees. It doesn't prove or disprove anything, but it's another example of a degree not dictating your future. Formal education gets you in the door, but if you want to succeed you have to be great once you're in there. Most of the time (again, in my field), the top-level executives only have a bachelor's degree, a lot of ambition, and a lot of tolerance for risk and change.

So says the guy in a doctoral program, who doesn't particularly like risk and change.