Re: schools banning homework

I often felt pressured not to say anything negative about the real world.
If I did, I might, apparently, discourage the students from learning the
material, who might then drop out and do something else. If that happened,
it might be damaging to the administration's reputation, thus depriving it
of potential revenues.

It wouldn't surprise me that it would have preferred to have the students
finish, find out that the real world wasn't what it was cracked up to be
and then return to school for retraining, bringing with them money.

The students should have done their "homework" about the field, before
even thinking about enrolling in it at a college/university. These
days there isn't any excuse for not doing some "homework" a priori.
(ie. Google is their best friend, along with one's own common sense).

When I was younger, I did my "homework" on various fields by asking a
lot of questions to folks who recently graduated with a degree in it,
as well as some folks who worked full-time in particular fields.
(Mostly found these folks via family and friends). I didn't bother
approaching many folks who were already college/university students
nor instuctors/professors at that time, since I knew they probably
wouldn't be as upfront about things.

When I was in graduate school, my advisor was straight upfront about
what the field was REALLY like and the future prospects (ie. both the
good and ugly). I knew exactly what I was getting into when I first
started to do research. Otherwise I could have just left grad school
with a masters degree. (At quite a number of places, some academic
masters degrees didn't have a thesis requirement).

That could be likely. By weirdos, I meant genuine eccentrics.

Folks like George Trepal? (Some Mensa guy who's on death row in
Florida).

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1535601/bio
http://www.amazon.com/Poison-Mind-Jeffrey-Good/dp/0312960166

Nobody that extreme that I'm aware of. There was one chap who was
brilliant but who couldn't seem to find a job that suited him. The last I
heard, he was homeless somewhere in Ontario.

How exactly was this particular guy "brilliant"? Was he a "book
smarts" and/or "test smarts" type? Or was he well read? (It sure
sounds like he wasn't "street smart").

At the Mensa meetings I've attended in the past, I got the impression
many of the regulars were folks who were either "test smart" and/or
"book smart".

I don't think I've ever met anybody in Mensa who was really "street
smart". Most of the "street smart" folks I knew of when I was
younger, typically were folks who ended up joining street gangs and/or
organized crime type of groups.

.

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