everything i need to know, i learned somewhere other than college.

One of the things that frustrated me as I was looking for a job for after college was the fact that I was about to receive two degrees, and I still didn't seem to know enough. Most of the job listings I found, I didn't meet the qualifications. Though I had a sheet of paper that said I spent four years learning, I apparently didn't learn the right things. There's a reason there aren't any posters that say "Everything I need to learn, I learned in college." (Actually, there probably are those posters, but they all have statements about kegs or going out in public in your pajamas.)

I shouldn't have been upset, as I had been warned. When I was in the eighth grade, my algebra teacher told me that college is only about getting a degree that proves to companies that you can have the ability to learn. He told me you didn't learn anything in college that actually prepares you for a job, that your employer will train you when you get there. I did not believe him. What a ridiculous story! Not learn anything in four whole years? That's craziness.

Okay, so I believe him now.

This isn't such a terrible thing as long as you can find a place that's willing to hire someone straight from school and train them. It's accepted practice. Apparently, it wasn't just me that didn't learn the right things, it was everyone. So that's why I have a job now, and that's why I'm learning a lot of things that were never even mentioned in all those computer science classes I took. My first couple of weeks, the guy who was training me would ask, "So, have you ever worked with this? Yeah, I hadn't either before I came here." That always made me feel better, because he had a Master's Degree, so he went through six years of school not learning anything.

It's not that I thought learning would be over as soon as I finished my last class. I believed in continued learning, but I believed it in that learn-something-new-everyday, cliche kind of way. No, I'm learning whole new languages and programs and processes. And don't even get me started on all the office politics I'm learning about.

It gets worse - I actually have to take tests. My company wants its programmers to be certified in a language I had no exposure to before I came here. I spend my free time reading textbooks and taking notes for the test I have to take. It's like school all over again, except for the minor detail that I get a certificate and a Microsoft pin if I actually pass the test. That never happened in college.

But it's not so bad. I do like computer science, so learning about it is not torture. And the new language is very similar to one that I already know, because I learned it...in college.