{"id":2446,"date":"2010-10-10T17:32:18","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T00:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/?p=2446"},"modified":"2010-10-10T17:32:18","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T00:32:18","slug":"my-schooling-versus-my-job-skills-provenance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/10\/my-schooling-versus-my-job-skills-provenance\/","title":{"rendered":"My Schooling Versus My Job Skills Provenance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I keep grinding my ax in my blog pieces on the efficacy of \u201cunschooling\u201d and informal learning versus what a person learns in more formal educational settings. Though I acknowledge the primacy of formal education and training in some fields – like science, engineering, medicine and law \u2013 I also strongly believe (based on my own experience) that a person can develop technical and professional skills (for many types and aspects of business) mostly outside of formal schooling.
\n
Neither of my now young-adult kids has had formal schooling beyond ninth grade, but both are developing significant business and technical skills, and can present themselves as sophisticated, well-spoken and well-written people. I on the other hand, have had over twenty years of formal education, but if I really analyze where my work skills come from, they were mostly acquired outside of school. If truth be told, I suspect I personally could have done quite well without any formal education (other than having those two college degrees on my resume to help me get my first and possibly some of my subsequent jobs where I did not have a personal connection).
\n
\nIt was an intriguing and thought provoking exercise for me to do an analysis of my significant job skills and where essentially they were acquired along the way (plus basic skills that were the building blocks to those more advanced ones). I have twelve years of K-12 education (I skipped kindergarten) and approximately nine years of college leading to two degrees \u2013 a BA in Speech and a BS in Computer Science. Given all that formal education, it is interesting how most of what I consider my work related skills (that motivate the people I do work for to pay me) were acquired outside of school.
\n
\nMy first degree was basically a liberal arts education, which one could argue contributed to making me more \u201cwell rounded\u201d and culturally sophisticated. It did include some more practical TV and film production classes, but honestly I did not leverage them much in the few film production jobs I got before I gave up on that industry.
\n
\nMy second degree was a technical one, all about skills in the computer science and electrical engineering fields. Given that, it was mostly focused on training me to be an electrical engineer or a computer programmer in the aerospace industry, which was big in Southern California in the first of the 1980s when I got my degree. I never ended up working in that industry because IT jobs in the \u201cbusiness\u201d sector paid much better.
\n
\nNow admittedly, I may be somewhat of a unique case, and other people may not have had such rich experience outside of their formal school settings. But given all that, here are what I consider to be the job related skills I learned at school…
\n
\n1. Basic reading skills<\/strong> \u2013 Elementary school
\n2. Basic arithmetic skills<\/strong> \u2013 Elementary school and junior high
\n3. Basic writing skills<\/strong> \u2013 Elementary school
\n4. Set theory<\/strong> \u2013 Junior high math class
\n5. Basic public speaking<\/strong> \u2013 High school and college classes
\n6. Business process modeling<\/strong> \u2013 College class
\n7. Basic structured computer programming<\/strong> \u2013 College classes
\n8. Economics<\/strong> \u2013 College class
\n9. Basic technical writing<\/strong> \u2013 College class
\n
\nNow here are the job related skills that I learned outside of formal educational settings in my \u201cregular life\u201d or in some cases \u201con the job\u201d…
\n
\n1. Basic design and implementation<\/strong> \u2013 Designing sets and lights for theater productions and then building those sets and setting those lights
\n2. Basic teamwork<\/strong> \u2013 Playing on Little League baseball teams and pick-up games
\n3. Collaboration on projects<\/strong> \u2013 Mounting theatrical productions and playing military simulations with several players on each side
\n4. Basic systems theory and process modeling<\/strong> \u2013 Playing sophisticated military simulation board games
\n5. Basic strategy and logistics<\/strong> – Playing sophisticated military simulation board games
\n6. Time and critical path management<\/strong> \u2013 Working as a short-order cook
\n7. Persuasive writing<\/strong> \u2013 Writing volunteer and money appeals for community groups plus writing this blog
\n8. Supervisory skills<\/strong> \u2013 Coordinating volunteers for a community organization
\n9. Data analysis and management skills<\/strong> \u2013 Maintaining prospect, donor and volunteer lists and coordinating direct mail campaign for a community organization and working as a systems and business analyst
\n10. Budgeting skills<\/strong> \u2013 Budgeting campaigns for a community organization
\n11. Advanced persuasive skills<\/strong> \u2013 Doing TV and radio interviews for a community organization
\n12. Leadership skills<\/strong> \u2013 Coordinating various campaign events for community organization and as a lay leader for a religious congregation
\n13. Meeting and large group facilitation skills<\/strong> \u2013 As Board President and lay leader of a religious congregation and as business analyst and release manager
\n14. Advanced public speaking skills<\/strong> \u2013 Leading worship services for a religious congregation
\n15. Business process analysis and design<\/strong> \u2013 Working as a systems and business analyst
\n16. Basic accounting<\/strong> \u2013 Working as a systems analyst
\n17. Advanced technical writing<\/strong> \u2013 Working as a systems and business analyst
\n18. Web site management<\/strong> \u2013 Working as a business analyst
\n19. Advanced visual presentation skills<\/strong> \u2013 Working as a business analyst
\n20. Organizational development <\/strong>\u2013 Participating in the creation of several non-profit organizations
\n21. Basic counseling<\/strong> \u2013 Working as a volunteer youth advisor for my religious congregation and learning from my partner as she studied to be a marriage and Family Therapist
\n22. Business process re-engineering<\/strong> \u2013 From self-initiated reading along with work as a systems and business analyst
\n23. Basic health care industry business practices<\/strong> \u2013 Working as systems and business analyst in the industry
\n24. Basic insurance industry business practices<\/strong> \u2013 Working as a business analyst in the industry
\n25. Systems analysis <\/strong>\u2013 Learned on the job as my computer programming work transitioned to systems analysis
\n
\nI would be curious to get a summary from others doing a comparable analysis.
\n
\nIt is interesting again that the biggest thing I think I got out of my nine years of college was to be able to put those two degrees on my resume, which probably got me jobs with employers where I did not have a personal connection (say a recommendation from a friend, family member or past supervisor) and their bureaucratic hiring rules required such degrees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep grinding my ax in my blog pieces on the efficacy of \u201cunschooling\u201d and informal learning versus what a person learns in more formal educational settings. Though I acknowledge the primacy of formal education and training in some fields – like science, engineering, medicine and law \u2013 I also strongly believe (based on my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1151,1152],"class_list":["post-2446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-ongoing-strategy-for-learning","tag-informal-learning-versus-formal-learning","tag-learning-outside-of-school"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2452,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions\/2452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}