Here's a thought for the day: does what you're studying actually apply to what you're doing? Does it apply to what you're going to be doing? I made this little questionnaire because I thought it might spark a little bit of thought, and it's something I've been thinking about for the past few days. I had a conversation with my mom a few days ago, and she told me something that was really wise. She said that a college education is becoming less valuable in these shifty economic times, and just simply having a degree in whatever doesn't guarantee success. She talked about how a lot of degrees and programs at Universities don't have a lot of practical application and it's difficult to get jobs afterwards. However, she told me that there are some degrees that will always have value, because of the things taught that are hard to pick up in a hands-on environment. For example, a company looking for a new structural engineer for a building project would never hire a person without a college degree proving that they'd studied the ins and outs of structural engineering thoroughly. Another degree that will always have value is accounting (which is my current major), because of the need for accurate financial reporting methods. As I think about it, I'm becoming more sure of my decision to stick with the accounting path and get a degree in it, because it will give me the business experience and financial know-how to branch out into whatever field I want. Also, it's a great fall-back protection against changing times and economies, because there's always going to be taxes for filing and financial statements to produce and review, the whole modern business world depends on it. I feel good about going into something where I'm actually learning the skills and knowledge I'll use in my career and be able to apply in different settings.

Professional-Grade Writing

This is my brother Spencer. (He was also homeschooled). Spencer over the past few years has taken an interest in body-building, because he was a skinny kid growing up and felt like it stopped him from getting interest from girls. So, he decided to put an end to that and researched everything he could about body-building and anatomy and nutrition, and ended up gaining about 50 lbs and being in really good shape. People don't believe him when he says he was a tall scrawny kid that got picked on in middle school (for not going to middle school). Well, Spencer was dedicated and recorded every set and every bite of his journey, and has multiple notebooks filled with his records. He decided to compile it into a program to sell to people who have a hard time gaining weight, "hard-gainers", and also to people who want to start working out at the gym but have no idea where to start. He put together a draft of the program, complete with his story and the workout program and the diet, and sent it to me to look over. I've been closely following his program for about a month now and can already see results, and I'm getting more and more convinced that it's a product with value. I offered to help him with a more polished prototype that he can send out and get some attention with, and I've decided to give it a go tomorrow.

Thinking about how to polish Spencer's body-building guide has made me wonder about why it's so easy to pick out a poorly written document, but it's so hard to write a document that isn't poorly written. I mean, the average person can tell in less than a minute if a sales pitch they're reading or a published article is professional quality, yet there are very few people who actually know how write professionally. I feel like part of this comes from our education system, where academic writing is taught by highschool teachers who care more about big vocabularies and flowery sentences than actual content or style. I learned how to write in that extravagant, boring style in my one semester of highschool, and even though I was good at it I couldn't stand reading anything I'd written for the class. BYU seems to have a lot of this academic influence, and it comes out any time students have writing assignments. The sentences are long, the flow is complicated, and the words are reminiscent of Pride and Prejudice. Although those papers get high points in the standard English courses, the same styles applied in real-world writing mark a person as immature and amateur. People don't like to read things that are boring! So, writing effectively is as much of an art and talent as it is an academic science, and it's important to learn how to use both effectively.

Home-school

How does college life compare to home-school? Most of us have a stereotype of home-schoolers as socially awkward kids who wear their pants too high and don't know how to leave mommy. They wear hand-me-down sneakers and sport the rolling backpacks, and wear a smug look as they pass their publicly-schooled peers. They're almost like a distinct class of nerd, a social under class that crops up occasionally, but is generally ignored. Having been home-schooled myself, I come from the other side and will make some comparisons to college life, and how the two are surprisingly similar.

As I grew up I was educated at home, primarily by my mother. I learned from an early age that I had to be self-motivated and disciplined in order to learn anything, because if I didn't put in the effort there was very little my mom could do to force me. I decided to make the most of things, and even though I didn't study exactly the same topics as my friends in school did, I learned the basics of reading, writing, and math, and I felt like it was sufficient.

When I got to BYU, I found out that I could do well in my lasses by just doing the exact same thing I did in home-school. While those around me were complaining about how much harder college was than high school, I just quietly got my work done and studied concepts till I knew them. I was already used to not having a strict schedule and rules to follow, so I didn't feel like I had to stay up late or waste time with TV shows or experiment with "new-found" freedoms, I'd already seen where that goes and I realized what I was at school for.

I feel like home-school is really an extension of college life, but in reverse. It gives personal responsibility to kids when their younger, and it can give a great head start to being successful in college. I don't vouch for all homeschoolers, I find it just as weird when I pass the kid clacking along the walkway with his rolling backpack and t-shirt tucked in, but there's merit in giving personal responsibility to younger people so they can make independent choices sooner.