One of my recurrent dreams involves a classroom, a random teacher of the many I’ve had during my life, and a test. Any subject that was hell to me comes to haunt me in the dream. Call it Physics, Calculus, Molecular Biology… Yeah, the hard ones. I wake up in the middle of the night sweating as if I were having a horrible nightmare. And it happens often… it happened last night.
It made me remember a discussion my friend Brittany and I were having with John over a Budlight pitcher at Applebee’s the other day. Britt insisted she thought school was way harder than work, and that it was mentally draining; I had to agree with her. John, on the other hand, told us we were crazy, and that work requires much more of you. In the end, I decided it was a personal thing… I prefer working.
Why? I have NEVER liked tests (who does?), they make me extremely nervous, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I want to cry, I never think I’ll pass… it’s not nice. I like school, but I don’t like school deadlines, I don’t like being graded all the time, and I could have done without all that stress. I don’t have to deal with that a work. Sure, there is always something to worry about, and sometimes I feel like storming out of the office when situations become frustrating. But I personally think it’s better to have your manager telling you that you messed up, and not someone telling you that you failed a class and you have to take it again.
But like I said, it’s personal. What do you think?
I agree with you, I think it is probably personal or maybe even career related. In my type of work I still have deadlines, I still have “tests.” I have to make sure that I account for what the users are going to do to the software I write and prevent them from misusing it.
I think that the moment you have money at stake it becomes more real to me. When at school, you are not going to lose a company money if you miss one answer.
I also think our education system is all wrong when it comes to measuring competency. I am a great test taker, but at times I felt like I was learning more to pass a test than to really learn.
I think work is harder just because I enjoyed school so much. I would be happy to be one of those ‘permanent’ college students! haha
For me, work definitely. I got thru High School, College, and even the Navy’s Nuclear Training Program all a lot easier than many of my peers. That’s not only because I absorb knowledge quickly, but I also test well.
Work tho expects better than 80-90% results. And I actually hold myself and my team up to higher standards than the company does. I have to work over time, and even when I don’t I need to coordinate with people from many other departments (or other companies) all with different agendas trying to complete a project.
I have worked 50 hour weeks at a job while in college, but it was just a job. Now that I have a career, I put real work into it. And occasionaly it seems worth the effort.