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posted by janrinok on Thursday December 29 2016, @01:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-the-money-is-good dept.

It didn't dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I'd just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn't have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn't succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. "Ivy retardation," a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn't talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

It's not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society's most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:13AM (#446971)

    It's not hard as in rocket science hard, but hard as in pain-in-the-ass (more likely in the lower back) hard.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:21AM (#446979)

    Also a good way to end up with 1ft of water in your home if you do it wrong. Some things are easy. Others take practice. I for one am well practiced in the magic art of 'fixing computer' not so much in the magic art of 'fixing cars'.

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:03AM

      by Francis (5544) on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:03AM (#446998)

      If you're lucky, if you're unlucky, you wind up with a smaller leak that leaks over a long period of time causing mold to grow all over the place.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 29 2016, @11:55AM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday December 29 2016, @11:55AM (#447045) Homepage Journal

      Valuable education there and you didn't have to listen to some self-important tool to get it. If you end up with a foot of water on your floor though, it's because you didn't do the necessary research and use your brain first. Making proper solder joints on copper pipe is an acquired skill but most of the rest of plumbing is easy as shit; sometimes literally.

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      • (Score: 2) by driven on Thursday December 29 2016, @02:55PM

        by driven (6295) on Thursday December 29 2016, @02:55PM (#447086)

        Hah! Spoken like someone who either is a master at plumbing and forgets how hard it is, or someone who's barely done any plumbing at all. Plumbing is most certainly not "easy as shit", I can assure you.

    • (Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday December 29 2016, @02:53PM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 29 2016, @02:53PM (#447084)

      Yup, i did that one. Then i got to learn about replacing drywall.

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