Do you remember anything from your degree?

I remember much of my major from college as I majored in communications and I stil use the knowledge in my career. However, most of my gen eds have long since been forgotten.

I remember way too many stupid factoids from my degree work. If I could figure out how to purge most of them I would - and have space for more useful information.

The most useful things I learned in university had to do with approaches to problem-solving/opportunity identification.

oil painting is handled just the opposite of water colors. All the rest is just proving your skill.

I still remember quite a lot of Middle English (I can still understand Chaucer) and I use my French every day so yes I remember something from my B.A. degree awarded in 1973.

I remember the basics only, plus things I've reviewed since in order to not lose them. When you study Physics, as I did, you absolutely receive a wider perspective, and it changes you by indoctrinating you into something it took mankind a long time to figure out - how to view and analyze technical problems. Once you learn that, I don't think you can unlearn it.

Really, Brandon that's interesting. I specifically asked my friend who studies physics with maths whether it's changed his perspective on things (since I'm learning a bit about aesthetics/philosophy/sociology, which has changed my perspective, and wanted to know if a science based degree would do similar).
Anyway, he said no, although he hates it, so maybe that's why.

I've always viewed knowledge as a key to a wider world view, rather than an end in itself. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

The difference one's first Physics or Engineering course makes on one's understanding is greater than the difference all subsequent courses make put together, because it teaches one how scientific problems are approached. It's comparable to studying algebra. Remember those problems that begin, "A train leaves Albany, travelling east at 80 mph. Two hours later, a train leaves Boston travelling west at....?" Before you learn algebra, those problems are very hard indeed, but after you learn it, they're so simple as to be boring. It's the same sort of thing with learning science and engineering - the critical part of knowing how to do the problems is understanding the basic idea of how they're approached. That's why when a person with a degree in a scientific subject debates a person who's never had any education in science, and the debate is about a scientific topic, it really is no contest. It took humans a long, long time to figure out how to analyze scientific problems, and it's unlikely that someone could spontaneously re-create it himself without studying what is already known.

Oh, and I guess I'd say that I've always thought that the main attraction of learning is that it's interesting.

I am reading a book about the brain and here is what one of the greatest philosooher, Aristotle, said about it:

1. The heart moves and contains blood. The brain is inert, incapable of sensation and without blood. Life is associated with movement, sensation and blood. Therefore the brain cannot be the control center.
2. There are simple organisms that move and have sensations, but which do not have a brain.
3. The heart is warm, the brain is cool. Warmth is associated with life, coolness with its absence.
4. It is possible to see the beating heart of an embryo before its brain is visible.

Aristotle did not believe the brain was the body's control center.

It shows just philosophising without a basis of fact or observation can lead to erroneous conclusions even by geniuses.

memory an degrees

well i know that 16 an 61 are basically the same, and that 0=32

I remember a great deal...I retain some facts, but the wider picture stuff, of course, dominates.

I can't really say any more how the knowledge (and the experience, really) changed me...because it's too incorporated in me, and mostly it was too long ago...but it's a big part of me.

Actually, my Infant Mental health Degree is more accessible, since it is more recent....and I have to say that it profoundly changed how I (and the entire team I worked with at the time) view and do therapy...as well as much about ourselves.

Actually, we changed a lot about how people outside our team did things, too.

remmember that everyone is a prisoner of their times.

Sadly, I've retained the original theory behind McCandless area lighting, but have to look up what organisms are most likely to be involved in hepatitis in the dog. Whatcha gonna do?

Good for you. That means a lot.

I remember quite a bit from both degrees, yes. I clearly remember the first paper where I "got it" as an English major, a sort of scale-lifting where I suddenly saw the layers of what an author intended, not just the surface/ obvious stuff. I think that sort of close reading has a lot of uses, not just in terms of writing papers for literature courses.

My second degree was largely about early childhood education and I use that stuff all the dang time. I think my parenting is probably based more on what I learned during my degree than any other single source, including how my own parents parented me.

I graduated from art school with a degree in illustration so yes, I remember alot and put it to great use from time to time.

My first five years were in the early sixties, five years because I kept changing majors (ending up with bacteriology). I learned how to learn in a concentrated way on many subjects while I now forget much of the detail. I learned how to use the library of those times, how to write papers in the middle of the night, how I could be fascinated about things I started out with no interest in, and best of all, how to question assertions - something I didn't learn much about in my parochial high school. I guess I think of those years as my "waking up".
One singular sentence comes to mind as a brain spit: Ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny.

A decade later I took dozens of studio art courses. I remember most of those, and best remember that I learned how to play with paints (or anything else).

A decade after that I studied landscape architecture for four years. I've retained most of that, most strongly re matters of design, but also a fair amount of the technical side of it. I nearly died at the time from a site engineering type class like grading and drainage but later found working that out re real properties to be great fun - and still remember all that. Oh, re changing - my eyes opened wider, much wider, to the city and countryside around me, every day, all day.

'waking up' is interesting.
Is that how you would explain growing older in general?

Well, sometimes I'd call it "trouble with staying awake"... but I do continually observe and re-calibrate my understanding of things in general; it's ongoing. A2k is a kick for that, in that I like the many viewpoints swirling around and pick up bits for myself from this source.

Completely agree, I do the same, and that's the same reason I like A2K. I think 'waking up' is a good metaphor for the insight you get from thinking about an issue rather accepting one.

Do you think you get more skeptical as you get older? You must do.

Actually, the more experience I have the less skeptical I've become. Also, my Buddhist practice enables me to view life from a continually youthful perspective.