Reddit mentions of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

Have you read Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford? You might want to check it out.

I'm a teacher and I have 3 college degrees. My plumber, mechanic, and electrician all make higher salaries than I do. A great book that shows how screwy this is, written by a real brainiac who traded it all in to run his own motorcycle repair shop, is "Shop Class As Soul Craft" by Matthew B. Crawford. http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230

Don't fret... everyone loses interest in 3rd year. It's an international phenomena. Find a prof that you like and ask them for some inspiration. Make yourself a design goal and accomplish it. What got me through my tough times was a shift of focus to philosophy and theory. It gave me something to love when studio was failing to hold my interest.

If you really just can't make yourself get into a project, you could try treating your design project as an art project and make the most beautiful graphics possible to convey a simple design solution. It will push your graphic limits and lead you to come up with more effective ways of visualizing an idea.

Also, try looking into aspects of architecture that aren't "architecture school"... like the trades. After finishing my masters degree I worked in an office for a short bit before deciding it wasn't for me. Now I'm a wood worker and am much happier for it. I dabbled in woodworking all through my education and focused my master's thesis on craftsmanship, so it was a fitting transition. I'm now the only person in a woodworking shop with actual design training and the only person with an advanced understanding of the architectural process. I'm also the only one who can really use computer graphics and design tools.

Random: Check out this book.

Hang in there.

This only illustrates the priorities that are being forced upon us in this country. People go to school to get a good job, not to study or learn or better themselves. That is one of the reasons we have college graduates who can't understand basic concepts in math, science and literature. They went to school just to get a job.

Making money, in an acceptable profession, is not the culmination of success. That needs to be defined by the individual. Read Shop Class As Soulcraft. That book put into words what has been bothering me about my life for the past 25 years. Now I need to make sure my kids learn the lesson sooner than I did.

I would recommend Shop Class as Soulcraft

Not directly about riding, but an interesting read on the mentality and ideals behind the manual labor of working on motorcycles, or manual labor in general.

http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230
Shop Class as Soulcraft - Reading this book now.

I personally feel that I am overeducated in the technical aspects of engineering, but undereducated in how to physically produce products.

Shop Class as Soulcraft

The joys and benefits of working with your hands are vastly undervalued.

Shop class as soulcraft is an excellent book about the fanatic push to get us into information jobs, which are the ones most easily shipped away.

I recommend anyone interested in this subject check out the book Shop Class as Soulcraft. It's a good, informative read.

Please read: "Shop Class as Soulcraft" http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230 I am not the author of this book and I am not an employee of the publisher. I read this book last year and it explains your exact question. It's actually a really good read.

Have you read Shop Class as Soulcraft? This is one of the many interesting points raised in the book. It's a great read. Completely changed my opinion of vocational school and blue-collar jobs.

http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230

Reading this might help you. It's about who college can help, and who it can hurt (as well as tons of other useful knowledge about making yourself happy in the American workforce).

Typical Millennial attitude reinforced by dubious boomer social engineering politics.

A teacher's job is to teach and evaluate mastery of learning. Some kids will never master certain subjects. That's why we have grades. This society is falling off the wheels with this idea that everyone is equally capable of everything, and therefore our standards are racing towards the bottom. Lousy student with a lousy degree from a lousy university? That's okay we'll bail out your student loans as if the younger generation were too big to fail too.

Note, that a lot of people are figuring this out. The fastest growing rate of enrollment right now is in community/junior colleges that actually teach people trades that will lead to a job. Our public schools used to do this, but somehow the boomers settled on the idea that all their special little snow-flakes, especially their second franchise millennial kids after they were done dumping on the first round of GEN-X) all deserved to go to college. Note, the word deserved versus the concept of being afforded an equal opportunity. So now our institutes of higher learning are stuck with the OP's problem. I'll bet he spends all his time with the kids who don't belong versus the truly bright kids who will engineer our future.

No amount of self-esteem, standardized test tweaking, money dumping, student loan bailouts or teach for America b.s. will produce the type of educated people this country needs to succeed without a clear-headed reevaluation of our now basic assumptions about education. I'd like to see it start with some math teachers failing the shit out of people.