for all the time you spent on bass....could you have done a couple of degrees?

[Icey101]

so would you have been better off if you studied instead of playing bass????

yeh of course its all about the music but if you furthered your education instead of all that practice??

EDIT: it might not be a degree but if you put the time into your education instead of playing bass how much better off would you be now?

[5StringFool]

Considering how much debt is typically incurred furthering a higher education I think it's very debatable that you'd be better off having spent the time earning additional degrees.

Peter Theil has some interesting thoughts on the value of a higher education.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7409142n

[carlos840]

My only degree is actually in bass playing...

[Angus]

I practiced and earned degrees. But practicing suffered, for sure.

Originally Posted by 5StringFool

Considering how much debt is typically incurred furthering a higher education I think it's very debatable that you'd be better off having spent the time earning additional degrees.

Peter Theil has some interesting thoughts on the value of a higher education.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7409142n

What people never want to admit is that that plan really only works if you have a very smart, very motivated human being...which most people aren't. So sure, it worked for a lot of those kind of people, but isn't generally a great idea for the average person who needs every advantage to get a leg up in an interview.

[Eric Perry]

I wish I put the time and energy into my playing instead of my education. That was a waste of epic proportions.

[Tractorr]

Originally Posted by 5StringFool

Peter Theil has some interesting thoughts on the value of a higher education.

Well if you are a GENIUS and someone is willing to give you 100K then maybe Peter Theil's plan is good idea. Unfortunately, many many jobs are simply not open to people without college degrees. For instance, to work the counter at many car rental agencies you need a college degree. Some cab companies in places like NYC are requiring college degrees.

The odd thing is I was just reading a book written in the time and about working conditions in pre-Nazis Germany, and the author complains about how people need a high school degree to get jobs that anyone with basic reading and writing skills could accomplish. Like Weimar Germany we are a culture obsessed with certification, and while that may be problematic the solution for the vast majority of people is not simply to drop out of school. Of course, for most students going to a community college before attending a 4 year university and attempting to incur the least amount of debt is also good idea.

[BassChuck]

..... Like Weimar Germany we are a culture obsessed with certification, and while that may be problematic the solution for the vast majority of people is not simply to drop out of school......



It does seem this way, but I think a lot of people doing the hiring don't have confidence in their ability to judge a person in a short interview process. Also, the legal atmosphere in this country makes it difficult to fire someone and companys are often liable for the actions of employees. All that combined makes it very tempting to require degrees, reccommendations and past experience.

Consider. If you were going to hire a guitar player for your band without an audition, would you pick someone who had 'played in some bands' or someone with a degree from Berklee? It could well be that neither one was the right player for the gig, but the guy who had finished the degree did have to come up to some standards.

[tastybasslines]

Chess for me. From 2003 to 2011, my records from ICC or Internet Chess Club showed that I played approximately 90K games (most one minute for each side) and spend 12% of my entire life during that time period playing. That is about 5600 hours or 1.9 hours per day for 8 years.

[Definitely]

I could've gotten better marks in my first year of high school, most nights saying "screw homework I'm going to play," but I'm too young to get a degree and schools (post-secondary) don't really look at grade 9 as much. Going into grade 10 this year I'm planning to hang up the bass and actually do my homework...but I said the same thing last summer and had completely changed my mind by October so I don't have high hopes. As long as I can keep my 3.8 GPA I'll likely continue to practice more than study.

[LiquidMidnight]

Originally Posted by BassChuck

It does seem this way, but I think a lot of people doing the hiring don't have confidence in their ability to judge a person in a short interview process

They shouldn't by that confident. Interviewing is one of the least valid methods of selection, especially when compared to more intense selection methods such as assessment centers.

Originally Posted by BassChuck

Also, the legal atmosphere in this country makes it difficult to fire someone and companys are often liable for the actions of employees.

You're correct about the second point in that sentence. You are incorrect about the first point in the that sentence. Employment at will is the default doctrine, and employees can generally be discharged without cause unless they are covered by a contract or a collective bargaining agreement (of which about 7% of the private sector of the U.S. is unionized). There are a few statutes that modify the at will doctrine, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the ADA. There's a VERY small body of case law that deals with constructive discharge and being fired for public duty scenarios such as jury duty.

In the industrialized world, the United States is probably one of the easiest countries in which to fire someone without legal or social repercussions.

[LiquidMidnight]

Originally Posted by 5StringFool

Considering how much debt is typically incurred furthering a higher education I think it's very debatable that you'd be better off having spent the time earning additional degrees.

Peter Theil has some interesting thoughts on the value of a higher education.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7409142n

I have always been in the camp that not every person needs to go to a traditional four-year institution in order to be successful. While some of his criticisms about higher education are valid, some of them are a bit off the mark, such as his criticisms of for-profit schools (which are actually highly scrutinized and are required to hit predetermined marks when it comes to job placement after graduation).

Personally, I don't understand what his purpose is with requiring the scholarship winners to drop out of college. Is he trying to make some symbolic gesture? While having entrepreneurs is important in society, they are only one cog in the social machine. It's that flawed Randian dichotomy that society is made up of people who fall into the category of being either visionary producers or people who aren't. Many of the ideas that the scholarship winners want to put into place are going to require the expertise and labor of people who have technical skills that can only be gained from higher education. Theil also pulled the same flawed move that people do whenever they want to discredit higher education: He cherrypicked some famous people like Bill Gates as evidence that college ain't all what it's cracked up to be. The interviewer however called him out a bit on that, pointing out that those people also had quite a bit of social and cultural capital to have gone to the universities from which they dropped out. Citing people like Bill Gates and Larry Ellison as successful people as examples of how dropping out of college is a good thing is like citing Jimi Hendrix as an example of why you don't need to learn music theory: they're all very special outliers.

The biggest flaw in the logic of both Theil and the scholarship winners is that they weren't challenged enough in school. Welcome to being an overachiever. Education, like just about anything else in life, is what you make of it. I'm an overachiever as well. So I looked for ways to challenge myself. Professors will challenge you if you seek them out. I remember taking a computer class in college. It was clear that I was miles ahead of all of my classmates. So my prof had no problem spending time pushing me to do advanced stuff. My Master's program did not require a thesis to graduate. One of my professors warned me that only one person had completed a thesis since he had taught in that department. He had no problem being my thesis chair. It's probably a good thing those students decided to drop out before they decided to go to grad school. You have to be an autodidact if you're a grad student, particularly at the doctorate level. The professor isn't just going to give you a bunch of challenging tasks just for the sake of them being challenging. If you're an overachiever, you just have to deal with the fact that you're not going to be challenged 24/7 in your education; you have to make your own challenges.

[IconBasser]

meh, I did lots of bass while getting my degree.

[recreate.me]

heh... I did both lol

I got a couple degrees, halfway through the second one i started playing bass seriously though.

I think you can easily do both, if you work at it (the same way people go to school and work, or raise a family).

Also, you have to understand that 'playing bass' is not the same as 'learning bass' or 'studying bass'. I know lots of people who play an instrument and have for many years but still know nothing about it or its theory.. THAT is wasted time my friends.

[MAJOR METAL]

Originally Posted by Eric Perry

I wish I put the time and energy into my playing instead of my education. That was a waste of epic proportions.

+1

[DwaynieAD]

Originally Posted by Eric Perry

I wish I put the time and energy into my playing instead of my education. That was a waste of epic proportions.

this is why i managed to remain uneducated

[blendermassacre]

Once the lady gets done with school, I'll be looking to finish my degree. I've got a decent amount done (~60 hours) and want to switch majors from Mechanical Engineering to Architecture. I think it would be a lot harder to make the same money playing bass (or guitar) than it would for me being an Architect. could be wrong, though.

[Richland123]

I have done both playing bass and getting several degrees, including an M.B.A., all while working full time and raising a child alone. However, if it was not for my bass playing, I would not have had much income the last 10 years due to the poor job market here. Band gigs have been paying the bills.

[groooooove]

i went to school for music so its all time well spent.

[MatticusMania]

Originally Posted by Icey101

so would you have been better off if you studied instead of playing bass????

yeh of course its all about the music but if you furthered your education instead of all that practice??

EDIT: it might not be a degree but if you put the time into your education instead of playing bass how much better off would you be now?

None. I was pursuing a degree, and I quit in favor of finding full time gainful employment.
Part of it had to me being unsure of what I wanted to do with my life, and the other part had to do with me securing a living.
Working to support myself while pursuing higher education and trying to maintain a social life was quite difficult.
It wasnt bass that did me end.