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>Call me cynical, but one thing college teaches you is to avoid assuming most people are like yourself.

That's like the one thing that it doesn't teach you. Everyone is expected to be interested in the same selection of things and learn the same things in the same way or not get good grades.

>> one thing college teaches you is to avoid assuming most people are like yourself.

> That's like the one thing that it doesn't teach you.

Huh? You didn't get to know people who weren't like yourself?

Since the people there chose the same path as me, they were in fact more similar to me (similar demographics, hobbies, ...).

"Same path" as in... "K-12, then college"? By that standard, when you start working, everyone has had the same path as you, too -- "education, then work".

And how can you even say "more similar" without specifying more similar than what?

More similar than the most of other people I met/know. I studied CS. When I started working, there are (compared to my CS studies) people from different colleges, or without higher education at all, artists, HR, managers, ... They are much more diverse than people from my college.

You say "compared to my CS studies" to argue your point, then conclude with "than people from my college"? Was there nobody but CS majors in your college? Or did you just never take the opportunity to go meet them when there were tons of them in your college?

I have met more people who aren't like myself outside college.

> I have met more people who aren't like myself outside college.

And this supposedly implies "That's like the one thing that [college] doesn't teach you"?

That was a hyperbolic response to a hyperbolic claim.

These are both more "I..." comments. When "I" went to college "my" experience was X so therefore...

Assumption: experiences in college are incredibly diverse based on multiple factors

You're assuming a lot of homogeneity in those people, but just seeing innumerable children pass through is a chance to see a load of variability, even if it's not fully representative of the whole world.

There's a ton of variability to see in the population of those who go to college and feel the constraint of grades and majors.

Or did people want visiting one corner of campus to be like visiting the corner of China, and the other corner to be like visiting Australia? Well, sorry, nothing but real money and travel can substitute seeing the world, but yes, college is an eye-opener in terms of people.

Well, I don't assume everyone is like me. The opposite.

And I think I do provide hard evidence in article when I mention tuition vs debt vs income. And although I recognize my personal story is anecdotal, it seems similar to what I have heard over the years. Plus, I studied a hard science at a good school.

> It's extremely frustrating to see individuals trying so hard to generalize from their own 1 sample of anecdata

You seem to be doing that yourself here. Your description of college does not correspond to my personal experience. If you had written "... one thing college teached me ..." it would have been less of an overgeneralization based on your 1 sample of anecdata.

I did not need college to learn that most people aren't like myself. Even in kindergarten, it was quite obvious that most kids weren't like myself. Later, I went to a high school for "mathematically gifted students", and they were quite similar to me in some ways, but different in others. When I went to college and met people who weren't like me (or, for that matter, like each other), it wasn't unexpected.

But that's just my 1 sample of anecdata. Maybe other people grow up in a world where most everyone is the same, and only when they attend college, they finally realize that this isn't true of all people. Then they will probably associate this major life lesson with college. But it doesn't mean that this will be true of all, or even most, college students.

> You seem to be doing that yourself here. Your description of college does not correspond to my personal experience.

First, the crucial difference is that, unlike him, nowhere was I drawing any conclusion based on that statement.

Second, your argument is unsound, and a strawman. Obviously some fraction of people will come away failing to learn {any given topic}. My statement was a general ("general" != 100.00%) truth I'd observed based on what I've seen others take away from college, not just myself. So if you're really going to argue this point, you need to claim that most people you've seen, at least, have left college believing that most other people are, in fact, like themselves. Would you actually claim that though?

> Second, your argument is unsound, and a strawman.

Can you point me to the logic errors in my post, and where I set up a weak counter-point just to refute it? I would like to avoid these mistakes in the future.

> you need to claim that most people you've seen (at least) have left college believing that most people are, in fact, like themselves. Would you actually claim that though?

I do not need to claim such a thing, I am claiming the opposite: most people should already have realized that most other people aren't like themselves, even before they go to college. If they haven't, I don't think that college will make them realize it faster than the average other path they could take.

> Can you point me to the logic errors in my post

I literally did in the sentences that followed.

In the sentences that follow, you address a point I didn't intend to make, so at best you show that I didn't express myself clearly. Even if I had made that point, you are not exactly pointing out where I made a logic error to arrive at it. So that doesn't help me find it, and I still don't know where the strawman is.

People may use I/my simply for a personal taste, such as a blog post of a mother about her daughter, instead of a formal article. Some use it to emphasize that they are expressing a personal opinion. Sometimes it shows they are more self-centered, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Or it could just be habit. Anyway, I wouldn't psychoanalyze it too much.

Yes, that bothered me too. Not everyone is you.

> Another thing it teaches you is that if you want to argue "everyone is doing it wrong", you should provide hard evidence for it.

University professors are among the first to say "do as I say" without any motivation (and no, they do not "want you to challenge them"; they just tend to be very narcissistic). The first thing I had to unlearn from college is repeating prefabricated opinions (which I had to do to get acceptable grades).

> University professors are among the first to say "do as I say" without any motivation (and no, they do not "want you to challenge them"; they just tend to be very narcissistic). The first thing I had to unlearn from college is repeating prefabricated opinions (which I had to do to get acceptable grades).

This is so vague. What kinds of "opinions" are we talking about?

Your opinion on what topics the professor should teach or whether he should assign homework? Yeah, no, just sit down and learn the curriculum the way they've designed it. When you graduate and start teaching, then you can be a rebel and do everything your own way and prove to everyone they're doing it wrong and you're doing it right.

Your opinion on whether you should use method 1 or method 2 on your homework? Well if they're telling you to use method 1, it's because they're teaching it and want to make sure you learn it. Even if it's painful.

Don't forget the reason you're there is for the faculty to challenge you, not the other way around. Their job is still to teach you the way they know best. If you don't care for that and want to teach yourself, then indeed, don't go to college.

You do tend to see yourself in your kids.

Yeah, this is probably the best argument for his position. The only problem is, he would probably not be passionately blogging about it if he didn't intend to generalize it beyond his daughter.

And you buy something for that debt. You buy freedom. In those 4 years, you can basically do anything you want- like really do it. Want a laser to print 3D Lightning into mid-air, yeah we have one in the lab, go and grab when its not used. Want to write some software? Congrats, you got 4 years, and will recive a good grade when you present your program as a project.

All this needs a certain personality type though- and there are some for whom college is a lot of closed doors and hostile personalitys. There are some who cant self-organize, and who by staying would force organization from outside upon all other students.

I miss my college years. The many moments, i found some pocket universe of complexity in places least expected.

It bothers me more if somebody claims to be all-knowing and owner of universal truths.