Planning Personal Education: What coventional education forgot.

[IDMclean]

I have been at this college thing for officially five years. I realized recently that I need to understand the purpose of each kind of education and each tier of academic distinction. Towards this end, I have been accumulating data on what I want to do while I am at school and after. Much of my recent efforts from the past year on are a result of this focus on discovering objectives. I have a few notable interests that I would like to actively and critically pursue in the next five to twenty years.

They are:

• Study abroad.
  
• Produce original research utilizing many medias about my choice medias.
  
• Become involved with the artificial intelligence, cybernetic, artificial life, robotics, and game studies communities as a peer.
  
• Start an entertainment development business. We would produce and possibly even publish (in-house) books, video games, short and feature length animation, music and graphics.
  
• Experiment with, design and develop games. Particularly, I would like to work with titles involving edutainment, personal and social discovery.
  
• Teach, lecture, and maintain life-time scholarship (be a student and a teacher at the same time or in juxtaposed sequences).
  
• Start an experimental school and/or community. Focused on team/interdependent-based education, parenting, scholarship research.
  
• Participate in the design and development of artificial life forms, and bionics.
  

 

Here's what I need and what I believe will benefit Hypography's current and future membership, how does one search for programs and schools that offer the kinds of learning and degrees you want? We can start in America but I would like to know how one searches world-wide. At current, I am signed up at fast web and another college search site; however, they only search my local country and I want to see what the world has to offer me.

 

I'm looking first for a Ph.D.* program that I am interested and from there I am going to use back planning to figure out where I need to go and what I need to major in.

 

*Assuming that a Ph.D. education would benefit me rather than alternatives such as professional certification.

[CraigD]

how does one search for programs and schools that offer the kinds of learning and degrees you want?

I’m sure there are many useful answers to this question. Personally, my approach has been to follow popular and academic publications, tracing books, article, and papers that interest me back to their authors – which usually also leads to their authors' schools and departments.

 

This approach agrees well with my understanding of how schools actually work. Individuals are, IMHO, more important than institutions and programs – in fact, comprising and creating them, individuals are real, while institutions and programs are mere abstractions.

 

Actually corresponding and conversing with faculty about your academic goals is, in my experience, the best way to attain them. Some faculty are better at such conversations than others – in many cases, mediocre or inferior research faculty are excellent advisors, which excellent researchers are terrible advisors. Other than being carefully skeptical and objective, I know of no systematic way to determine good advice from bad.

[IDMclean]

I must admit Craig, that seems like an interesting way to go about finding a path in education, but I would think it difficult to go from school to school studying under individuals to acquire the education and training I need to accomplish what I want.

 

I was recently out and about at the local C.S.U., talking with advisers and coordinators for the various academic programs. I learned a new term that is pertinent to my goals: terminal degree.

 

Apparently, one needs a Masters of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) or a Philosophical Doctorate (Ph.D.) to get tenure at an American university.

 

I think I know what subject I want to study for my Ph.D. thesis. I think that Cybernetics would be of greatest benefit to me. I know that MIT is supposed to be really good for that kind of thing, but I also know that India and Japan are supposed to have some top notch computer engineering universities performing research in the area I want to one day pursue.

 

I already know that I am going to need to learn a second language or more because I

want to study overseas for a year or two, possibly more. My mom gave me the idea of teaching American English as a second language to pay for studying abroad.

 

I'm putting together a packet that I can give to or send to people. For the first time ever on Hypography I'm going to post a picture of me. Enjoy :rolleyes:

[Tormod]

I'm putting together a packet that I can give to or send to people. For the first time ever on Hypography I'm going to post a picture of me. Enjoy :evil:

 

The blog is only open to members you give access to... :rolleyes: Let me in, let me in.

[IDMclean]

I believe I've corrected it so that anyone may view it. Otherwise, feel free to look at the direct links.

 

The Plan, Page 1

The Plan, Page 2

[IDMclean]

The Plan has shifted subtly.

 

I'm going to help my community college, the local State University, and the Northern Californian Community Colleges offer Game Studies degrees. It turns out there's good demand in it but few experts on the topic in academia.

 

I've helped in the design and playtest of an Introductory Game Design course at the College I attend. I'm helping to organize the departments to work together in developing a legitimate degree program. We're going to the GDC in March of 2009. I'm organizing a booth, and we want to get panel/roundtable/presentation space-time at the 2010 GDC for the relevant organizations: IGDA Education Special Interest Group, Northern Community Colleges, State Universities, etc.

 

I'm doing better since I started examining the time consumption rates of my various projects. I've found I am most successful at school when I take four or less courses.

[questor]

I think success does not depend on the school, it depends on you. The school merely furnishes a guide to your education, it does not ''educate'' someone. In my opinion you obviously have a fertile mind, but you lack focus. You can't do everything you think of. It takes time to be good at something and you are not getting younger. Why not take an aptutude test to determine your strongest talents, determine what jobs call for these talents, and determine if any of these jobs excite you? Do you want money or job contentment? Do you want your own business, or prefer to work for someone else? Do you want regular hours or hours of your choosing? Any endeavor you undertake will cost you time and money. You can always make money, but you can never get back your wasted time. You must look 15 years in the future: will you be happy and successful at what you are doing? What will your life be like? 15 years from now, you will be verging on being unemployable by a lot of businesses.