What does a college degree mean to me and to american society?

It is alot of hard work to get a college degree. Sometimes people get theirs in two years and some people it takes 7 years to get the degree they set out to get. A college degree to me, means that you have been to college and taken the courses you needed to in order for you to better yourself in the feild you were learing in. To have a college degree doesn't necesarily mean you are smarter or better than anyone else, it simply means you went to school further than a person with a high school degree. In some cases, yes people with a college degree are usually smarter than a person who just has their high school diploma. In the work force having a college degree is a very big deal. If you were to apply for a job as an assistant manager, for example, and you have a college degree, and the other person that applied for the job also only has their high school diploma, you are way more likely to get the job. Not all of it is based on whether or not you have a degree because the other person could know alot more about the feild they are trying to get into even though they dont have a college degree. They could also present themselves better than you do and they could end up getting the job. I think having a college degree is definently something you would need if you are trying to make alot of money or get a good job, and keep that job.

Botstein's Writing response

In my opinion Botstein is writing to the leaders of the education feilds and the government. I believe this because he is trying to inform them that students need a whole new way of learning. That students need to get rid of the whole high school program and make it into something somewhat different. I think he is also talking to the american people because we are the ones who have to go to high school or elementry school. We are the ones who have to do the education and go onto college. He tells us that we should get rid of high school and have kids graduate at the age of 16 because kids are maturing alot faster these days and they need to graduate earlier for this reason. Also he says that kids should start elementry school at four years old and it should end in the sixth grade. After sixth grade he says it should then go to seventh grade and have four years of secondary education. I think this could be effective and also it couldnt be effective for different reasons. I think that if kids graduated at the afe of 16 alot more kids wouldn't go to college unless they lowered the age limit to work at places. In could be effective because there would be less kids dropping out because they would get their schooling done faster so they could either go to college or get a full time job and save up money.

Question #1 for "Where College Fails Us"

I am in my first semester of college at Missouri Western State University. I am going to college because I want to grow up and get a very good job so I can live in a nice home and have a family someday. I am going to college right out of high school because I feel that if I dont do that then I will never end up going and/or finishing it. I want to get a degree in elementry education to become a kindergarden teacher for right now. Im not sure if thats what I really want to be for sure yet, it might still change. I think there is alot of hard work put into college. At first I thought my classes weren't very hard after all, but now as the time goes by and I learn more and more things its getting harder to stay on task and to keep up with the class expectations.
Going to college is alot of money and alot of time you have to spend, either here, or at home doing homework, or either working so that you can pay for your college. I think that in the long run college will be worth all the hard work and long nights doing homework. By the time I graduate I will hopefully get the job that I went to school for and earn the money I expected. These days, the economy is so bad it is extremely difficult to get a job expecially if you dont have any kind of education. Also with a college degree you can make alot more money doing the same job as someone else who doesnt have a college degree.

Task 2 Self Evaluation

The thesis for my task two paper was that it is alot easier to get a good job making the money you want to earn if you go to college the tradtional way right out of high school, unlike my dad did. This paper was an interview I gave to my dad about his education growing up and how he went about his schooling. The main points I make in my paper would be; the crappy jobs my dad had to work at before he started doing his schooling, the amount of money my dad made in those jobs, the job he currently works, the schooling he is going through, him dropping out of high school, going back to school years later at 40 years old, and him fulfilling his goals. The most helpful advice I recieved from my peer evaluation was that I needed to have more details and to take out one whole paragraph that I didn't need. The most helpful information I recieved in class was when my teacher helped me make an outline and figure out where I needed to put my information and how to organize it all.
I wrote two drafts of this paper, one rough draft and one final draft. I wrote both of these on the computer in microsoft word. I also wrote an outline for this paper before I wrote my rough draft. I wrote my rough draft straight from my outline. I wrote my final draft from my rough draft. I would make this paper more effectively by sitting down after I received my rough draft and write down the changes I would make instead of just trying to change them as I go. I am most pleased with the length of my paper, I didnt expect it to end up more than two pages.

Writers Response to "Becoming Educated"

I think that my early expectations for my college classes were that it wasn't going to be that hard at all. I thought I was taking easy classes this semester and I would be flying by in them. Most of my classes are really not that difficult I dont think, but they are just time consuming. I learned that my classes are getting more difficult the longer I am in them and the more things I have to learn. My math class expecially because we have to take a test every so many topics we learn and the more we learn the more we have to know. Also in math everything builds off the things you already know so you have to know the stuff you already learned to move on. My online class is very time consuming because I have to watch videos and sometimes they are longer than an hour.
I also kind of expected my teachers to be very leneant on things, which for the most part they are, but I just expected it to be more free since I am in college now. Also another thing I did not expect was all of the things that are online to be online. In all of my classes I do things online. My other three classes are actually based online. I have a computer class that takes the internet to use and nothing else. Also my math class is online and nothing else. I think that college is for the most part what I expected it to be, and I do expect it to get harder as the time goes by.

Interview

I conducted my interview. My interview was with my dad and his past education and what is education is now. I dont have any questions that still remain after I finished the interview. My interview went very well I thought. Every question that I asked lead to another question and that gave me alot more information that way. I started with open ended questions like, who are you and did you graduate high school. Things like that. I conducted my interview at my house in my living room. I learned some things that I didnt already know about my father. I also learned that when you conduct an interview, when you ask one question another question can be brought out from that one.
I am going to make an outline with my information I collected to make my paper more organized. I will have to transition my interview into a paper by doing that. Some concerns that I have for this paper would be that there isn't enough information for me to write two and a half pages. I also think it might be kind of hard for me to put it into paragraph form, all the information I have. I will have to overcome these things by making an outline with alot of information. I will have to write down what will  be in each paragraph. I also think it might be somewhat hard for me to find out a thesis for my paper. I will read carefully over my information and find out the main point of my paper and my outline to find my thesis.