I haven't been able to write any blogs these days, because I've been busy studying for Certification exams from Sun microsystems. And I plan to write many many more of these, from vendors like Oracle, SeeBeyond, IBM, LOMA (domain certifications) and finally Microsoft. The motivation for writing them is to get such a huge stack of vendor certifications to go with my resume, no one should be able to see the engineering degree. Things went really wrong for four years with that type of (irrelevant) education.
This is the kind of education that I really enjoy. It's directly relevant to the real world, unlike most of what they taught in engineering. It's mostly multiple choice questions, or actual programming assignments. Plus, no one has to go through the horrendous ordeal of reading my handwriting.
I'm enjoying this a lot, it feels just like the good part of college life. Waking up on the day of the exam, thinking "damn, I got up four hours late. Stupid alarm clock...", realizing that I haven't completed even half of the original "preparation plan", riding to the exam center thinking "I'm surely going to fail", waiting for your turn with nervous anticipation and actually passing in the end.
I strongly feel that the whole of education should be restructured this way, starting with the engineering courses. What do you say?
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9 comments:
Hi
Hi yourself
umm.. how about some real comments?
You have said everything. Nothing much left to comment. Still I'll try...
*) Certifications are good.
I don't know how much do these software companies value it though
*) I don't think that changing our current syllabus or pattern of examination to this (Certification) makes sense.
Our current engg syllabus is great to give a good foundation. The problem was with the way WE studied.
*) What do you mean by the "whole of education"?
If it is about engg. and if you want a pragmatic approach, then should have had the whole of 8th sem for projects. A real project.
[Hungry] Hi
[KK] Hi yourself yourself
[Swaroop] Real. Happy?
[Hungry] Unlike 42, ours was a real project. Ask Chethi! Change should happen both in the way we study and the exams are conducted. We study like that because the exams are conducted the way they are conducted. Even I don't know how much these certifications are valued.
well, they value it enough to REIMBURSE everything you spent.. which makes me happy. (making the company spend, that is). everyone is congratulating me here, including the boss's boss's boss (really) so i think the clients do value it, somewhat.
and why are we bringing up 42 now? we never claimed 42 to be real. i've written some funnny stuff on it: Project "work", Sales Pitch for 42...
http://360.yahoo.com/swaroopmurthy
finally, how should exams be conducted? doesn't it make a lot of sense to use MCQs and real programming assignments?
I must say this, none of these companies are worth those certifications. What these people need is just an employee who works, they don't even need him/HER to be intelligent. They just need a resource.
NOTE 1:I'm talking on behalf of all those companies where the job profile sucks.
NOTE 2:You can always assume that I don't know specifically anything about "your" company and ignore my comments.
NOTE 3:There is a reason for all caps for HER in my comments, which will be discussed sometime later. It's just not a typing mistake.
"they just need a resource"
that's so true.
wud really like to know about the "HER" bit..
a topic for which i have strong opinions ...
1) to test our knowledge of what's written in the text book, the testing should be MCQ. There's no use asking us to write a page full of facts for one question and expect us to answer 2o such questions in every exam.
2) subjective questions are important too, but the evaluator must not be a dumbass and must understand English. Subjective questions are what test the student's ability to apply factual concepts in solving a real-world problem
3) "they just need a resource" - i tend to agree with this in many cases :(
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