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<p>[QUOTE="placement93, post: 1558247, member: 39525"]I was hoping my last question would point towards the kind of irony I was trying to imply. ["<span style="color: #000000">Am I a naive American who just thinks that college degrees are short cuts into mastering various fields and allowing people to capitalize on personal passions?"] </span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"></span><span style="color: #000000">To a certain extent, I was pointing out the absurdity of the fact that I received an ad suggesting I get a degree in photography when one of the only things I talk about on FB is coins. Especially over the last couple of months, probably 65%-70% of my posts (other than saying things like "How cute!" when I see pictures of my niece) are me posting about coins, especially my coin roll hunting results.</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000">The serious part of the post was asking whether or not professional numismatists, whether graders, traders, etc. thought they would have benefited from something more formalized than being a hobbyist in their days starting out. Despite the banter about, "Experience trumps education any day!" you can't argue that in just about any field, a college degree is usually a pretty darned good place to start. I'm thinking, in particular, of a thread on this very site where someone facetiously posted pictures of heavily cleaned coins (</span><a href="http://www.cointalk.com/t205352/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.cointalk.com/t205352/">http://www.cointalk.com/t205352/</a>)<span style="color: #000000">. For at least the first page of responses, everybody got the joke, but it wasn't until the second page that Jim stepped in and pointed out that some newcomers might be convinced that grinding down the details on their coins with cola and toothpaste on an eraser is a great idea. </span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000">I could go on about skepticism and why a person should or shouldn't trust folks in online forums, but that debate is pretty old at this point and this community seems one of the more earnest and knowledgeable on their topic than almost any other in which I've participated. I've learned more in two and a half months about coins from these forums than I have from any other online numismatic resource. However, I learned a LOT more about my own body (comparably) in an A&P I course I took a few years ago than I've learned about coins here. I don't think that anyone, including myself, would argue that education is more meaningful than experience. However, experience is not systematic and education, at least at the 4 year level, which comes before the emphasis shifts from "</span><span style="color: #000000">be[ing] baby fed material they can then regurgitate back to others,</span><span style="color: #000000">" (Jim's words) to personal research and actually advancing the field as a whole, is intended to give the student a "broad, general view of things." [Readers of William Burroughs will get that joke.]</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000">[Edit: grammar]</span>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="placement93, post: 1558247, member: 39525"]I was hoping my last question would point towards the kind of irony I was trying to imply. ["[COLOR=#000000]Am I a naive American who just thinks that college degrees are short cuts into mastering various fields and allowing people to capitalize on personal passions?"] [/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]To a certain extent, I was pointing out the absurdity of the fact that I received an ad suggesting I get a degree in photography when one of the only things I talk about on FB is coins. Especially over the last couple of months, probably 65%-70% of my posts (other than saying things like "How cute!" when I see pictures of my niece) are me posting about coins, especially my coin roll hunting results. The serious part of the post was asking whether or not professional numismatists, whether graders, traders, etc. thought they would have benefited from something more formalized than being a hobbyist in their days starting out. Despite the banter about, "Experience trumps education any day!" you can't argue that in just about any field, a college degree is usually a pretty darned good place to start. I'm thinking, in particular, of a thread on this very site where someone facetiously posted pictures of heavily cleaned coins ([/COLOR][URL]http://www.cointalk.com/t205352/[/URL])[COLOR=#000000]. For at least the first page of responses, everybody got the joke, but it wasn't until the second page that Jim stepped in and pointed out that some newcomers might be convinced that grinding down the details on their coins with cola and toothpaste on an eraser is a great idea. I could go on about skepticism and why a person should or shouldn't trust folks in online forums, but that debate is pretty old at this point and this community seems one of the more earnest and knowledgeable on their topic than almost any other in which I've participated. I've learned more in two and a half months about coins from these forums than I have from any other online numismatic resource. However, I learned a LOT more about my own body (comparably) in an A&P I course I took a few years ago than I've learned about coins here. I don't think that anyone, including myself, would argue that education is more meaningful than experience. However, experience is not systematic and education, at least at the 4 year level, which comes before the emphasis shifts from "[/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]be[ing] baby fed material they can then regurgitate back to others,[/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]" (Jim's words) to personal research and actually advancing the field as a whole, is intended to give the student a "broad, general view of things." [Readers of William Burroughs will get that joke.] [Edit: grammar][/COLOR][/QUOTE]
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