In a coffee talk that I had with one of my designers – between the casual and the disinhibition of the moment – he made the confession that every teacher does not want to hear: “the truth is that I was never prepared for this at university”, referring to the projects we had in front of us.
I think that every teacher has heard this expression on at least one occasion, phrases like: “the university is not good for the real world”, “the teachers never gave me the correct knowledge” or “the school and the real world do not combine. If it belongs to any student, it feels ugly, but if it comes from the lips of a former student, it goes a little deeper.
I do not understand how it is that we endure so long without talking about it, I have never read an article that addresses the subject, but I do viral videos in which the education system is accused over and over again of not being in force with the needs that the market requires obsolescence.
In some teachers, this idea generated a vaccine with which we tried to remedy it. Many try to emulate the professional world: “I am not the teacher, I am a client, and so I am going to demand them”, even, once I knew of one who conducted interviews with his students at the beginning of class, trying to teach them a little of future reality.
What is true is that teachers do not focus on refuting this argument, we always react with superficial arguments and from the wrong side of reason. I do not think that any teacher, especially those who have an alternating work in daily practice, has not thought about how to turn it around from their classroom, therefore, I propose four arguments that allow us to understand this reality, which as a colophon, is not so real nor so exaggerated.
Table of Contents
1. The real world does not exist in the university:
The truth, and with
This begins my argument, is that it is impossible for you to
teach the real world. I stopped trying to do a long time. I don’t mean to do
my design providers students, but the essence of my strategy
pedagogical is based on it, on observing what the market requires and starting
from there, without trying to turn the living room into a professional study, but yes
lay the groundwork and prepare them as well as possible so that when the
moment, find a more or less known place, from which they depart to
new experiences and knowledge.
A student has a universal characteristic: he has always been a student. From kindergarten to college, all you know how to receive in exchange for your effort is a grade; Make him see that in the future he will not be able to deliver 6 or 7 jobs and will not have any effect until his head is involved. Also, for this, it does not require any preparation, when the time comes, you just have to make adjustments to your head to change to the high-speed lane.
2. No university can stand the pace of modernity:
Yeah not even the MIT, Stanford or Oxford They can offer a curriculum to match the changes. There was a web design class, in which the teacher, in an attempt to equip his pupils with “useful” knowledge, taught them Muse, the Adobe program that allowed designing websites without the need to enter code. Today with Muse discontinued that class touched obsolescence, really the essential thing would have been to learn code, to program and perhaps from Dreamweaver It would have been a more logical solution. But we know that since the graphic design career, a class of HTML it is only the beach of an ocean.
The renewal of
study plan requires months and sometimes more than a year of planning,
authorization from the authorities and the guarantee to be able to integrate
formally. It starts from the first year, so when someone goes in
seventh semester, the plan brings a lag of at least four years.
That is why a good university opts for continuing education plans, where courses can be designed in accordance with a more present reality.
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3: The ‘universality’ of the university:
We lose sight of the fact that the university do not It teaches the real application, but the bases on which one can understand how the interior of each of the races works, it is like the formation of bone, but not of the skin.
The initial thesis, that the university cannot teach the real world, has to do with the fact that professional practice is so varied, that classifying it in one style is idle.
There are those who in their first job enter advertising agencies to do photo retouching; others from day one are already designing a logo or campaign; While some fall limp and work in unbeatable environments, with sympathetic bosses of their novice, with benefits beyond the law, others must give their lives and souls to their workplaces, breathing hostility and managing the stress of urgent jobs while they charge the minimum.
There are things that do
they are comparable: just as one must learn to deal with good and bad
teachers, later they will be good and bad bosses. There are students who since greeting
have already disliked the teacher (and vice versa) and still, they must
learn to deal with it throughout the course, just like in real life
with a boss.
It also works to learn to justify work, to support ideas, to make value judgments beyond the “I like / don’t like”, even to get rid of that bureaucratic maze to obtain the title. All that works, but we cannot sell it as the real world that will be discovered from the first job.
4: Professional life is like soccer season:
Almost all the
Professional soccer tournaments are divided into two parts: the first, which is
longest, where the teams face each other and accumulate points
as they win, draw or lose. This helps them to climb inside their
groups in order to arrive first or with the minimum that
guarantee to move to the second phase.
The second phase in which it is called playoffs, the finals or the league, as it is known in Mexico and in it the best teams are eliminated, most of the time in one or two games until reaching the final and then the championship.
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What i want
to get from this is that everything a team did in the first phase – almost always
much longer than the second – it was working hard with an eye on
qualify, to do it in the most efficient way, in the shortest possible time,
in order not only to qualify, but to do it in the best position,
getting as a reward, skipping a round or playing closing at home in
instead of having to go to the opponent’s city. From there on, the beginning
of the second phase is a period and apart, it does not matter if all the matches
You won by beating or if you passed because you barely gave thanks to others
teams above you lost.
That is one
perfect definition between university and the real world. In the first phase
—University—, we are dedicated to winning in every subject obtaining good
notes (although the emphasis should be rather on the quality of them), with the
purpose of moving to the second phase as comfortably as possible: being able to choose
among the options, not having so much wear looking for work and fitting in
our first options with the most competitive salaries.
Normally, a team that goes through to the second phase in a row is more likely to keep winning. The first phase helps teams get to know each other, learn to play together, measure strength, assimilate strategies and playing styles.
Each match gives them a broader domain of the tournament. As in real life, those who are more likely to advance in the second phase are better positioned are those who have a better streak, who dominate more the design, its variants, which adapt easily to each of the challenges and are more skilled in handling situations, almost always based on excellent technique.
It is clear that
the harder we try to win the championship from the first round,
we are losing focus that what really matters is winning every
match and get the most teaching, be it victory, draw or defeat.
So, the
university is one thing and the real world another, as linked as disparate, and in
where in each place one must do his work.
