to think my degree is as good as anyone elses?

[SecretSlattern]

I started off in 2004 doing a NVQ 3 in Early Years Care and Education, 3 months after having DD. I qualified 9 months later, with 2 level 3 qualifications and worked for a bit in day nurseries, pre-schools and after school clubs before studying a Foundation Degree in Early Years Childcare and Education.

At the start of the second year of my FD, I discovered I was pg with DS but continued on anyway and had him 2 weeks before the end of the course. I graduated from Uni in 2008, six weeks after having DS.

I finally went back to finish the last year of my BA (hons) in Early Childhood Studies. I now have 2 DCs, one of which is constantly in and out of hospital, and have now discovered I am pg with DC3. The timing is pretty shit, but there you go. DC3 is due in May, the same month that I am due to finish my degree (although will still have to write my dissertation, which I have done before so am confident I can do it again).

However, when telling a friend of mine what I was up to (hadn't spoken in a while), she sniffed, pulled a face and basically said it wouldn't matter if I didn't finish my degree because it isn't a proper degree anyway. "What can you do with a degree in kids?" was the question I was asked.

I actually intend to go on in the future and do a PGCE in primary, specialising in early years. AIBU to think that just because my degree is "in kids" it doesn't make it any less of a degree? I still go to uni, still have to do a mahoosive amount of work, same as any other undergrad.

LeQueen - I don't agree at all. What proof do you have that your average doctor could develop these skills and the OP couldn't? I have to say, I suspect you're still thinking, 'doctors are very intelligent, I'm sure they could develop others skills if they chose'. But I don't think intelligence works like that.

I agree it's possible that there are more people do the OP's degree, who are not capable of being doctors, than there are doctors who would not be capable of doing the OP's degree. But it is still rude to assume this must be a general pattern. We've no evidence to say it is, have we?

The medical profession is a hugely diverse profession and a large range of skills are needed, which is why medical schools like students who have a range of achievements apart from just good exam results.

To argue that it's the same as any other degree is ignorant.

I think a medical student would be highly capable of doing a ECS degree. What abilities do people think they would lack?

Wow, people are getting very het up and defensive. Excellent.

To lay my cards on the table, I recently gained a 2.1 in English Literature from a non Russel-Group, but non-ex-poly University.

Oh, ok then, it was Sussex.

We did have very few contact hours (4 in final year) compared with other subjects. However, we also had a shedload of reading. e.g. three novels per week, prepare a presentation on one of them, and maybe reading some theoretical essays.

Having said that I'm now doing a secondary PGCE. A million times less demanding academically, but a million times harder in terms of stress and time-consumption.

all this posturing and my degree is bigger/better/shinier is really daft - it is not degree trumps.very well done op

imo,pick a degree that suits your temperament ,abilities and interests after all we all work in many areas

and many degrees have a cachet,not actually matched by their day to day demands.not all medicine is dashing around being ebullient like holby and not all law is wafer thin trial winning ass shaking like ally mcbeal.not all architects are glamorous visionaries.every job has its mundane stuff

SM good post

OP I hope you didn't come away from this feeling bad- I did a bit,although wellaware that'smy issues- my personal buttons well and truly pushed, as it were.

Which is of course my own problem, but I hope you don'tfeel in any way as if yourachievement in lesser in any way: I would challenge most people tocoepwith what I did and get the grade I managed. An A with a 5week old baby sat outside with his dad waiting for a feed is IMO an achievement for anyone that will stand in as much stead as anything else. Sheer grit, I think they call it.

Which is something most mature student grads have in spades.

*(Oh and PMSl at the calling it Uni says everything- all that says is where you were riased, not your intelligence level.I am happy to admit I lived on a council estate as a child, absolutely. Where in fact attending Uni, University or even the bleeding Sorbonne wuld be met with equal measures of 'OOOOh' and 'well that's a lot of your life wasted, now when you going to sdrop all this nonsense and get a real job?' )

assumed everyone says uni? and yes i grew up in a scheme.

Smit was the post about saying Uni below from LeQueen I was referring to.

ok,thanks

at SM

truth is, you can waste an Oxbridge first and make amint on a former poly third. It'sjjust the one part of aperson'sskills. My ex had a good maths degree from a RG Uni- slummed for a year, worked for the council a bit,sort of disappeared up his own backside really. My BIL has a third from Coventry,just paid for his six bed house (with my sister with the Early years degree-in-progress) and has a Very High Powered job as an International Trouble Shooter for a big Asian chemical company.

Socialskills, hard work, willingness to learn,and a dose of good old fashioned luck areall int the mix as much as his degree.

You don't need a degree to know the pecking order. You just need a brain.

And anyway what does as good as mean?
Most people going to Oxbridge are much more clever and have better A levels than people doing many other degrees and the teaching is better at the better institutions and employers know all that and you earn more and get hired for more from the better places. That is how the world works but that doesn't mean other degrees are not an achievement and that first post shows a load of effort and achievement.

And no, not everyone does say "uni" - it's an indicator of your class and educational level if you say uni and most people know that. What always I feel is very sad is that some people aren't aware of which degrees from where count with whom and that use of words like uni etc does have an impact - it would at your graduate level job entry level salary £40k. It would matter not a jot if you wanted to be a teacher though - which just shows how downmarket teaching has become. Anyway it's a reasonably free economy so wages typically tell us what society values - housewife - zero, classroom assistant, minimum wage, nanny £X per hour, doctor £Y etc etc.

I agree with VP. I didn't go to Oxbridge although I could have done probably and my younger siblings did. I earn a lot more simply because of hard work, inclination and all those other skills VP mentions above.#

All good fun. The real way to have a fun life as a mother, worker or even a man is to know you're doing the right thing and not be bothered what friends might be saying about you. it's when you're worried all the time about keeping up with the mythical Joneses.

My first reaction was what does it matter.

Then I thought that you can't compare different degrees at all.

Degrees are not all equal, and its unreasonale to think that they are - A perosn might might have a 1st class degree from Oxbridge, another might have a 2:2 from an new university. The Oxbridge degree is more prestigious, but if both people want to be primary teachers and the person with the 2:2 has a degree in teaching well thats more useful. But if both were applying to city law firms to join their graduate programme then the Oxbridge degree would be better.

So your friend is being unreasonable as your degree will be useful for you, but you are being unreasonable to even take her comment seriously, and to not appreciate that some degrees probably are harder than others (not implying that yours is easy, just that some are more work than others.)

my elder brother read English at Oxford around 15 years ago. my cousin also read English at Oxford five years ago - same university, same subject and same final result. however, if one were to imply that they are equally matched intellectually then i would laugh aloud.

standards have fallen a lot even 'at the top'; infact they have been in freefall - i would NOT employ anyone who has graduated during the last decade without testing them rigourously. i have not been impressed by what i have seen recently. we were recruiting for an accounts position to deal with our family affairs. we met plenty of lovely, friendly, sociable new graduates (many with first-class degrees in mickey mouse subjects like 'Business Management'). they could not add up quickly (even with the help of a calculator) and their lateral thinking was really poor in every case. in the end, we opted for a mature person with few formal UK qualifications who had 'worked their way up the ladder'.

i would urge people with kids in their teen and twenties to be realistic about their abilities. a string of A*s and a good degree in a trad subject could be masking a pretty mediocre mind.

excuse the typo para. 2, l.2

AMerryScot - I guess I'm just nervous about people assuming that someone who's bright in one area is necessarily bright in another. My friend is doing the 4-year conversion medical course at the moment (he has an English degree from Leeds that he got before he knew what he wanted to do). His English degree is fine, but he knows perfectly well that he couldn't have coped with taking it any further - he just didn't have the right sort of mind (and furthermore it irritated the heck out of him). I've never done OP's degree so I can't really get a sense of how it might suit a medic to study that, but to assume that doctor = genius in every respect is just plain silly.

tispity, I doubt young people today are any less bright than young people 20 years ago - it's not their fault that league tables (and the national curriculum/assessment) mean schools and universities are doing much more teaching to the test and spoonfeeding. But you are right, in some cases it probably means people are starting work with fewer skills than graduates 20 years ago.

But on average you'd probably want to sit next to a doctor at a dinner than a care worker in terms of brains and conversational skills... or I would... although the last time someone set me up at a dinner party it was a doctor with the personal skills of a lobotomised monkey but even so... my general comment I am sure holds water.

I dunno, I've met some boring doctors and lawyers and some entertaining care workers. And vice versa. Can't tell much about a person from their job, really.

All the extremely clever people at a highly respected charity think tank thingy I know took their receptionist for granted. Until she left and had her first novel published - to great commercial success. (Which is very rare - lots of people try to write novels, some of them manage it, but few ever get published and even fewer make a living, let alone get rich.)

But Xenia, isn't the point that the OP had to suffer someone generalizing and it upset her? I am pretty well aware that the average 18-year-old mother did not plan her pregnancy, but I hope I wouldn't be so rude as to say to a young mother I met, 'Ah, I see, the little one's an accident then?'

As far as I can see, it's a comparable situation in the OP's post. Her degree may attract a lot of layabout teens, but her personal situation is rather different, and she can do without the generalizations.

No - I work beside too many doctors, and they really are no more interesting than anyone else. You get some interesting ones, and some boring ones, as in all walks of life.

goodness cant people give gracious approbation for achievements without nipping on about who has the hardest degree

i had no children at uni and i consider op achievements quite considerable

I think the OP has achieved a hug amount given her personal circumstances and her 'friend' was being unpleasant.
I would agree with others that all degrees are definitely not the same though.

I don't think that academically clever necessarily equals an interesting dinner party guest. I am a medic and can confidently say that there are some in the profession who are v dull and can't talk about much other than their work (although most of us are not like that at all)

I've met some very dull and slow people whose brains seem to move at about a 5th of many others and it's very hard as you sit there thinking well can I wind you up a bit.... now you get very clever doctors and I'm sure the odd clever care home worker but on the whole the Oxbridge firsts you'd rather be stuck at an air port with for 12 hours than the care worker with the IQ of 90. Obviously there are exceptions but generally the person with CCD who scraped into Middlesex ex poly to read XYZ studies and get a "degree" (or lavatory paper) or whatever you want to call it in comparison) is not going to have as good a degree or be likely to be so interesting to talk to as your AAAer at Oxford reading PPE or law or medicine.

But note I did say above it looked like she had achieved much and that it's all relative and as long as you know what you need for whatever you want to do then it's fine. But some children from bad schools aren't told that the ex poly XYZ studies degree is not regarded as well as the Bristol law degree or whatever are being conned by their schools and parents.

A person's career is no indication of how interesting a conversationalist someone will be, and neither is their IQ.

Xenia, not all of us are so obsessed with the IQs,social status and careers of others that we meet.

It wouldn't cross my mind to consider either as a measure of how interesting someone that I meet is likely to be,unless their career was one that I had a particular interest in,perhaps as a possible future career for myself.