I Love The Internet

What follows are some major points from a most interesting comment in response to my post on why I left the University of Phoenix.

So, after your very long write up on why it doesn’t matter where you get the degree, your ego forced you to go to brick-n-mortar. I think you care too much of what others think, than your own thought — and to put UoP on your resume is too much for you to bear … in your prior notes on why UoP was a good place to go, you mention..“If you are in the professional world already and trying to get a bachelors or masters, UoP is probably going to be just as good as a small to medium-sized state or private university. The odds of your company not accepting what’s embraced by tons of Fortune 500 companies are slim.”But your ego couldn’t handle putting such the UoP joke that was before pragmatic and really had nothing to do with your pragmatic fortune 500 post than with your all-consuming ego (your blog is a manifestation of it.)

I think you’ve utterly mis-characterized my decision to not attend UoP. If you’ll notice, it wasn’t until I actually interacted with them and saw their glaring flaws that I made the decision not to attend the institution. I didn’t go into the details in the post itself, but since you’ve made it an issue I’ll offer some examples.

1. The experiences with my handlers at the school were reminiscent of being conned into something. I am quite tuned to such things and it was utterly palpable. Their answers to me questions were defensive in nature, as well as evasive. It felt as if they were running an operation that was under investigation and about to be shut down. And this was while I was a proponent of the place.
2. On the day I was supposed to sign up, nothing worked. I had my advisor and a tech support guy on the line for close to two hours, trying to show me how to get into my classes. I’ve actually done the technology implementations on online classes before myself, and have a bit of web design and web development knowledge. This was a total hack. A kludge of a hack.The site was a collection of heterogeneous crap thrown together through hyperlinks, many of which didn’t even work. The guys on the other end of the phone were freaking out trying to convince me that this was atypical, but it was clearly not. The bottom line is that I got an extreme feeling of low quality from the entire institution — a feeling of pretending to be something it was not.The reason I wrote such a positive post before about the UoP is because I asssumed it had 90% of the quality of a decent, small state university. My theory was that the quality was basically the same, and that it just had a stigma that it did not deserve. As such, I defended UoP based on the reasons I mentioned. I was simply wrong about the place. It is in fact far lower quality than I previously imagined — so much so that I would fear for my degree’s future worth if I were to graduate from there.So no, I didn’t change my mind about my post; I simply received more information that showed me my initial assumptions were incorrect.

You need to write a few blog posts on your ego and how it affects your talking about your car, your toys, your schools and how to re-re-redesign the looks of your website… I’m sure there will be plenty of “holes” in my post, that you can logic your way to a witty reply, but then again, isn’t that ego looking to refluff itself…? Anyway good luck in your lifelong wrestle with your inner voice and your fear of what will think of you.

Actually, I’m working on an ego post now that you’ll probably enjoy. Of course, I’ve already discussed this a number of times, including here: http://dmiessler.com/archives/1152. The short response to your comment is that I acknowledge your observation and agree with it.

But since you seem to cast the whole thing in a rather negative light I feel inclined to defend myself to some degree. I don’t think having an ego is something to apologize for any more than having sexual desire toward attractive women. It’s natural. I’m aware of it and I enjoy writing about it, as I do all my various flaws.

I would ask you to consider, however, that there is arguably a negative trade-off to having no ego. That downside is the reluctance to voice your opinions and ask for input on them. You won’t encounter many interesting people who don’t have an ego. Why? Because your odds of running into an interesting person by chance who doesn’t make their opinions known aren’t good.

The odds are that if you find someone interesting, it’s because they’re saying something in public, which requires confidence, courage, and therefore some form of ego. Think of 100 people that have contributed most to the world and the majority of them probably like to be heard, seen, interacted with, or otherwise experienced.

Anyway, I have much to say on the matter, but I’ll save that for another day.

Cheers,

-Daniel