The hard truth of university was drilled into me by the dean on our last day of class in our exit exam. He was telling us our whole four years of bullshit in pursuit of a degree was, in his words, "us just throwing shit on a wall to see what would stick". Better was the comment from the peanut gallery, "I SAID you admin guys were there to shit on us!" But then he elaborated, saying that most jobs only require a small subset of skills to do it, but that most of them had to be quickly learned, so they battered us with shit we didn't need so we'd condition ourselves to learning on the fly.
And since I've been working, it's so true. Rama mentioned AutoCAD...I had to teach myself remedial ACAD so I could do my work. Either I updated some drawings, or the job would die and it'd be my fault. So I hunkered down with that big-assed book, found a few guys who would help me out a bit when stuck, and did it. It was quick, dirty, and completely not up to conventional drafting technique, but it was done. And that doesn't count the contracting, inspections, paperwork, many other pieces of software, etc.
All told, I'd be happier and life'd be far simpler if I were in the woods cutting and loading paper wood all day. But they don't take 6' pine anymore, so that's out. So I'm stuck doing this crap...but I remember my university experience as being a matter of not being around enough women. Where I was, most of the time was spend studying, and you just didn't deal with the opposite sex often unless you were big into the bar scene.
