Even Without Student Loans, I Regret My Degree

Allison Fleck
2 min readSep 8, 2021

I’m just not sure what I got out of it.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

I graduated from college in the early 00’s with only a small amount of student loan debt. The $10,000 I did have was paid off within a year with the modest salary I earned at my first job without living like a frugal hermit.

So it’s not about the money.

I’m just not sure what I got out of the whole experience.

Though there are some highly technical fields that do require advanced training and years of study, most jobs are not in those fields. Engineers, doctors, and lawyers all needs very specific skillsets and knowledge that are honed through rigorous coursework.

But most jobs are not that.

For myself and the majority of people that I know (who are an overly educated bunch), the skills we use on a daily basis were learned on the job. Internships provided valuable learning opportunities and the rest of college was mostly fluff that we had to get through to get our degrees.

I have a degree in pure mathematics; I took several classes which taught me the correct way to prove mathematical theories.

In my job now, I add and subtract. Occasionally I multiply or divide.

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Allison Fleck

Data analyst and life analyst. Proud maker of mistakes. A big fan of learning lessons the hard way.