Geek-Filled College Has Required Social Skills Classes
- Thread starter Keane Ng
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They don't mess about enough?
That's a new one... But I suppose their lives must be pretty un-interesting. Ok, so you hit level 80 less than a week after WotLK came out.. Try using that as a chat up line. Problem is.. they probably would as well.
That's a new one... But I suppose their lives must be pretty un-interesting. Ok, so you hit level 80 less than a week after WotLK came out.. Try using that as a chat up line. Problem is.. they probably would as well.
You Americans are funny. Most of you dabble in opposite ends of the spectrum. Either total party animals, or complete outsiders. Why not just a bit of balance?
After all, if you're this über-programmer that makes millions, but can't enjoy the company of others, not being able to share experiences, how the heck can you stay creative? Or mentally balanced? You really think you can have a family, if you can't face other people? You'll you become the parent of the smelly kid? And forget about leading a team at work. That's 90% socialization skills. You may know a lot about the area you're working on, but it will boil down to how well can you coordinate and motivate the people you're responsible for.
I know that when I go towards an extreme, I miss out on more than what I gain.
Social skills can be taught to a degree, but most of the teaching will come from the environment. That university is deadlocked.
After all, if you're this über-programmer that makes millions, but can't enjoy the company of others, not being able to share experiences, how the heck can you stay creative? Or mentally balanced? You really think you can have a family, if you can't face other people? You'll you become the parent of the smelly kid? And forget about leading a team at work. That's 90% socialization skills. You may know a lot about the area you're working on, but it will boil down to how well can you coordinate and motivate the people you're responsible for.
I know that when I go towards an extreme, I miss out on more than what I gain.
Social skills can be taught to a degree, but most of the teaching will come from the environment. That university is deadlocked.
*sighs*
I wish there were LAN parties at my school...
Lucky.
I wish there were LAN parties at my school...
Lucky.
The thing you don't see outside of the states are PSAs that instruct us to be extreme and/or steriotypical so that we could participate in a country-wide reality show, if the economy should crash.oMonarca said:
I don't know how universities work in America but I imagine at a geeky university with 95% per cent males the hazing is a Zork Challenge and a D&D dungeon crawl through the MUD before any of the students are accepted into any form of fraternity living. But even then, I'd rather have that than paddling.
This wouldn't happen in Australia, in Australia there are not enough jobs for the said programmers so not enough courses are being offered with scholarships in IT.
That and a shower never killed anybody. Apart from that woman I saw on "Today Tonight" once who is allergic to water. So sad.
This wouldn't happen in Australia, in Australia there are not enough jobs for the said programmers so not enough courses are being offered with scholarships in IT.
That and a shower never killed anybody. Apart from that woman I saw on "Today Tonight" once who is allergic to water. So sad.
I'm on the flip side of this particular dilemma as far as my business studies are concerned, and I think the problem isn't with the geeks in IT. The problem is that nobody adequately prepares business-school types for dealing with people who aren't socially driven, outgoing rah-rah corporate people, which leads to talent dilution in American corporations.
We don't need to teach social skills to geeks. We need to teach tolerance skills to managers. Then again, Scott Adams was right about business-school people. Statistics have shown that the lowest IQs and SAT scores at any given college are going to belong to the business majors (my own woeful performance on the verbal section of the SAT stands testament to this point). "The smartest guys in the room" ain't.
Still, if we start teaching a process-oriented approach to business school students, a "take care of your nerd and he'll take care of you" line of thinking, then not only will we see greater job satisfaction among the people with the real talent (an essential in any business), but we'll also see greater productivity in the whole office once managers realize that the socially inept, horribly introverted to the point of autistic-spectrum, but freakishly brilliant people are the key to the whole damn company. Plus, a manager who gets the most out of his people makes more money, which seems to be the only thing 90% of those biz-school dolts understand.
We don't need to teach social skills to geeks. We need to teach tolerance skills to managers. Then again, Scott Adams was right about business-school people. Statistics have shown that the lowest IQs and SAT scores at any given college are going to belong to the business majors (my own woeful performance on the verbal section of the SAT stands testament to this point). "The smartest guys in the room" ain't.
Still, if we start teaching a process-oriented approach to business school students, a "take care of your nerd and he'll take care of you" line of thinking, then not only will we see greater job satisfaction among the people with the real talent (an essential in any business), but we'll also see greater productivity in the whole office once managers realize that the socially inept, horribly introverted to the point of autistic-spectrum, but freakishly brilliant people are the key to the whole damn company. Plus, a manager who gets the most out of his people makes more money, which seems to be the only thing 90% of those biz-school dolts understand.
Chrisma check- 19+4, that means I score!
No for real though, you can't change a person by making them take classes. They genuninely need to want to change.
No for real though, you can't change a person by making them take classes. They genuninely need to want to change.
I'm getting two things from this thread:
1) Lots of defensive sounding posts, presumably from people who have been criticised at some point on their own 'social skills'
2) Lots of people seem to be missing the point; they are not teaching them how to go a bar and have a beer, or how to chat up girls. They are teaching them how to be functional in their workplace by, for example, speaking eloquently during a meeting or something.
I think its a good think, they do similar classes in the physics department at my uni.
1) Lots of defensive sounding posts, presumably from people who have been criticised at some point on their own 'social skills'
2) Lots of people seem to be missing the point; they are not teaching them how to go a bar and have a beer, or how to chat up girls. They are teaching them how to be functional in their workplace by, for example, speaking eloquently during a meeting or something.
I think its a good think, they do similar classes in the physics department at my uni.
So instead of a bunch of smelly awkward nerds you'll have a bunch of drunk smelly awkward nerds. The school should take that money it was going to spend on those social skill classes and use it to create more social EVENTS. Concerts, stuff like that.CoverYourHead said:
I have a good idea of what this is on about, and honestly I'm surprised it hasn't come up sooner. As a working software engineer and former president of my college's gaming club, I've seen some fairly atrocious examples of poor social awareness, and I'm talking about more than just failing to bathe regularly.
The gaming club holds weekly meetings that basically amount to a bunch of TVs set up with consoles and games for people to jump into. For a good 2 years, we had one kid who brought in his own PS2 with Capcom vs SNK 2, and spent the entire meeting sitting by himself playing on Training mode. Occasionally someone would come by and play a match with him, but most meetings he would sit on his own for the full 3 hours. Every week. For 2 years.
One time we had Guitar Hero 3 set up, and one guy got on it and failed the opening to "Through the Fire and Flames" a good 50 times in a row. Listening to the same opening bar of a song I never liked in the first place repeated over and over was extremely annoying. We told him this. He continued playing. A bit later we warned him that if didn't cut it out, we'd pull the plug and send him off. He didn't stop. We pulled the plug and told him to leave. He literally threw down the guitar controller (lucky for him it wasn't damaged) and started shouting, acting indignant, and overall throwing a tantrum.
We've had occasions of people demanding refunds for their tournament fees after being eliminated, claiming some complaint about our rules (which were clearly available for them to read before they entered).
And this sort of behavior definitely transfers to the office. A friend of mine had a co-op (basically a paid internship) with IBM this past year, working on the Lotus Symphony program suite. He was assigned to work with another co-op on making a calculator plugin. Now this guy knew programming, and he really knew calculators (and would often brag that he owns more than 100 calculators). But whenever the project needed some sort of graphical work done, this guy would have to go to the graphics design people and tell them what he needs. From what I gather, he was completely incapable of clearly explaining what it was that he wanted, and when the graphic he received wasn't exactly what he had pictured in his head he would berate and insult the designer. On at least one occasion he made someone cry by shouting at them. It got to the point where the graphics designers outright refused to work with him. He was eventually fired for this.
This is what they mean by 'basic social skills'. It's not a matter of whether they'll go out and get drunk with the guys; it's a matter of being able to understand the concept that other people have needs and emotions, and that ignoring or disregarding the needs and emotions of others is rude. Now by the time these folks are in college, this behavior will be fairly difficult to fix, but by forcing them to be lectured on it and grading them on their ability to play nice, it is possible to curb the more drastic problems.
On the other side, there are of course the people who are simply introverted who've never been good at speaking with others or expressing themselves clearly. I was like that back when I started college. Forcing myself to interact with the gaming club did wonders for my public speaking and overall ability to interact socially. I still wouldn't go out drinking with the guys, and I generally keep to myself at my cube, but now if someone approaches me at work to start a conversation, or to ask about something work-related, I'm perfectly able to respond to them in a way that they understand and we can get along just fine - and to a business, that means productivity, which is all they really want from you.
So in conclusion, these sort of classes are a good thing, and given the rise of online social networks I honestly feel that most schools would do good to require that students learn about proper real-world human interaction.
The gaming club holds weekly meetings that basically amount to a bunch of TVs set up with consoles and games for people to jump into. For a good 2 years, we had one kid who brought in his own PS2 with Capcom vs SNK 2, and spent the entire meeting sitting by himself playing on Training mode. Occasionally someone would come by and play a match with him, but most meetings he would sit on his own for the full 3 hours. Every week. For 2 years.
One time we had Guitar Hero 3 set up, and one guy got on it and failed the opening to "Through the Fire and Flames" a good 50 times in a row. Listening to the same opening bar of a song I never liked in the first place repeated over and over was extremely annoying. We told him this. He continued playing. A bit later we warned him that if didn't cut it out, we'd pull the plug and send him off. He didn't stop. We pulled the plug and told him to leave. He literally threw down the guitar controller (lucky for him it wasn't damaged) and started shouting, acting indignant, and overall throwing a tantrum.
We've had occasions of people demanding refunds for their tournament fees after being eliminated, claiming some complaint about our rules (which were clearly available for them to read before they entered).
And this sort of behavior definitely transfers to the office. A friend of mine had a co-op (basically a paid internship) with IBM this past year, working on the Lotus Symphony program suite. He was assigned to work with another co-op on making a calculator plugin. Now this guy knew programming, and he really knew calculators (and would often brag that he owns more than 100 calculators). But whenever the project needed some sort of graphical work done, this guy would have to go to the graphics design people and tell them what he needs. From what I gather, he was completely incapable of clearly explaining what it was that he wanted, and when the graphic he received wasn't exactly what he had pictured in his head he would berate and insult the designer. On at least one occasion he made someone cry by shouting at them. It got to the point where the graphics designers outright refused to work with him. He was eventually fired for this.
This is what they mean by 'basic social skills'. It's not a matter of whether they'll go out and get drunk with the guys; it's a matter of being able to understand the concept that other people have needs and emotions, and that ignoring or disregarding the needs and emotions of others is rude. Now by the time these folks are in college, this behavior will be fairly difficult to fix, but by forcing them to be lectured on it and grading them on their ability to play nice, it is possible to curb the more drastic problems.
On the other side, there are of course the people who are simply introverted who've never been good at speaking with others or expressing themselves clearly. I was like that back when I started college. Forcing myself to interact with the gaming club did wonders for my public speaking and overall ability to interact socially. I still wouldn't go out drinking with the guys, and I generally keep to myself at my cube, but now if someone approaches me at work to start a conversation, or to ask about something work-related, I'm perfectly able to respond to them in a way that they understand and we can get along just fine - and to a business, that means productivity, which is all they really want from you.
So in conclusion, these sort of classes are a good thing, and given the rise of online social networks I honestly feel that most schools would do good to require that students learn about proper real-world human interaction.
Unfortunately, that's just not true. You still need the social agility to get through the workforce. As an IT person who is system and network admin, I still need to be able to know the niceties of interpersonal relations in order to meet my obligations. The reason these complaints are surfacing is because these poor folks don't get the basics.GothmogII said:
That being said I sort of disagree with required classes for social skills. You can only teach them to a certain extent and if these students are as skeptical of these classes as they seem it might even make the problem worse. The real way to deal with this is practical examples. For any of the internship programs they may be required to participate in, they'll have goals that require the social skills to be used - for example, giving a presentation about their developed product or working with people in a project management role in order to gather technical needs and deal with challenges.
I think seeing that having horrible BO or being unable to look people in the eye is destructive in an actual work environ will go a long way towards teaching these students rather than some class.