Do the things i learn in class going to help me in my professionel life?
I’ve just finished my second year in Industrial Engineering and I’m currently doing my summer internship. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m learning at school. I know that every university has a different curriculum, but I can’t help feeling like almost nothing I’ve learned so far will actually be useful in my future career. Maybe that’s because I’m still an intern and I’ve only completed my second year, but during my internship I’m barely using any of the knowledge I gained at university. I’m currently doing time studies and will soon be working on process charts, but honestly, it feels like I wouldn’t even need a degree to do these tasks.
A lot of what we learn at university feels like either manually performing calculations that can already be done automatically with software, or learning procedures that almost anyone could carry out if they were simply given clear instructions. It makes me wonder whether anything I’ve learned so far will actually be useful once I start working full-time.
Sometimes I think that when I graduate and start my career, I’ll still be starting from zero. If that’s the case, what is the value of the degree right now? Why spend four years studying if I’m going to learn everything from scratch on the job anyway?
Or is this just because I’ve only completed two years? Does the education become much more relevant once I start taking more specialized and elective courses? I’m honestly quite confused about all of this