UHK: The University of Hard Knocks

Here we're talking about just going out and getting a dumb 'ol job in the business and learning by doing. This is the time-honored way. Working your way up from Hanging Out to Slave to Gopher to Assistant Studio Office Manager to Assistant Engineer to Engineer to Producer to President to Ruler Of The Universe! The theory is that you learn on the job. And because it's the real world, you learn the really important stuff, not some stupid theoretical junk that some egghead professor who's never soldered an XLR in his life is spouting in some ivory-tower classroom. The best part of it is that you are getting paid for it. You are getting an education on OPM (Other People's Money)!

There is, of course, a lot to be said for this. It works best, of course, if you already have learned how to learn. The problem is that your on-the-job learning is restricted to the range of your job (soldering XLRs?), and to the restricted vision and limitations of your boss (who may never have completed eighth grade and may be a turkey, besides). I've noticed a defensiveness among UHK graduates - they often aren't sure how much they know, and sometimes resent others who may have more extended training. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that you sometimes find it harder to get promoted than some guy coming in with lots of degrees 'n stuff. The UHK diploma doesn't count for very much, except among other UHK alums.

As a result, you'll do best with UHK training if you combine it with learning on your own, a short course, and/or some college. Don't just entrust your learning to your job. Learn everything you can from your job, but also go beyond it, seeking out every possible opportunity to expand on what you know.

Commencement For Fun And Profit

In the real world, you never graduate. You just keep learning. As you learn, your knowledge of your limitations keeps increasing so that, paradoxically, as you learn more and more you will find that you know less and less!

At the same time, education works! The more you learn, the more successful you will become. The benefits of education keep accruing throughout your life, in terms of money, success and life quality.

Meanwhile, the recording field is fiercely interdisciplinary: you need to know science, psychology, math, music, basic engineering, and you've got to have patience, endurance, tolerance, ears, humor, and lots of judgment. These don't come quick, they don't come easy. You'll need to keep working and working on them, probably for the rest of your life or at least until your next career change!

Beyond audio, everything else is changing too. Life's a moving target. You'll change jobs lots of times, careers a couple of times, and your place in and perspective of life will change as you age (yes, Virginia, aging happens to all of us and from all reports beats the alternative!). Adapting to those changes successfully is a central part of what education is all about, sort of like learning to dance on ice floes. You'll never really be educated. So, take on as many of the educational possibilities I've discussed above as you possibly can. At various times, in various places, all of them are the right way to do things.

Happy diplomas!

Dave Moulton is generally confused, and learning to enjoy it. He also enjoys confusing students wherever he can find them, most notably, these days, at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and Emerson College in Boston.