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by constantcrying 270 days ago
From my experience at a German university, it was very clear that every student with a desire to learn would learn relevant skills and have no trouble passing any exam. The exams never were easy and studying was required,but if you understood the subject you would definitely pass.

The experience the author describes seems totally disconnected what I have ever experienced in university. The author believes (which I think is unlikely) that the university had nothing to teach to him, in my experience this always was the fault of the student. Often blaming "esoteric" and "irrelevant" subjects such as linear algebra for their lack of success, while not understanding that it is a vital course for any engineer.

1 comments

The poster was achieved success in all metrics he was exposed to.
Did you read the article? The author laments that he did not learn anything relevant to him during his degree.
He graduated with "some of the highest grades" in his class.
How is that at all relevant to what I am saying. The author explicitly said that it wasn't.
> Often blaming "esoteric" and "irrelevant" subjects such as linear algebra for their lack of success, while not understanding that it is a vital course for any engineer.

The author was successful in his particular environment. It was only much later he understood that the content of his education wasn't valuable in itself.

He is not blaming linear algebra, rather complaining that he was graded on memorisation rather than understanding.

And? How is that relevant at all to anything I or the author said?

His success, as the author makes explicit, has nothing to do with his university education.