7 years, 4 Masters, Full time job

The other day I made an observation on LinkedIn that 8 people had recently left the employment of UMass (LinkedIn told me so). The number seemed rather high, so I wanted, out of curiosity, to know who had left, was it someone I knew? It turns out that most of the people who "left" were teaching assistants, graduate assistants, or like me had added "student" to their profile under job. Back in the day LinkedIn didn't have a way to get recommendations for your student achievements which is why I added a Student "job" under employment, now of course they do so it's not that important.

In any case, I remembered that I too had a "job position" as Graduate Student, and since I recently graduated I thought it would be time to update my profile and say that I no longer have that "job". I have to say that while I knew that I was a perpetual student, it really surprised me that I had been a Master's Level student for 7 years! In 7 years, with a full time job, I managed to earn 4 Master's degrees....wow! I really surprised even myself!

Throughout my studies I looked at a number of things including: (1) the Telecommunications Industry; (2) Academic Library & Academic IT Department mergers; (3) Human Resources & Labor Relations; (4) Issues of Privacy; (5) Communities of Practice; (6) Educational Technology in Language Education; (7) Methods in Classical Language Education; and (8) the Web 2.0-ification of the Website of College Libraries . Some things were purely management oriented (the telecom industry for example was a strategic management thing), but other themes, like the Communities of Practice, crossed over throughout all my degrees.

This long stint as a Masters student, through several subject areas, made me realize something that most people don't realize. Knowledge and knowing are not individual and unconnected silos - All knowledge and all subject are connected. Some more loosely than others, but they are connected nevertheless. The sooner we realize and accept that, the better the overall outcomes for future knowledge generation and knowledge dissemination.

Cross-Posted from my Club-Admiralty blog

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