 Oh boy, we're on the internet again. Hello my people Welcome to another Monday livestream today, I'm gonna be telling you guys a little bit about my University experience because honestly, I don't think I've talked about it a whole lot on this channel and I feel like my university experience story is like one of tragedy comedy and everything together it is it is a Wild ride and I want to share it with you because it's part of the reason why I do what I do here at score like I have had What most people would consider an awful University experience like an awful one that's probably what most people would say But that's not really the the reason why I want to talk about I want to talk about the positives that I got from it I mean, I'm gonna share some of the negatives, but I wanted to point that out like there is This was a university where I did not get a lot of support I did not have a very good time to say the least but I benefited from it and I think I got a lot of good positives out of it that I want to share with you guys So that's kind of the idea of the stream today I want to talk to you guys a little bit about my university experience and share with you what it was like I went to university here in Peru in a public university no less Which is a bold move to say the least Most people Were very surprised that I took that decision But it may it was the decision that made sense for me One of the things we talk about a lot here is how important it is to find a university that is a good fit for you You know like one that works for you and your needs and my needs were very particular see I was at the time I was teaching in Ramon de school and I had zero University experience like I had no college education whatsoever. I had no no nothing. Okay, no nothing I had like zero Didn't even get like started on a degree in the US which I'll get into a little bit later But I literally just had nothing more than my own experiences here in Peru And that wasn't quite enough for me to continue to be like a qualified teacher here in this country Arguably, I shouldn't have been teaching school in the first place if we look at it from a legal perspective, but I was teaching English and So as a native English speaker you can kind of get away with teaching English for a while without a degree But if you want to keep moving up and if you want people to kind of respect you And if you want to have job security you need a degree like it wasn't a good feeling being at a job and having to sort of like hide the fact that I didn't have a degree and having to like Worry about well, what if somebody says something or what if I have a problem? And then I get in trouble like I didn't want that to happen to me So when I started in Ramon de after my first year there I kind of got myself financially situated a little better and the next step was like, okay I should probably study this thing that I do every day Right like I teach but I'm teaching basically on intuition and a little bit of like What I've seen other people do and what I know works and doesn't from my own experience But I didn't have any sort of theoretical basis or like any sort of knowledge about how education was really supposed to work And and I wanted to get that knowledge. I genuinely did so I ended up taking the Opportunity to study in this Peruvian University for a very simple reason. It was literally a good fit It was exactly what I needed and here's why I worked full-time Monday to Friday at a school I had to be at that school by 7 30 every morning had to finish around three every day I could not do classes during the day. All right While there are some programs where I could go get classes at night It was also difficult because I also did private classes. Sometimes I had to do stuff after school like I could not like rely on a One, you know weekday schedule. I couldn't work in a typical university program. So What I did instead was You know look for a program that actually was flexible and fit my needs and what I found were a couple of Programs that were semi-presential, right? Like you would have online classes for you know, maybe like two or three nights a week and then on the weekend you went to class and That sounded perfect to me. That was like exactly what I was looking for So I was looking at those you know those options that I found I found Garcilaso. I found one at Birreal and I kind of checked out both the offers and looked at what they were putting on the table and Birreal actually made the most sense like it was Tuesday Thursday night Virtual class Sundays, I would go to the university for a few hours and actually be in the class and That was how it would work for five whole years That is exactly what I did. So During those five years, I Will say there were a lot of ups and downs. There were a lot of like oh just rough experiences there however Not all of it was that bad like it wasn't terrible I think that the Problem that I had with Birreal mainly was just the fact that public universities here in Peru struggle with administration Like they are extremely disorganized. They are I mean the messes that I saw there You guys have no idea. I'll give you just a couple of highlights like there were We had a virtual platform for uploading our homework and assignments and taking a mid-term exams as well That platform probably changed six different times in the five years. I was there I mean it would change from one form to another from like a moodle to something else to something else It changed all the freaking time. I don't know why my guess is because Arguably they were trying to look for the cheapest option didn't have money allocated properly in the budget I don't know but all I can say was my time at Birreal was plagued by constant Disruptions to the service. It was like you got into the university got going into a class and then suddenly Well, we don't have a platform anymore All your homework has been erased and then you had the chaos of trying to like resend your stuff to your teachers And it was a nightmare when it came to the the virtual side of it the virtual classes were Honestly at the first couple of semesters I attended every single one after a while I started just Disappearing on those because frankly they were a waste of my time It was like I could just read this stuff on my own or just do this myself It was not the best experience when it came to virtual online learning and and that's something that I've actually put into practice in Recent years now that we've been teaching virtually like I have seen what not to do with virtual class Okay, I I've experienced it I spent five years in this academic environment where most of the virtual classes honestly We're not enjoyable. Some of the teachers were great and did really good ones But most of them were just like I'm just not even listening like this. I'm gonna play video games while you guys talk about school and You know, I look at the people who attended every single one of those and who like really gave it their all and I have mad respect for Those people I had a really good set of classmates in a lot of ways. We had a big class There were we started out as about I think there were about 80 people and then it worked its way down to the point Where we were maybe they were like 30 of us 40. Actually a little more than that maybe 30 40 and then we we all would You know be put together eventually there were like two Groups in our promotion our graduating class that ended up merging into one and by the end of it They were like 50 of us. So I mean out of maybe 200 people 50 people made it to the end That's a graduation rate of about 25% that would be considered pretty awful If you looked at other universities and compared them But a lot of that is also because people have lives and people you know part of the reason people sign up for this Program is because it was flexible and affordable But also that means that you know, maybe there's people who were just barely able to pay it and then something happens and they're out you know, so That was the thing like the virtual side of it was horribly organized just horribly organized But the classes in person were fine. Not most of the teachers are pretty cool There were a couple that drove me insane There was one guy who would just like tell stories and he taught us like three times So we heard all the stories the same like the same stories like three times And and while you're like, oh, this is nice I don't have to like pay attention the thing is you do because this guy would go off at any moment He's on the spectrum of something he would go off in any moment and be like You right there. Tell me something and you'd be like Oh, and then he would like flip out on you if you weren't paying attention So I I spent most of these Sundays like with that guy just typing on my computer looking like I was taking notes And just looking at him while I type because I can do that and he would always like nod his head at me and like get a Response for me and he always liked me and then I would like just actually be writing articles and making money good strap So like yeah, the the issue with the school there are many and then let's talk about the physical infrastructure my god. Oh Let me show you let me just show you a little bit of where we're going here with this Also chats open here if you guys want to say hi or anything, you know, I want to say what's up Let me let me just show you so this is the main site of being real. This is where I went. All right. This is this is the place But this is not hang on where'd my there we go. I wanted to be over here with my camera on there We go. So this is BRL site, but this is not indicative of what beer is like first of all these three people have never gone to that University I can guarantee it right now for obvious reasons those three people have never set foot in that University But okay, let's just let's just go to Google Maps for a second and like let me just show you By the location I had to go to so I had to go down here to the center of Lima to colonial which is right over here It's Formal name is, you know, Mariscalos Caramundo Benavides, but we call that colonial and It would have been right about Around here I think hang on because there's a few blocks away and you go past the hardware. Yeah past the pretty max past the Server this way. I'm surprised it's not showing up on the map here at all because it should be here by now Why that's weird. Well, let's just go to Street View. I know it's after the Repsol Pretty sure anyway. Wait, did I go too far? I'm I'm embarrassed now. I'm like not finding it. Why am I not finding it? Because it should be right around here. Maybe I went too far. Let me try this now. Yeah, okay There's the there's there's that spot. Yeah, okay, so this was here. We go. Yeah, we're here Okay, so this is the university. I went to right here I want you to just take a look and really just you know embrace what you're looking at here It's it's pretty rough. Okay, it's not it's not the best time. This is where we are So this is I don't know it looks like I'm getting a little bit of lag on you guys too for some reason Which is weird because I mean I'm doing pretty good on stream health, but I don't know It's telling me that it's not receiving enough. So let's see. Hopefully it's working. Okay. Um, hey, what's up, Alessia? How's it going? Nice to see you. So yeah, this is where I went to university break breathe in this beautiful building Yeah, it's not exactly a great look these pictures are from 2015. So this is actually a little before I went there So they I don't remember all this graffiti for the record I would like to establish that I did not see that much graffiti So maybe when I went there they painted over that and it looked better but that would be the door we went in where every Sunday go through that door and Then I don't know if we can get any good shots of the inside of this place but basically most of the classes would have been up in this building up here and It would be like how I explain this like you go into these classrooms with you know 50 60 other people Find your spot find your friends and that was it. There were no other real amenities We're talking about hard chairs hard, you know, like desktops built into the chairs like all made of just hard wood You got to sit your butt on that for about four hours. It's not comfortable There was obviously no air conditioning in here like it was just hot in summer Especially if you got stuck on the fifth floor man, you were just baking in the sun the whole time the bathrooms were Not clean To say the least like you walked in and it was just like a bunch of flies would hit you in the face It smelled like pee. It was bad in there. I'm not gonna lie. It was rough Not exactly a pleasant like environment to study in you know having said that It wasn't like it wasn't intolerable That's the thing I feel like I have to explain to people like I know most people would look at this and just be like dude Really like this is what you this is what you did. This is where you went to university, but this wasn't that bad So like What I would say about this place is that yeah while the physical infrastructure was severely lacking in quality The education itself wasn't all that terrible. It wasn't the worst thing that I've ever seen and that speaks to a bigger point that I want to make about this idea of where finding a good fit for you like I think a lot of times we get caught up in This university is better than this university when in reality They're all the same in a way. They all present the same information now They may do that some in better ways some may have better You know better setups better equipment better environment to do that stuff in and obviously that makes a difference, but You can't tell me that be a real Gave me worse Information about education than some nice university in some other place like I Still gained knowledge from this institution and I did that by and large through my own hard work And that's something that I think needs to be expressed like your university experience is going to depend mostly on you It's gonna depend on you. It's gonna depend on how you You know Work and how you prepare yourself and how much effort you put in if you don't put in the effort You're not gonna see the result So if there's one message I would give to people is like don't stress so much about which university you go To think about you Are you ready for university? Are you? capable Are you able to handle it? Are you willing to put in the work because if you go into a university with this mentality of like oh My success depends on the teachers. I need everybody to give me you know everything and spoon feed me information and like I Can't learn on my own. I need somebody to just put the information in my face. Yeah Yeah, you're probably not gonna get the best results no matter where you go Like you have to be able to sit down and say okay. I'm gonna learn this. I want to learn this I am capable of learning this and I'm gonna do it myself And if you can do that you can learn at any university You'll definitely get more out of a university that gives you more opportunities and better instruction and better experiences definitely but you do not need a top university to learn and That's something that I learned to be around like I would not qualify this as a top University by any means having said that I learned and the fact that I learned says a lot about you know, the overall quality of Education in general like it doesn't need to be high quality education for you to get high quality knowledge So what did I do differently to get that knowledge that maybe be around wasn't giving me directly? I spent a lot of time reading. I read every text that my teachers gave me I did all my homework and I did it really well and I did that because I found this formula That would ensure that I could pass every class and not have any problems at this university and here's what the formula was I'll basically break it down for you. Yes weird. I'm getting really really bad choppy connection today I'm looking at it saying you're sitting and spinning on my screen here, which I don't understand because like I Have good internet right now. Everything's running fine, but whatever the so I Lost my train of thought darn it poopy. I was saying about what I learned there and why I learned there Oh, yeah, the homework formula. So here's the thing 40% of my grade would be homework 20% of my grade would be the midterm and then the other 40% would be the final exam now If I just did all my homework really really well I would probably average like 18 out of 20 on my homework if I did my midterm, okay I got like a 16 with that I would have like eight or nine points in the bank and all I really had to do was get like You know what I had to get like 10 12 out of 20 on my final exam and I and that sometimes happened Sometimes that happened because the final exams were always designed to be very quick for the teacher to correct because school policy meant that they had to Correct those live right there on the last day of class So they were always very basic multiple-choice tests. Sometimes there were written answers But they were very simple and the teacher was just looking for some keywords and it was like You never really knew what you were gonna get from those final exams They rarely reflected the learning that you actually got in the course. So my whole approach was like, okay I can't trust this final exam I'm gonna put in the effort day to day and when the exam comes whatever. I'll just relax. I don't need to get a great grade I just need to pass and That worked really well for me. I finished the program with a pretty high average I think I was averaging around 17 out of 20 by the end of it Most of the time doing the homework made it easy for me to do the exam because a lot of teachers would base the exam on questions