Of the worth of a piece of paper

So, I'm about through the first full week of looking for a job. And it still looks bleak. All I know is while I don't have a job using the skills I gained through school, that piece of paper (which I won't get actually till August at the earliest) that says I did all that hard work will be slowly deprecating. Though really, in my field, slowly actually means pretty damn fast. Yes, the $25,000 I spend on school (including food, lodging, and tuition) is all going to result in a worthless degree.

As I look through the job listings, almost all companies are requiring a BS/BA and around 4 to 5 years of experience. Before I started school, people told me to get a 4 year degree because companies like that. And I head full steam into getting the degree. But now, as I think more about it, the degree is pretty worthless. For a person who's been in the computer industry for 5 years, that BS/BA is nothing more than a memory. Skills gained then are going to be useless now because that's just how the computer industry is.

My degree is particular worthless because I started back in 1993. Back when if you had a computer, you were lucky to be running Windows 3.1. Looking through a notebook I had which I used for a biology class in 1997 did not ring any bells with me, though some of it could have been applied to that last quarter of bio. The cliche of "Use it or lose it" is too apparent here. I didn't use bio so I lost most of it. I started out programming with Pascal in 1993. I don't remember any of it other than I had a class or two in pascal. I started C programming around 96 or 97 and I still remember it cause I've used some version of it off and on since then.

But that's where I stopped. I know technology that's about 8 years old now, to me. Now a days, people are using stuff created about 3 years ago with the advent of Windows XP. That's just about when I started WSU and WSU doesn't like teaching the new technology, unlike CBC where they try to keep up with the Jones.

Anyway, I think I'm just whining about the whole worth of my degree here in a few months. I'm disappointed with myself for not staying in the CS program and completing my degree in the recommended 4 to 5 years. New tech comes out every day and I'm playing catch up all the time. I'm so far behind now in some things that I wonder if I'll ever get to a position in my life that I'll enjoy.

Ok, that's enough. I think I have more job postings to look at or something. *sigh*