Some newly graduates are proud of the institutes and universities they graduated from. I often meet them everywhere. They think they are far superior to people from ‘low ranked institutes’. While the truth is that belonging to the list of graduates from a certain educational body does not necessarily have much to do with success at work.
Of course, it is a prestige to get a diploma from a famous institute. It becomes a part of people’s nostalgia and personality. It can exceed that to be one of the pillars of their lifestyle, due to their contribution to projects that live longer than their stay at that university or institute. It can also be a good part of their life, if they are still part of clubs, sports teams, etc. It does weight heavily, but for them only!
The issue might be still valid, if they find at work some ex-classmates. Automatically, they will not need much time to build a friendship, as long as they share, more or less, the same “history”. This might make them make other mistakes. Still, being a bit boastful is a mistake which I hope no trainee makes.
This mistake does take place on several occasions when:
- Someone from a famous institute is taking training with another person from a new or not that highly ranked one,
- Their institutes are in different districts (high class vs low class),
- The trainee in question belongs, or thinks he belongs, to a social class higher than the other trainees, because of his degree,
- The trainee thinks his degree weights much heavier than the others’,
- The trainee, mistakenly, believes he deserves that degree, and the others do not, because of the “quality” of the institute he studied at.
Making this mistake makes us question the institute of the instructor. By doing that, the trainee might belittle his instructor. The result is one of the following, or all of them:
- Less respect towards superiors,
- Belittling everybody else, including the boss himself,
- Viewing the training as invaluable and of low quality,
- Not learning enough during the training,
- Losing concentration,
- Losing the skills learnt during studies,
- Belittling customers,
- Losing the job, because no one would promote a boastful trainee.
No matter how high your degree is, no matter how your institute is world widely ranked, your colleagues and boss will always have a lot to teach you.