Have you ever felt embarrassed by your lack of a degree?

[siersema]

I think every situation is different. You're a teacher and the primary product is formal education, so for you not to have followed that path makes you stick out from the group. I don't think you should be embarassed by it, but at the same time you need to recognize you're the "odd woman out" until you do have a degree. I'm in IT in a decent size organization, and I do get asked by our users from time to time where I went to school. I take this as where did I get a degree and honestly respond that I don't have a degree. They don't then look at my with disdain, but respond back to me with "How did you learn all this?" These people are aware of my skills and how good or bad they are, they don't seem to be upset that I don't have a degree, but impressed that I was able to learn so much on my own. Come to think of it nearly anything I do from a technical stand point would never be taught in a school, not even most technical colleges. I do rather unique work much of the time on propritary databases, servers, and applications that you wouldn't learn at a school. Now when it's come to process stuff I've been fortunate to take courses like Project Management that have helped me, and it was easier to learn that process and talk to others in the field while learning, than it would have been to do it on my own.

I'm proud of the fact that I learned on my own, and happy to tell them so. I'll actually be kind of disapointed when I respond to their question with the name of a school and their follow-up about how I learned all this doesn't happen...

-Rob