When a person disagrees with each and everyone in his/her environment, it may mean a number of things, but it usually boils down to that person being above or below average. Now, most people I know are what we can consider 'average'. Average grades, average jobs, average incomes. I'm not talking about education, etc. Just the numbers we can use as some sort of reference...
Since most people are average, it is very difficult if you are above average (or below). If you know more than the rest, or have more than the rest, or whatever that sets you apart, it is quite difficult when conflicts arise. What you know will probably be very hard to relate to others and financial advantage is, needless to say, one of the most difficult things to overcome. However, I'm now in a position to consider the benefits and disadvantages of above-average education, or, in other words, being overeducated.
I've never gone through the usual, and socially accepted routine of going to college and/or university. I've taught myself every one of the skills I use daily in my profession. So, what's the difference? Well, the difference is huge.
First of all, there are many skills that are taugt on universities without any explanation of their possible application later in life. Failing to see any point in learning the skills, students usually just do enough reading to pass the exams, only to discover, later in their proffesional environment, that those skills are acually quite useful. When you are self-taught, you tend to learn things quickly as needed, and since you can choose to learn things (i.e., no one is forcing you to do so) you tend to go in-depth on those subjects. This gives you an advantage of knowing exactly why you are learning something, and how you can apply the skill.
Another thing that is especially true nowadays when Internet is accessible to most people is that you tend to expand you knowledge by getting in touch with related areas. Web makes this especially convenient by offering us links and tags, and whatever incidental search engine results you get everytime you do a search on a particular subjet. Rather than reading strictly about things that you need to know to pass an exam, you read a whole lot pursuing only your own curiosity. This self-centered attitude is quite beneficial for those that want to become complete, and work on themselves.
Now, with this rather non-standard attitude, you gen an overeducation, a tendency to know more than people who are dealing only with issues in their own field. You go multidisciplinary simply because the world is like that, and not because it is some facy trend at universities.
So what is bad about it? Bad side of it is that most people whom we mark as 'average' are simply not able to attack problems from different angles. How many designers do you know who are also quite educated in related fields such as marketing, brand management, psychology? How many psychologists do you know who are also proficient linguists or graphically literate? It is quite rare to find all of those related fields in a single mind.
When you start explaining you design work through the eyes of a marketeer, they say: 'Look, marketing is not your job.' Or when you start talking about grammar, a journalist might tell you: 'Look, language is my area.' Sure, they are right at some level. But it usually boils down to them not accepting the fact that you, as an overeducated graphic deisgner can, and will, speak with them on the same level about 'their' stuff.
At the end of the day, you tend to think being overeducated is a bad thing, and that you could be better off being plain dumb... If people only cared about the quality of the job you do, there'd be no arguing about the merits of being overeducated. Otherwise, in reality, it is much harder to say if it is good or bad.
