Everyone is required to master the school curriculum, so having an education usually means a university diploma or at least a secondary specialized educational institution. If you don’t have either, you shouldn’t feel inferior, especially since your curiosity and self-development can compensate for gaps in knowledge.
Embarrassment
The first thing that gives away a person without an education is an obsession with its absence. Modern companies often check for skills rather than a diploma, so you can be a highly qualified and sought-after specialist without one. You may not even need one at an interview. And if the conversation about who studied where turns up in an informal setting, tell your interlocutors about your successes, and ask educated friends about the topic of their diploma thesis. Either it will turn out that they are well versed in a narrow topic, and you will learn something new, or it will turn out that those with diplomas do not remember at all what they researched.
Communication with pictures
When online communication became possible, people readily began to use abbreviations, and with the advent of emoji, pictures began to replace entire words. And then it got even better. Stickers, including those with text, became popular, and then stickers with animation. A few smileys and a sticker, of course, will not give away a graduate of evening school, but the complexity of the thoughts of erudites rarely allows them to express an idea with a picture, even if it is a joke. Educated people are less likely to think in cliches.
Small vocabulary
In many ways, the situation is aggravated by the very features of digital communication from the previous point. Uneducated people often cannot put two words together. A thought is akin to an emotion: an image appears in the head, but it is difficult to put it into words, simply because they are not precise enough, and the alternative may be unknown to the owner of a poor vocabulary. In addition, educated people more easily operate with abstract concepts, which, in fact, are products of human thought. If you catch yourself on the fact that you understand everything, but cannot express yourself, reading will help, including popular science.
Complete ignorance of the “base”
Regardless of specialization, it is assumed that any educated person has a certain set of general knowledge about the structure of this world and is familiar with the basic concepts of the main sciences. For example, he knows how the digestive system works and what the median is in statistics. A mathematician may not be able to say exactly which countries Burkina Faso borders, but at least he will guess that it is a country on the African continent. And not to know about the 1917 revolution and the existence of the Soviet Union… It sounds absurd, but it happens. To know about this, you don’t even have to read, educational videos will do for a start.
Belief in the unscientific
It is one thing to be carried away by mysticism for the sake of entertainment, and quite another to seriously deny scientific discoveries. Education teaches scientific thinking, including when writing term papers and theses. Not every former student defended a dissertation, but everyone understands: scientific work is based on previous discoveries, the greatest possible objectivity and impartiality. It is difficult to argue with this.
Lack of one’s own opinion
A person who is unable to form his own opinion on a particular issue actively quotes other people’s opinions. There is nothing wrong with quotations, but the difference between an uneducated and an educated person is in the development of analytical thinking. The former will retell someone else’s opinion as the truth. The latter is able to reason and understands that the world is complex and everyone has their own truth, and any problem can be viewed from different angles.
Confidence in one’s own rightness
“I know that I know nothing,” said Socrates, or at least this saying is attributed to him. Uneducated people tend to simplify everything and often believe that this world is absolutely clear to them. An educated person realizes that even his most extensive knowledge is limited. And therefore, he automatically assumes that he may be wrong even in his area of expertise. People without any education often cannot understand this.