College is history. It’s an overpriced, overvalued, inflated bureaucracy.
College used to be “the thing to do after high school.” It largely still is, however people are starting to realize that a bachelor’s degree will get you about as far as a professional recommendation from your parents if you don’t have any proof of real value that you’ve created to go with it.
The core meaning of education has been lost in the bureaucratic jungle that is the public school system. Instead of focusing on actual education and challenges to improve, students are corralled to think and perform like robots. School provides almost no opportunities to create real value in the world.
From age 5 and all the way to 22+, students participate in a rat race towards empty credentials that teaches nothing more than how to follow specific rules.
This is why dropping out of college in 2014 has been quite possibly the best decision I’ve ever made. January 2017 will be my 3-year anniversary.
It’s been an incredibly journey. I began learning how to bend the rules. I learned how to test my own ideas and find better rules. I learned how to communicate my ideas, and how to be creative on command. The list goes on, but instead of listing skills I’ve learned, here are 3 things I did that helped me gain a real education:
I started a podcast.
Initially this was meant to be an excuse to interview people I found interesting. I just wanted to learn about how people were building their careers without college, and copy their strategies. I would record the conversation, then leverage it as content from my own personal brand, while stealing their tactics. It worked like a charm.
I mostly interviewed friends and acquaintances at first. This gave me an opportunity to get into deep conversations with people in a setting where they would be excited about telling their story.
Aside from learning the semantics on how to record audio and host episodes, my guests provided practical strategies on starting online businesses, talking to your parents about dropping out of school, learning a language, and much more. I learned more starting a podcast than I did in 1.5 years of college.
I wrote about this experience here.
I toured the country in an RV.
All I wanted to do was build an alternative. I had no idea where to start, so I got together with my one of my good friends and fellow college dropouts and we decided to launch a tour. We wanted to travel and create a dialogue with college kids to find out what their pain points were (if any).
We thought that by jumping into something in a bold way, even though we didn’t have a specific plan to start, we would figure it out as we went along as long as were doing something.
This experience taught me so much about myself. Aside from learning how NOT to launch a business, traveling the country gave me a perspective I couldn’t get by staying in one spot. I talked to people from all different walks of life, and they shed their perspective on the college system.
It turns out that plenty of college kids know from first hand experience that college isn’t that valuable. When I asked people why they went to college, this is the answer I typically got:
They just don’t know what else to do because they are so used to doing what they’re “supposed” to do.
I wrote a series on this experience. Here’s Part 1.
I applied to Praxis.
On my tour, I found Praxis through word-of-mouth. Praxis is a 9-month apprenticeship program for young people who want to start their careers by doing real work instead of reading textbooks. The best part? All students graduate debt-free with a full-time job.
I applied to the program and got in as an apprentice. I joined an incredible community of motivated young people who consistently challenge each other to be better.
I built a website, refined my personal brand, and started blogging because of Praxis. My learning continues to grow exponentially.
What have you done to educate yourself in 2016?