My first article on the subject of college ended up being very long, so I chopped the last half off and made this part II article out of it.
Here are the common reactions I received, and continue to receive, due to my decision to withdraw from college.
1) “Most people go to college, so you should too.”
Could it be that the absolute dumbest reason for going to college could also be the most popular? Yes. I think this reason is in the background of every other reason people give for going to college. “Hey, this is what the majority of people do. The majority can’t be wrong and anyone who doesn’t go along with the majority must be wrong. “
If the majority jumped off a bridge, would you? Neither would I. In fact, the best life advice you can give yourself right now is to always be weary of what the majority is doing. Most people: are in heavy debt, are depressingly bored with their lives, and aren’t doing with their lives what they wanted to. Don’t take advice from people who aren’t living the lives they wanted to when they were younger, unless you want to end up in the same situation.
Just think of the majority as a bunch of zombies ready to follow whatever path the government-brainwashers set them on and you’ll be fine.
2) “If you drop out you’ll never be able to go back”
This one is just laughable. The logic behind it goes something like this: if you drop out you’ll likely get into some kind of trouble like getting a girl pregnant and you’ll be forced to work fifty hours a week at some low-paying job you hate, you’ll never be able to go to college again because all your money is going to support a family, and you won’t be able to afford to reduce your work hours in order to attend classes.
But can’t all of that happen if you are going to college?
People seem to think that upon enrolling in college a shiny blue force field bubble immediately forms around you that will protect you from screwing your life up.
Fact is you can go back anytime you want. You have infinite, unlimited chances. The colleges will still be there happily willing and ready to take your money. People who raise the fallacious objection that you won’t be able to go back are probably just cowardly, lazy, stupid, and stagnant people who simply can’t imagine themselves being able to drop out and then one day return.
Pity them for having such uninspired attitudes.
E Envy
More and more we are hearing stories about young people who go into horrid debts to finance their college education with the goal of scoring a spectacularly paying career, only to graduate and fail to find a job that pays more than $10/hour. I know a girl whose sister earned not one but two B.A. degrees and years after graduating the best job she’s been able to find is working at a movie theater.
People in this situation are understandably bitter. After getting their degrees they’re not a bit better off in the job market, only now they have a debt that will haunt them for years and possibly decades. Some of these people also lose their souls and become monsters. They want to see other people wind up in their situation. Instead of climbing out of their hole, they’d rather drag others into it.
These people do not want to see college dropouts surpass them. They will speak ill of and hate those who bypass college.
Even if they came out of college with no debt and did land a well -paying job, most college graduates are still hostile towards those of us who aspire to do great in life without getting a degree. Why? Because it makes them feel inadequate. They had to get a degree to do well in life; they don’t want to see people without degrees doing well nor do they want to see dropouts developing enjoyable careers.
Current college students will also express this toxic attitude towards drop-outs because many of them, maybe even the majority, don’t want to be in college. They have no idea what they want to do, they have no interest in what they’re studying, they’re depressed that they might be committing themselves to a life they probably won’t like, but they’re afraid to take a risk and pursue a different path. I have my own name for these people: stay-ins.
Stay-ins just keep staying in college because they’re afraid to do anything that isn’t a part of the prepackaged one-size-fits-all life plan society expects them to follow.
4) “Just get any degree. It doesn’t matter what kind. Getting a degree is all about showing employers that you’re willing to put in the time and hard work necessary to accomplish goals.”
Or it could show employers that you don’t understand the relationship between cost and benefit and don’t know what a good investment looks like.
You don’t actually accomplish much in college. You feel like you’re actually accomplishing something. You’re speeding through traffic to get to your morning class on time, you’re passing exams, and you had to write essays for three different classes last week, but at the end of the semester you have nothing to show for this labor other than a few extra letters on your transcript. Having some employer references on your resume looks better to employers than these letters you slaved away for.
5) “Without a degree you’ll forever work at McDonalds.”
This is the most offensive one. When someone says this to you they are literally calling you stupid to your face. They are saying you’re incapable of providing for yourself without a college education. I would say you should explain the meaning of this rude comment to anyone who utters it, but that would be a waste of time – just cut that person out of your life. Give them three strikes maybe if you’re a kind person. I’m not kind. I don’t care. I’ll cut out anyone who says something like this to me. No one is sacred.
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Want to show you can accomplish something? Then get out in the world and actually accomplish something. My friend Alec is twenty-one. He was not an exceptional high school student and he dropped out of college after one part-time semester. Alec has his own aerial photography business now. He gets paid hundreds of dollars an hour to fly his RC helicopter around and take pictures for people. This is an accomplishment. Alec had to invest thousands of dollars that he saved from delivering pizza into building a state-of-the-art remote control helicopter that can fly for miles, thousands of feet above the ground.
Alec also invested about $10,000 he made by delivering pizza into building a top-notch music recording rig and now he gets paid to produce bands and has even gained the written respect of a few famous music producers.
He didn’t have to have a professor threaten to fail him if he didn’t do it. He did it through raw ambition and will, the whole time being told by his elders to drop it all and go to college.
If only his elders were aware that:
Students are now borrowing TWICE as much money to fund their education than they were just a decade ago.
The average college student is now graduating with $25,000 worth of debt hanging around their neck and the average amount of time it takes for these debts to be repaid is approaching twenty years.
More and more girls are engaging in “sugar daddy” prostitution to pay for their education.
NYU sociologist Richard Arum conducted a study involving 2,300 students at 24 different universities and found that after two years of “learning” 45% of students shows no signs of increased intelligence.
In America (go to page 7), there are 107,457 janitors and 317,759 waiters with college degrees.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a full one quarter of all the retail sales people in America have college degrees.
70% of college graduates report that they wished they had spent more time preparing for the real world while they were in school.
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