After my visit to Duke University yesterday, I had an epiphany – I should never have gone to college. My friend who gave me a guided tour was explaining how the university was an enclave for the wealthy. He, himself, was a scholarship student but most of his peers came from extremely wealthy families. They had been raised with lives of privilege. Their childhoods, college experience and working lives after were guided and supported by parents who subsidized their expenses and eliminated obstacles.
I’ve been thinking about college a lot lately and realize that for many people, college is (or was) a period of extended adolescence. It was a time to have fun, party, socialize and learn a few things.
It wasn’t for me.
For many years I was ashamed that I dropped out of college and never got a degree. After all, I was an academic standout. I graduated with a 4.0 GPA and was Valedictorian of my high school class. I always knew I was made to excel in college. I fully expected to get a law degree, a masters degree, a medical diploma and quite possibly a PhD.
Instead, I got 100 some credits scattered around Chemistry, Math and Business, about $6K in debt and wasted years that I could have been using to establish myself in a career.
Even though I was clearly a strong academic candidate from an emotional, social, cultural and financial perspective I was not a good fit for college.
I should have joined the military. Or gone to trade school. Or jumped directly into some kind of blue collar internship straight out of high school.
Any of these would have had me progress from my 20s-30s, instead of languishing in a series of low paying, dead end, unsatisfying service jobs.
I’m not complaining. In the end, I was able to work my way into decently paying tech sales & management career that supported my family and gave me a good life.
But in retrospect, not going to college would have been a much better choice.
I know plenty of poor kids went to college and it enabled them to move from poverty to the middle class. I don’t debate that.
And after 30+ years of working, I know plenty of college graduates who spent they parents money, amassed huge student loan debt, graduated and never used anything they learned in their careers.
I hired plenty of people who had masters degrees for entry level sales positions. Their lack of writing ability, communication skills, basic mathematic skills and general knowledge was astounding to me.
I used to be impressed by degrees and education. Not anymore.