“Without a masters degree you won’t have any opportunities”

If you are in high school, you may or may not be told that you need fancy degrees on your wall to be useful in society. Our teachers fervently urged us to apply to schools for masters programs so that we could really make something of ourselves. While I believe that they meant well, and that many of my classmates will go on to do great things with degrees, there are paths outside of traditional higher education that lead to success.

Discontinuing school and putting a halt to learning are two very separate decisions. I hate school, everything about it. The structure stresses me out, I do NOT test well, and we all know I would rather draw on the edges of assignments than complete them. What I love is discussion, debate, and immersion. The best way to continue learning the way that works for me was to work.

If this is your last semester before entering the real world and everyone keeps asking you what your plans are, and they don’t include 4 years of dorm life, you aren’t a failure. My immediate advice would be to find the smartest person around you and work for them. I was blessed in that I got to be a part of several small startups as an employee for 2 years. That was the greatest crash course in business I could’ve ever asked for. You get to see the technical business pieces that a class would teach but you also get to see the tiny and not so tiny fires that have to be put out.

I left school and immediately entered the entrepreneurial chaos of what has become my life. Thankfully, my distain for routine comes in handy and no 2 days are the same. I attribute the business person that I am today mostly to the insane few years I threw myself into following high school. I was a yes man, I took every opportunity, I worked for free a lot, I learned invaluable information, I watched, I built, and now I am 7 years separate from school and don’t regret a thing.

Go to college or don’t, but either decision is not a pass to quit learning. Both allow you to grow and be an integral part of a community. The idea that there are different paths for different people should not shock or frustrate anyone. I am pretty sure it was Einstein that said “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its life thinking it is stupid”. Well I think that there are a lot of fish in classrooms being told to climb trees when theres a whole ocean out there to be found.

So, if you’re a fish and the paths are to climb or swim…..swim.

-Annalisa