Dropping out or Staying in School? Taking an Unconventional Path to Success 🚀
Hearing from successful unicorn people.
If you were to tell your parent(s) you didn’t want to pursue a higher education, what would that response look like? If it’s anything like “Hell nooo”, then I feel you.
My thoughts on college were always fluctuating. When I was younger growing up in an Arab household, there were 2 options. Either go to college fresh outta high school or literally become a millionaire before college app deadlines (FYI that didn’t happen to me).
As a freshman I struggled tremendously with school, I found myself waking up every morning going to a hostile and negative environment. My hatred for the high school I attended bled into me making the rash choice to not want to peruse a higher education. I thought if high school is this revolting and trifling, imagine what college life would be like. As someone who always envisioned herself attending a university this was huge.
As a senior writing this I can tell you that I will be attending college and I am patiently waiting to hear back from my dream school. You may be wondering, what changed? Well the answer is I took control of my environment. In 11th grade I was intentional about going in and out of the building as fast as I could. I didn’t view myself as a member of my current school’s community, instead I found other communities that showed me love and made me feel heard. Some of those communities were college communities, this felt settling. My plan for college is allow myself to be invested in an environment that’s positive. I know due to my high school environment being so bad, I’m going to do everything in my power to have the best school environment possible.
Besides what I wanted, I had to be logical about it. College is expensive and this was a huge turn off because I’m broke. Not to mention I know there are people who have a bachelor’s degree, who now during the pandemic are on unemployment. They’re making no money.
I don’t want to throw my time and money at a degree and then not have anything more besides a piece of paper. I want businesses, startups, real estate, and not just a degree. I think this is where the disconnect happens, for 4 years people don’t do anything but go to school and work a minimum wage job. So now you have a bunch of people with degrees that don’t know what to do next because life doesn’t come with a syllabus.
During the last two years I proved to myself that I won’t be the type to sit around and do nothing. As I disconnected from high school, I worked on myself. I started my own business, took leadership positions and surrounded myself with ambitious people. I trust I am a go getter and not just someone who awaits instructions. I view going to college as a space to be in an environment that gives me a transition into adulthood (also it’s calming to my mom). I’ll still be around people my age and it’ll be a good time to build meaningful relationships.
One thing I’m immensely grateful for is being able to attend college cost free due to me residential status as a Saudi citizen (I only learned this was an option last year). It feels relieving knowing I get to experience college without worrying about being in debt. To me college debt sounds like a fraud. Especially since we have the internet. Even now as we’re still experiencing a pandemic, students are paying the same amount of money just to be on zoom. You will not catch me being in debt over online classes.
Overall the pandemic highlighted how the poor became poorer and the rich became richer. Rich people don’t depend on a boss to write their paychecks for them and they’re quick to adapt. They’re not afraid of taking risks because chances are they had to take risks to be where they are now. If we want to break generational curses and break the cycle we need to take risks. For some of us it means going to college but for some of us it means doing something completely different. You may not even realize what’s best for you till you try both and that’s ok.
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are two of the most well known people in the world, we all know Microsoft and Facebook but they’re not known for their college degrees. In fact they’re both Harvard dropouts. A school some parents would kill to have their child attend. It’s not just them, I can go on and name thousands of high school and college dropouts that were just better off doing other things and are now mega successful.
I’m not saying education is useless, I actually deeply believe in the power of education. However to correlate going to college with a sustainable education is unjust. Especially when the system is so 1900s, and we’re in 2021.
These days companies don’t even ask for any degrees they ask if your qualified. I attended a talk with The Knowledge Society (TKS) and the head of delivery engineering at Netflix, Amy Smidutz. I was inspired by her because she’s worked with some of the biggest companies like Amazon and Go Daddy, yet she dropped out of college.
Amy grew up in a small town in Vermont. She always had a passion for figuring things out when it came to tech. She was a problem solver and while she was racking up debt at school she started working at Go Daddy. The company gave her a chance to experience the industry and do real hands on work. Even though at the beginning she wasn’t even getting paid enough.
The key to why Go Daddy was a turning point in her career was because she networked. It’s a pattern I recognize with people who are successful. Your network is your net worth because sometimes there are doors you can’t open by yourself but you’ll know someone who can. In addition, when you’re working at a strong company it’s ok to start at the the bottom because you can always level up.
One thing Amy said that stood out to me was that during the early stages of her career she wished she had finished college. It’s crazy because if she had not taken the risk to drop out she wouldn’t be where she is today. I wish I had the chance to ask her if she could go back would she still choose to drop out or stay in school.
Looking at where she is now I would guess she would say that she’d do it all over again because to be a woman who’s the head of delivery engineering at Netflix is iconic. She even talked about having an imposter syndrome so to see where she’s at now is amazing.
The point is we don’t know where our choices will take us. All we can do is trust the process and follow our passion.
“A shark in a fish tank will grow 8 inches, but in the ocean it will grow to 8 feet or more”. If you feel you can grow more in college than doing anything else then go to college. However, if that’s not the case and you feel that in those 4 years you can benefit more by doing something else then don’t cave into the pressures of society. At the end of the day even if you don’t know where you’re going, any road you take will take you there.
Heyyy, I’m Maryam, a young entrepreneur whose based in Boston. I’m the owner of my beauty company MarAmour.Co , and I’m a huge nerd who’s constantly learning about emerging tech.
Connect with me on LinkedIn say hey; let me know what future content I should post, feedback is always appreciated.
