Why I dropped out of college?
The 16 years old version of me would have crapped his pants if he would have to make this decision. The good GPA guy decided to get off the well-trodden path glorified by the society. The two checkboxes (get good grades, go to decent college) were already ticked off and halfway through checking the third one (get a degree), I quit. I did the thing which was least expected of me. So what happened in-between that influenced my decision. Let’s find out.
I choose to go to college for all the wrong reasons
In high school, I heard stories about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and the likes who started tech-companies and became billionaires. Check my foolish conclusion; “Oh Wow! You just have to learn to code, find an idea, make an app and BOOM!” I naively choose to opt for Computer Engineering. I always thought maybe because everyone told me that college would be this place where real learning would happen and it would be far better than school. I did all the things that I was expected to do in college, attended lectures regularly, scored decent grades, submitted assignments regularly. Starting a company was always on my mind which motivated me to take online programming classes.
Something else was also going in my college life. As the days passed, I noticed the professors lacked the enthusiasm, all they were doing was passing on information and most of my peers cared little about learning, all they wanted was to get a degree to get a job. They were in college just because their parents wanted them to get an engineering degree. Criticizing professor, copying others’ assignments, bunking lectures, cramming up notes during exams was part of the culture of college. It made me sick. The palace of illusions I had in my mind was getting shattered by the realities.
The Awakening
Gradually I started bunking lectures and would just sit at home surfing the internet, reading books and taking online courses. As the days passed, I started questioning everything related to college. As I went down this rabbit hole, I came across the digital nomad community and dropouts teens killing it building online businesses and traveling the world. I submerged myself in blogs, podcasts, and videos of entrepreneurs like Chris Guillebeau, Tim Ferris, James Altucher, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tai Lopez, Seth Godin, Robert Kiyosaki, Ken Robinson, Kevin Kelly and Dan Pink. I read books like Better than College by Blake Boles, Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg, The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, Choose Yourself by James Altucher. It totally blew my mind. The college no longer remained a checkbox to tick off to achieve anything for me. I stopped going to college and finally dropped out after four semesters in August, 2017.
Dropping out of fixed mindset
I left college but with the ingrained fixed mindset that 20 years of formal education developed in me. Being the guy who was preached during his whole childhood to score at the top of the class to please people and win admiration, going off-track of the socially accepted path where there are a lot of uncertainties is not so friendly. You can’t walk this path without pissing off some people. It was not like I just woke up one day and declared I’m dropping out. There was lots of second-guessing, doubting the decision. Regardless of the truth that dropping out would not actually kill me, it freaked me out thinking what others will say. Although I knew internet and technology have opened the doors for everyone to do anything they want to do, I would at times freak out not knowing what to do. In fact, I created this blog just after dropping out but it took me this long to share the story. These are all traits of a fixed mindset. I knew if I am to do anything worth in life I have to push myself, take the leap and burn the bridge.
Self-educating myself without college
After dropping out I read and watched tons of content ranging from topics like psychology, self-directed learning, neuroscience, evolution, spirituality and many more. I don’t claim I’m an expert on any of these topics now. Also went on a trekking camp alone with a bunch of strangers, poured my heart out by telling my story around a campfire to everyone and ended up making great friends; climbed a 1300 mt mountain for the first time. Taking my education into my own hands has allowed me to follow my curiosity anywhere I want to. I’m passionate about self-directed learning. I’ll share practical tips and resources about it a lot in my future posts. By blogging about my life and the things I will learn, I plan to learn creative writing, storytelling, content writing and digital marketing skills with the blog as my lab. This is how one should learn, by taking on projects, creating things, sharing it and starting before you are ready.
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Originally published at thenomadiclearner.com on December 16, 2017.
