I graduated from my useless school

One month ago, I graduated from one of the best business schools in Europe (according to rankings at least). I thought about not going to the graduation ceremony. Why? Because my studies were useless.

1. One of the most valuable skills to have today is the ability to think out of the box. In school, you don’t learn to innovate, you learn to follow patterns. You don’t learn to change the rules or create your owns, you learn to abide by existing rules. In such a changing economy and world, it does more harm than good.
2. What I learned in 4 years in my school, I could have learned it in 6 months by myself. Classes were bad… like really bad… and totally outdated… Lectures are dead. Today, MOOCs allow us to learn from the bests, often for free. Schools cannot compete with these. Their only chance to bring value is by creating a stimulating environment in which students learn by doing. More important, they should help students learn to learn by themselves. Great coding schools like 42 or Le Wagon in France are perfect examples. But my school did not get it!
3. In our world, nobody will keep his job for his whole life. In this context, you don’t want to lose several years of your life learning something you won’t do for long. You don’t know for how long you will want to keep the same job or if it will even exist in a few years. In my school, I majored in Entrepreneurship and Digital Marketing. Today, I work as a web developer. I have never used something I learned in school in this role… I am an extreme example but, except for regulated job (you need a diploma to be a doctor), long studies are overrated. Again, you should learn by doing.

Well, this was very critical. Actually, things are more complex, they always are. And I actually don’t regret having done my useless school:

First, human relationships are keys. In school, I met amazing friends. This is something a MOOC cannot give you. Creating social links, both personal and professional, is still the main asset of traditional education.

Even more important, you should not care about the sole end result. The journey is much more important, especially in education. Every choice you make, good or bad, is an opportunity to learn valuable lessons. It gets you closer to what you are want to do, to who you are meant to be.

Without doing my school, I probably would have never even thought about learning to code. It is thanks to a project I did during my studies that I discovered the power code gives you. I am not from this world and I am pretty sure I would have missed it.

Now that I have my useless diploma, let’s build something useful with it!