Jan 9, 2021
Quick Field Guide For College Dropouts
3 ways to make dropping out your advantage
For the past hundred years, college has been the golden path for the youth. The yellow brick road.
Marketing, society, culture, elementary school, middle school, and high school have done an amazing job of getting our parents to evaluate their performance as parents based on what college we get into and graduate from.
I don’t know about you, but that pressure my parents felt passed right down onto me.
The completion rate for college is around 58.6%. Which leaves a lot of students without a degree. Some of them drop out during their senior year with no idea what to do next. If you include the people who never went, more people don’t have a college degree than do. I think we all knew that, but still.
College is praised as the first great marker of success in our culture. Especially when you’re in high-school. It’s all they talk about. Meanwhile they jack-up the prices, the education is becoming detached from reality, and some of the biggest companies in the world like Apple and Google have put out statements that they intend to hire more people without a diploma.
Google is even launching their own college-level courses that they will give as much weight as a 4-year degree in their hiring process. (For a fraction of the cost)
It seems like the writing is on the wall. College is going downhill.
What’s out there for us? What is the correct path to take if you’re not going to college? What should you be doing with your time to get ahead?
Being a college dropout doesn’t need to be a disadvantage. It just means you didn’t go to college. How then, can we turn the time you bought back for yourself and the student loan you didn’t take into your greatest advantage?
Create your own curriculum
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That’s the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that.” — Haruki Murakami
If you have the same skills and education as everybody else, you’re replaceable.
It’s rough, but it’s the truth. If you go to college and study finance, congrats. You’re exactly like the millions of others fighting for those same positions. There’s nothing unique about them and employers are comfortable with the fact that they can get rid of anyone and new applicants will form a line out the door.
When you’re creating your own curriculum you can actually learn something unique and valuable.
This, of course, has a dirty secret behind it. You have to study like a college student even though your not in college.
Dropping out of college isn’t an excuse to be uneducated. Education is crucial. Education is our differentiating factor. By getting a different education than the copy/paste version everybody else is getting, we create our own advantage.
Learn Money
“Money without financial intelligence is money soon gone.” — Robert Kiyosaki
Whether you’re a musician, a writer, a performer, an accountant, a physical trainer, a social media influencer, or anything else, you need to learn and strive to master money.
You may want to be an entrepreneur, and in that case, mastering money seems like an obvious step. But even if starting a business or making it big isn’t a life goal, learning money and how it's made will make a huge difference in your life.
Look, I’m a writer. I write on Medium. I don’t think this is going to make me rich. But I’ve spent a lot of time learning money, finances, marketing, and real estate. Because of that, I’m able to spend time doing things that won’t make me money, like writing.
This is what getting a handle on your money does for you. I’m not rich in any way that I would want to flaunt on Instagram. In fact, I’m not rich at all. But I make enough to make my own schedule and work on my own terms. I do all this without a job.
You can too. And it’s important that you do. The need for money is the greatest force on this planet. If you find yourself in that need, your life decisions will revolve around it. You won’t make choices for yourself. The need for money will make choices for you.
Beware of time-sucking opportunities
“Your strategy must be twofold: first, to realize as early as possible that you have chosen your career for the wrong reasons, before your confidence takes a hit. And second, to actively rebel against those forces that have pushed you away from your true path.” — Robert Greene
A couple of months ago I turned down a job opportunity for much more money than I make on my side-hustles. It felt weird considering the pandemic we’re in. I felt guilty. Should I really have done that? Is this just my ego thinking I’m above this?
Some time spent in self-reflection made me confident I made the right choice. Then another job offer came. I turned it down too.
Taking the wrong job is brutal. It takes nearly all of your time. All of the time you could use educating yourself or learning money.
Consider how many people you know have jobs, but really want to be doing something else in their life.
Their job is their biggest barrier. Not only does it take up so much time that they rarely have the energy to reach for their other goals, but they’ve also built their life around the income they get from that job. Literally building a financial trap for themselves.
They got the job, so they bought a car with monthly payments. They got the job, so they got the apartment with the extra bedroom. They got the job, so they bought things with their credit card knowing they can make payments with their income.
What was objectively a good idea for the short term, getting a job, became the biggest tax on their greatest life force: Their time and energy.
In Practice
This is obviously not a, “do this thing to become successful” type of article. And if you need a job, get one. Don’t be silly.
These are just things to keep yourself conscious of.
Ask yourself:
- are you giving yourself a unique education that will give you a competitive advantage and isn’t the same thing everyone else is getting?
- Do you know how to make extra money outside your job? Enough that, someday, you won’t need your job?
- Are you using your job to create a trap that’s making you dependent on your job? Could you learn money and leverage the income from your job to create wealth?
- Do you need some more tips and help to make more money outside your job? Consider subscribing to my newsletter.
I find that those who go to college don’t really consider these things. I don’t think these are questions our culture promotes. Don’t compare yourself to their standards.
