How I failed my education — and how you can avoid doing the same

I failed my education.

That’s a bold statement, so let me explain what I mean.

But first, there is an important disclaimer to be made here. I am by no means saying that the degree or the school I got it in are bad. On the contrary. The critique is directed solely to my own behavior and the mistakes I made myself.

Also I should probably state that these opinions are highly subjective. I’m not going to, though.

What does “failing education” mean?

I studied to be a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and graduated in the fall of 2015. When I graduated I had

• No job,
• No special area of competence from my field,
• Not even a special area of interest from my field,
• No work, volunteering or project experience that would help me get a job that I wanted,
• No clue what I want to do with my degree, or even what I want to do in general, and
• No proper contacts from outside of my field.

Basically I was clueless as to what to do next in my life, and what the BBA degree was good for. After all it is a degree that thousands of Finnish students graduate with every year, so it doesn’t exactly guarantee anyone a job.

I consider this a failure. So how did I end up in a situation like this?

After graduating high school I was facing the same dilemma that countless of young people face — not knowing what I want to be when I grow up. Business Administration seemed generic and useful enough, so I went with it.

From the start, studying felt more like a chore than something I actually wanted to work for. I wasn’t particularly bad when it comes to grades and other traditional metrics, but I never felt like I was studying out of the will to learn more and develop myself. I only studied to pass the courses I was assigned and get through the exams I had to take. I never stopped to think about how the theory would be put in practice. I never stopped to actually try and put my own skills into use with some real-world problems.

So when graduating, I felt like a rug was being pulled from underneath me. No-one was going to reward me with a nice job for getting a degree. I realized that the optimal time for doing full-time introspection and trying to find out what I want to do in life was behind me. Worse still, I hadn’t made any use of it.

It felt like I had wasted the opportunity of a lifetime.

How to fail your education

These are tips for failing your education. If you want to fail, make sure to follow them. I sure did.

• Only do the minimum that you are required to do.
• Study like it’s a chore that you have to complete. After that you’ll have time to play video games.
• When studying, aim to please the teacher responsible for grading you, not to learn properly.
• Just study something — anything really. You will be rewarded with good job and steady income just for getting a degree.
• Get your studies done as fast as possible. This way you can get studying out of the way and start climbing the career ladder.
• Studying is not the time to make friends and connections. Just study hard.
• Or, on the other hand, don’t study anything more than the bare minimum that gets you through courses and semesters. Studying is the best time for mindless partying and drinking!
• Don’t participate in any extra-curricular activities, such as student association boards, school clubs or voluntary work. Those will just distract you from studying.
• Don’t try any study subjects outside of you major. More useless distractions!
• Don’t try and put the theoretical knowledge you get in use in the form of side projects. You might run out of knowledge.

(Just to be extra clear and safe, please don’t do the things listed above.)

My second chance

After having graduated I couldn’t get the jobs I would have wanted, and the jobs I could have gotten all seemed to have no potential for growth. I realized I had to come up with something I want to do, or I would end up doing things I don’t want to do for the rest of my life. So I took up something I had wanted to do for a long time — coding.

Long story short I spent countless hours learning to code. Eventually I applied and got in to study a Masters degree in Computer Science, took several courses also from other fields, did a lot of voluntary and project work, and eventually landed my first job as a software developer after only one semester of studying. Now I also value my previous degree and the knowledge I gained from studying Business Administration, as I have a context I can apply that knowledge to.

What separates studying on this degree from the previous one is that now I know what I want to have when I eventually graduate and how to get it. Also the subject is something that I study out of genuine interest for it, not something I picked when not knowing what to do. I have coded a lot, so the new things I learn fall into place like pieces into a puzzle — there’s a practical context where I can apply the theoretical concepts.

Most of all I realize that studying is not something that you should get out of the way quickly, but a time to learn, experiment, make connections and grow as a human being.

How to not fail your education

Here are some things that I learned to do better from the previous degree and that I recommend for every student. Personally I value these things more than any degree in itself. Follow these instructions and you might not have to do a “warm up degree” like I did.

• If possible, study something that actually interests you. You will be so much more motivated to put in the work and actually learn something.
• Within the field you study, find some area that is especially interesting to you. Try to learn as much as you can about that area.
• Don’t rush through you studies with the idea of getting them done and then focusing on work. Use the time you study to try and find what you want to do after graduating. In an ideal situation graduating is not a leap to the unknown but rather a seamless transition to the next phase of your life.
• Take some time off if you can and get a job from the field that you study. Internships and summer jobs are great for this. Working gives you great perspective and context as to what skills are needed in the “real world” and how they are used. Going back to study after working will be so much more motivating when you are hungry for knowledge on things that you found important during working.
• Don’t focus on getting good grades and pleasing the teachers (or your parents). After graduating no-one cares about your grades, what matters is what you can do with the knowledge you have built up. So, instead of trying to get good grades, aim to learn as effectively as possible. Though usually this also results in knowing your stuff and, therefore, getting good grades.
• Get to know people, especially from outside of your field of study. It’s valuable to get to know and be friends with people from your field, but I dare to claim that happens by itself while studying, at least to some extent. What doesn’t happen by itself is getting to know people from outside of your field and becoming friends with them. How do you move forward if you have a business idea that requires coding but you don’t know any coders? Certainly not as easily as if you are friends with some coders already. Besides, every job is inherently multi-discipline, so get used to working and getting along with people from other fields.
• Take time to try and find out what you really want to do when you “grow up”. There is no better time for this than while studying, when you can literally try different subjects, go on excursions and make friends from any field. If you are studying Computer Science but get gradually more interested in Social Sciences, what’s to stop you from changing subject?
• Don’t listen to your parents or try to please them. “Study hard and you will be rewarded”, right? Your parents surely mean well, but the world has changed from when they were young. Apart from some possible exceptions, no degree will guarantee you a secure job until retirement. Hard work is rewarded in life, but blindly studying a given subject and graduating is not that kind of hard work. Regardless of what you study, no-one’s duty is to employ you and secure your living. So don’t work hard, work smart. Quoting Penelope Trunk from Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check (2008):

“So stay focused on where you want to go instead of the paths other people have created for you.”

• Work on your “side projects” — never will you have as much time for that as when studying. Want to try blogging or vlogging? Want to try making music or art? Want to study abroad for a year? Want to start your own business? Then do it when studying. For me that has meant coding whatever projects I have felt like doing. Those have taught me much more about concretely putting my skills to use than any courses I have taken. Also, especially in my field of coding, my side projects have contributed greatly to my portfolio and me getting hired.
• Volunteer in communities. It might be a sports club, your faculty’s student organization, a local coder group, or anything. This has so many advantages I don’t even know where to start. First of all you get to know and befriend people you probably wouldn’t otherwise. Secondly, you get some valuable work-like experience that can help you get hired, especially in the beginning of your career. Thirdly, this is a chance to contribute to something meaningful that you believe in. And if there is no community that you want to contribute to, you can always create your own!

Studying in a university is the optimal time for doing full-time introspection and trying to find out what you want to do in life. Make the most out of it.

I’m a web developer and startup community enthusiast developing the ecosystem at Tribe Tampere. If you are a university student at Tampere, Finland like I am, and willing to get the most out of your studies, definitely check out both Tribe Tampere and Y-kampus, the entrepreneurship and innovation services in the Tampere universities. And don’t hesitate to comment or contact me!