<p>Sithra, we’ve had this same conversation before. You went into engineering, you hate math and you sucked in your courses…and on this basis of a very narrow experience, you decide you ‘hate college’. </p>
<p>There is far more to college than engineering, or business or some other ‘vocational like’ degree. If you are smart, you like books and learning, why on earth wouldn’t you just change majors and see what you think first? You might find your passion, get educated, have far better options for jobs, or possibly go onto graduate school. </p>
<p>Why on earth would you assume that your personal college experience, in one major with one set of students at one school, reflects ALL college majors, students, and degrees? </p>
<p>It just seems really silly to throw out the baby with the bathwater. </p>
<p>But you seem convinced to drop out regardless of what anyone says, so why do you keep asking?</p>
<p>Because I’ve tried three different majors at two colleges plus a bunch of core classes and found them all to be mind-numbingly boring. </p>
<p>I am mad because there are two opposing and contradictory forces at college- learning and getting a job afterwards. Seems like college is more about just getting through college, making good grades, and landing a job, so why can’t I just skip the jumping through hoops part?</p>
<p>Or, for the people who can do that, they either have other skills (for example, an artist or craftsman), or they have superb selling skills (that is, they can sell anything to anybody). My father, who had a GED and attended college on the GI Bill but didn’t finish, had those superb selling skills, refined them in a certain industry, and became incredibly successful as a result. Do you have those kinds of selling skills?</p>
<p>And do you think the attitude that you’re “smarter than 90% of people” holds you back?</p>
<p>This is where you are wrong. What you learn in college is not so much the information itself (you’re right, you can look up a lot of stuff on the Internet) but how to think, how to process, how to draw analogies, how to look for commonalities, how to reason, how to argue, how to synthesize, how to deconstruct. You are looking at this completely the wrong way if you think it’s about learning that Columbus sailed the ocean in 1492 and 9 is the square root of 81. </p>
<p>And what employers pay you for isn’t the knowledge that you learned from sitting in class - they are paying you for the ability to then apply solid patterns of thinking and insight to the situations in front of you.</p>
<p>That sounds like a defensive argument scrambling for something to cling on. I don’t buy it.</p>
<p>What about this…college is a way for employers to know if you are capable of jumping through some difficult hoops and then they pick you up like a ripe plant, ready to be exploited.</p>
<p>College is a way for employers to pre-screen the gigantic pile of job applications they get. Yes, some gems will slip through the cracks-- but it’s not worth their time to sort through all the high-school-only applications just to find those few gems, when there are plenty of gems in the college graduate pile already.</p>
<p>That’s life. You know you’re smart and capable, but they don’t, so how will you signal it to them? How do you differentiate yourself from the rest of the applicants in a way that doesn’t take up a lot of their time? They won’t have time to read an essay in the first screening round; they’re looking for short, credible signals of applicant quality. College degrees and other credentials & certifications (such as a CCIE cert, language cert, etc) are currently your best bet to do that. If you can think of a better way-- go for it! But you’ll have to decide for yourself whether the risk is worth it. External validation shouldn’t be a tipping factor in a decision this big.</p>
<p>Well, then, don’t buy it, and go drop out. What are you waiting for? Why are you then hanging around a message board asking for input, validation or affirmation? Your mind’s clearly made up already. Which is fine! But then don’t ask repeatedly in the hopes of the answer changing.</p>
<p>So, the only reason I should go back to my college is if I feel it will be a sort of pedigree (I think it would) and will impress employers. The only other option is to go it alone. I think I got it now. Thank you.</p>
<p>no? So college really is just another hoop to jump through, and probably one of the first of many hoops you have to jump through in order to climb the corporate ladder.</p>
<p>What do you want to do and what are your qualifications, skills? If you can answer these questions on your resume or employment application then you may be able to find a job.</p>
<p>Can’t it be both a hoop you have to jump through, AND something more?</p>
<p>Hey, you can make what you want out of any situation. If you choose to look at it as just a hoop, then it’s just a hoop. If you choose to look at it as a learning experience, then it’s a learning experience. Ball is in your court, buddy. It’s all up to you.</p>
<p>College is overrated. Join the real world, see what’s out there. I am sure you won’t have to jump through any hoops and there will never be any obstacles in your path. Your new job / will never be boring, pay you what you need, and give you stability.<br>
Now go get a job, finding your passion. If you don’t like it, just get another.</p>
<p>Adults are impatient with 18-20 somethings who think they are the first to discover how ridiculous the world is, which is definitely where you are. The thing is, people who truly feel this way about college go out and DO something, you just seem to want to complain about how we adults messed up college and work. Sounds so much like what we said when we were in college only we were a much larger and cohesive group (Baby Boomers in the late 60’s/early 70’s), yet, look where we are now. Guess there’s a reason for this process.</p>
<p>In any case, if you’re still reading, what I suggest you do is meet with a career counselor to help you discover your passion, as clearly you are a bit lost in that respect. There are some very insightful tests that can help you discover what you are good at and what you might like to do with your life. If you had all the money you needed what would you like to do? It may or may not require college, it may or may not require some other sort of certification or training. Maybe you need a “create your own” type of college - Hampshire or Pitzer come to mind but there are many others.</p>
<p>I know you are probably about 20 years old and think you can do it differently and better than all of us “old guys” but we were there once also and, I’m sorry to say, very few people can do it differently and succeed. Those that do, think less about following their own path and what others think, and just follow it.</p>
<p>Sithra, if you really want an answer to your problem, here it is: you will not succeed at college, at work, or anywhere else, without a major attitude adjustment. You think you are smarter than 90% of college students–you will also think that you are smarter than your boss at work. That will cause you to lose that job, for which you will blame the boss. That will happen at the next job, too, because they are all the same. In fact, you will have trouble getting jobs, because employers are familiar with people who have that attitude, and they won’t hire you.</p>
<p>I’m not so sure how you can go about getting rid of this attitude, which I’ve seen wreck the lives of other very smart people. Perhaps some kind of counseling could help.</p>
<p>Bravo, Hunt. Sithra wants something for nothing, and is waiting for someone new to read his post and tell him how to do this. You really won’t find it here, I think. </p>
<p>Gotta say, pretty much every job has some periods where you have to grind out doing something you don’t want to do. One of the reason employers prefer a degreed candidate is because they have proven they can stick out something difficult to reach an end goal. They don’t want an employee who is going to quit the first time the going gets tough.</p>
<p>I know several adults who have gone back to college later in life to finish their degrees as night students because they realized that the companies they work for require a bachelor’s degree to get promoted. They are usually juggling a house and kids by the time they do this. One reason to buckle down and finish a degree now is to avoid that scenario in the future. It is much tougher than just rolling up your sleeves and finishing college now.</p>
<p>If you don’t want to jump through hoops, go start a company. Start a catering business, a lawn care business, a house painting company. When you are the boss, you can decide what hoops you choose to jump through vs. not. However, you will probably quickly find that you wish you had taken some coursework in accounting, finance, marketing, business law, etc.</p>
<p>I didn’t go to college during the rebellious late 60’s, and am still trying to get a degree now at almost 60.</p>
<p>A lot of my ideas at the time were right, and still may be right, but I can’t really discuss this, or even the fact that I was a top student, with someone looking through a stack of resumes before even choosing whom to interview.</p>
<p>It’s just a reality.</p>
<p>With maturity and experience, which most of us accumulate over decades, it can be easier to get a good job than when your age.</p>
<p>I think you should change majors and get a degree. Period. Unless you have a passion like wooden-boat building or violin making or something. </p>
<p>Check into other ways to get a degree. Google Goddard, Union Institute, Charter Oaks, for instance. Or do continuing education or online classes, two at a time, while you try out the work world.</p>
<p>Sithra, the pool of jobs that pay well without a degree is shrinking. Times have changed. If you went to your local grocery store, you might find that the manager doesn’t have a degree. The district manager may not have a degree. But look on the company’s website and it will tell you that now manager trainees must have a degree. A person used to be able to work their way up from cashier to management, but they can’t any more.</p>
<p>This is not true with all companies. I think McDonalds likes to publicize the folks who rose from crew member to management. </p>
<p>You can always buy a franchise and be your own boss and the boss of others. But it takes money to buy a franchise. You can start your own business. Again, it takes money.</p>
<p>Here is a project for this summer. Go onto a job search site and look up all the jobs that you can get without a degree. Find out how much they pay. (Note: The majority of jobs will be part time and have no benefits, so you may need two jobs to approach full time status.) Then research how much a decent apartment costs to rent, factor in a car payment and gas or the cost of public transportation. Then see how much you have left.</p>
So college really is just another hoop to jump through, and probably one of the first of many hoops you have to jump through in order to climb the corporate ladder.</p>