IME “peddling accessories at raves and techno dance parties” is code for selling Ecstasy. No wonder his business is successful at the moment. Who cares what he does. He sounds arrogant.
@MassDaD68 I do agree to a point – that said my step son is an engineering student who in my opinion still (despite having to have to take several English classes) kind of stinks at writing/grammar etc. – He has the who cares attitude. You know what? I do-- it is business and he needs to learn to communicate clearly and professionally so the non math and non-engineering in my opinion has value for his future career. And yes I have told him that numerous times.
Here is an example of such a thing, although from a church rather than a non-religious school:
http://www.foryourmarriage.org/dating-engaged/must-have-conversations/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Cana
This “well-rounded” vs. “career-specific” education has been a topic of conversation in our house in the past. H questions the reason for these “breadth classes”. I contend that you never know where or how the knowledge you’ve gained will come in handy. We are the sum of our experiences, after all. The number of professionals I’ve heard about with diverse skills (surgeons who are also artists, engineers who are also musicians), supports this notion. A well-rounded education is the charter of most universities. As an early poster said, there are avenues for career-specific courses.
OP has done someone a favor by opening up a space for someone who really wants to be at that school. College is too huge of a time and money commitment to not be at least somewhat on board. And not everyone has the drive, smarts and - let’s face it - luck to be able to carve out a living without some sort of higher education (and the valuable connections that experience can provide).
Sorry, I meant person in the article, not OP.
This ex-student has received his 15 minutes of fame. Time for him to go to work at Starbucks.
I read the article and his perspective… and I totally get where he is coming from… Academically, socially, athletically you get the picture, our culture pushes our kids to do better and achieve more by the time they graduate high school. Just looking at all the essays and really super achievements expected of our barely 17 yr olds just to have a shot at many universities makes my head spin. So it is not so surprising that an 18 yr old would choose to ditch the slow pace, no immediate reward of a college education to pursue the ultimate goal… money and all that entails.
However, I actually feel sorry for him. While he might “cash in young” he will miss the college relationships he could have formed, the agony of working through a group project with other 18-21 yr olds, 4 years of figuring himself out… without the struggle of paying the bills and worrying about taxes and the vast majority of other intangibles that becomes “the college experience.” I think it is sad that so many of our kids just want to get to the end and miss all of the “good stuff” in the middle.
“If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.” - Plato.
There are so many lessons to be learned at college, and I personally learned the most from a couple of classes I didn’t want to take or see a reason for taking. There is also this opportunity to be in company with other students who share this experience, and that is also valuable. Entrepreneurship will be waiting after attaining a degree. There are people who can get away with abandoning a college degree, but I think that is not many. I would be very sad if one of my kids made such a decision. I think a college education is valuable all one’s life, and this choice could very well be something this kid regrets.
Before I even clicked on the article, I said: “oh please let it be a middle-class white male, oh please oh please”. I was not disappointed. It’s nice to say college is a scam, take a picture of you flipping the school off was a nice touch, when you have mommy and daddy’s couch waiting at home. And wow, waiting until you’re 35 to be profitable, you’re right that’s got to be almost 10 years in the future. I would stop to figure it out exactly but math – when the hell are you going to use THAT? At least he’s got his most valuable asset on hand in spades – time. Those rave bracelets don’t make themselves.
He must be a really slow student because my kids got the quadratic formula in their 10th grade curriculum.
Well, Bill Gates, Larry EllisonLady Gaga, and Steve Jobs dropped out of college and they did pretty well. And some folks were even wiser and never even wasted a semester: Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, Rachael Ray, LeBron James, Jesus Christ, the Three Stooges, Goofy. And there are also untold millions of others who dropped out, and hundreds of millions who never went, never had the chance to get scammed.
I’d love to see a follow-up on this guy in 10 years. He should be rich and famous by then. With 300 hours of new You Tube videos uploaded every minute, he has so much to learn!
This came up on my Twitter feed a couple days ago, but I couldn’t fit my annoyance within 140 characters.
Almost everyone knows that college is overpriced. It doesn’t make him enlightened or intelligent that he decided college wasn’t for him. I think that everyone has to follow their own path, but I think it’s ridiculous when kids my age think their so profound because they don’t want to do what everyone else is doing. Great, you’re smart enough to know that college is overpriced, now let’s just see if you’re smart enough to make it without that degree. Selling accessories to a bunch of strung out kids at raves is not necessarily a million dollar venture.
It’s pretty darn presumptuous of him to declare that just because college isn’t is the right path for himself, that it must be a scam for everyone else, too.
His next presumption is to declare that just because it makes him look fat, orange is the wrong color for everyone.
That’s even later than the expectations set for a normal NYC public HS student(first semester of 9th grade at the latest when I attended) unless s/he was in some sort of academic remedial program or was repeating it after failing it in 9th grade.
And I hope he isn’t hoping to be hired by companies/clients from countries where quadratic equations/what we’d consider 9th grade algebra are topics which would be considered standard for middle school math(6-7th grade) in their societies.
My older relatives and some Russian friends who wasn’t considered academically qualified enough to attend a university track high school in the former Soviet Union/early post-Soviet Russia, especially the one who attended a highly competitive STEM-centered vocational HS for aspiring military officers would have laughed at this aspiring engineering major who “needed hours” to ponder “quadratic equations”. That was middle school material for most of them.
Does that mean most students take calculus in high school? Or is the material arranged differently than the usual Algebra I, geometry, Algebra II (quadratic equations here), pre-calculus progression?
Shark Tank is entrepreneurship for Joe Average, and they get a lot wrong. Even the very top people get a lot wrong. Most people do not know that there are some 1000+ venture capitalist investors who said the exact same “failure” about Google and Facebook Fedex. etc. and they regret not investing in them now.
The part I really like is he is not trying to be some 9 to 5’er dependent on someone else to give him a job.
At my public magnet, yes as most would have taken algebra/geometry I and even II in middle school. For most NY students who start in 9th grade, following the sequence means they’d only be in a position to take pre-calc senior year…and that’s assuming they opt for the 4th year of math in HS.
Many don’t as the NY HS requirement is for 3 years of math. At my public magnet that’s regardless of what level one starts of with beyond the initial regular math sequence (i.e. If one is ready to take calculus in 9th grade, they’d still need to take 3 years of math in HS from calc onwards).
Quadratic equations would be part of 9th grade Algebra I and taught with geometry* and taught in the first semester of 9th grade at the latest. At least when my neighbors and i were taking it in NYC public schools back in the '90s.
- NY math curriculum combined algebra and geometry for those on the regular HS math sequence(9th grade till 11)...called it MQ series from 1-6 (6 semesters worth)
I checked out his business. So far it consists of a rather unoriginal t-shirt, a website that hasn’t yet come on line, and a Facebook page with 107 likes. Any of my kids could get more than 107 likes on a page by simply inviting their friends and family.
It sounds to me like this kid has an idea for a business, rather than a business itself. He may find that in the real world it’s tougher to make his fortune than in his imagination.
Personally, if I were at Kansas State and didn’t know what to do with myself, I would change my major to bakery science.
All businesses start as an idea; many times as an idea that does not seem like much. However, cannot execute the idea and grow it until one actually gets out and does exactly that. I like the fact that he is getting out and doing it.
It is always tougher than thought in the real world, but what separates entrepreneurs from the 9 to 5 job-seeker is they have the passion and the drive for their idea, not someone else’s idea. Makes going to work, not really going to work, no matter how tough it gets.
Hard work is not really hard when you are doing something you like AND when it is for yourself. I remember those 100-hour work weeks for 4 - 5 years, and I can tell you they felt like 30-hour weeks because I loved what I was doing.
If he follows the path of 90% of successful entrepreneurs, he will fail about two or three times, but will then get it right and make it big.