The Real Problems with Education

Why I dropped out of college with a 4.0

On January 28, I dropped out of college as a pre-med student. 

But it wasn’t because I was failing.

My lowest grade was a 93. 

Why It Made Sense

My self worth has always been tied to getting A’s. 

To help myself, I ran through two mental models from Jeff Bezos.

First, is this reversible? Bezos says to make reversible decisions fast. Whether it’s buying a diamond dildo with free returns or dropping out of college. Colleges are businesses. They’ll welcome me and my thousands of dollars at anytime. Not forging my own path in my early twenties is irreversible, so that’s actually the riskier decision. [1]

Second, imagine you’re 80 years old, looking back on your life. 

The goal is to minimize your regrets and make the most fulfilling choices right now. Ask yourself: “would I regret not trying this?” I would. Thoreau famously wrote that most men live lives of “quiet desperation.” I didn’t want to be another.

Escaping Pre-Med

To be a doctor, I thought you had to like blood and be good at school. I was right. But it shouldn’t be why you choose medicine. Kind of like how you don’t eat at Chipotle just because you’re hungry. 

There’s more to it. 

I think the day to day matters more. Long clinic hours, tedious paperwork, and weekends on-call would suffocate my soul. [2] Eventually I realized that control over my own schedule matters to me. 

Work is just one piece of your Life Pie. It might be a big juicy slice, but how does it fit in with other things you value? How big of slices do you want to save for friends and family, health and travel? 

Work is only one piece of the pie. For some people it’s big. For others, small. That’s ok! It’s up to you to figure out how big it should be.

As a doctor, I’d be a burnt out fat ass. Obese from work, starving for life.

But after I realized this, I still couldn’t let go.

Why was I so attached to being a doctor?

Prestige. It’s badass to tell someone you’re a doctor. It pays well. You might get to wear a white jacket. But as I learned in economics, the critical cost many of us skip over isn’t money but time: med school is expensive, but I’d also have to hand over my twenties. 

So if the renowned Dr. Blackwood was a no-go, why not just switch majors? I thought about physical therapy or psychology.

But then I realized my real problem was with college education in general.

The Destruction of Curiosity

Remember the last day of school when everyone chucks their notes in the dumpster? Smiles and cheers. Celebrating the destruction of knowledge. Like Fahrenheit 451 without the kerosene.

This symbolized college for me. Most people weren’t curious. When school finished, so did learning. Nobody wanted to learn for the sake of learning. They just wanted a degree. [3]

Some people need the structure of college to get something done. That’s ok. 

But if I was self-motivated and getting A’s, wasn’t that enough? 

No. I felt intellectually isolated. My classes were hard, but I mastered the process of getting A’s. Even though I was a 4.0 student, I became like most college kids. Homework was a chore. It felt pointless to memorize facts I’d forget just a few days later.

The only difference was that in my free time, I started reading again. I loved how practical books and podcasts were. That you could actually apply something you just learned to improve your life. What!? Like learning from Dr. Huberman that we actually have to go outside and get sun in the morning.

But don’t you need a degree to be successful? I’m not so sure. It depends how you define success. [4] 2023 was a great success for me because I’ve learned so much about the real world.

I’ve had eight job interviews, traveled solo to Europe, and hopped on phone calls with Twitter strangers. I worked in a retail store for three months. I transformed my people skills. I used to be terrified to approach a stranger. But now I love meeting new people and gaining fresh perspectives, like how life in Spain doesn’t revolve around work.

I radically shifted my beliefs and world views.

I started chasing truth over prestige.

Learning How to Think

In college, a girl once told me she wanted to learn Spanish. But she said didn’t have time to add on another minor degree. Her thinking rests on one tiny little assumption: that she needs a piece of paper to learn.

College will always teach us what to think. We’ll always learn who Freud was. But chances are, we won’t be taught how to identify and question the limiting beliefs that drive us. 

For example: after high school, college feels like the right “next step” for most of us. But should we even choose a career before we can buy a beer? [5] 

Earlier this year, I went to my first Spanish grocery store. I couldn’t find eggs to cook for breakfast. I darted around the small store. Five laps. Ten minutes. I finally realized they weren’t in the fridge. Same with the milk. Turns out they were on a shelf, next to the hanging pig legs. 

That’s just how they do it over there. 

This European grocery store experience taught me a lifelong lesson: just because someone does something different, doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It’s ok to have different beliefs. But you just can’t get a new perspective like this from the cold confines of a lecture hall. 

I worried those eggs would give me diarrhea. They didn’t. 

Not wrong, just different. 

Paul Graham once wrote that you don’t become an adult when you go to college.

It’s more about taking “intellectual responsibility” for yourself:

“Your life doesn’t have to be shaped by admissions officers. It could be shaped by your own curiosity. It is for all ambitious adults. And you don’t have to wait to start. 

In fact, you don’t have to wait to be an adult. 

There’s no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. You start being an adult when you decide to take responsibility for your life. You can do that at any age.” [6]

I’m curious. Intellectually responsible. I know how to think. I want to learn. If the desire to learn is scarce, then it’s probably valuable. Going forward, I’m trusting myself.

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Notes

[1] It’s reversible in the sense that if I wanted to go back to college, I could. The only irreversible thing about dropping out of college is the butterfly effect. This decision forever changed the trajectory of my life.

[2] From Dr. Layne Norton on Instagram. Asked about why he chose PhD over MD he said:

“Because I had zero interest in working in clinical. Sticking me in a hospital or clinic for 8-12 hours per day? Might as well already be dead. No disrespect to those who do and love those jobs, but it would have killed my soul.”

No disrespect to doctors here either. I’m deeply appreciative of the sacrifices they make. All I’m saying is that if I had a choice (and I do), medicine isn’t for me.

[3] This is from what I observed. I’m a small sample size (n = 1). The University of Colorado at Boulder is a huge party school. It’s a public state school. Maybe it’s not where the most ambitious crowd of students hang out. The teachers make or break the class too. We all would’ve adored physics if Feynman was teaching.

With all that said, there’s one massive benefit to college: the people. You’re around lots of young people. I met two lifelong friends.

[4] If you define success as getting a good job, just think: if startups and cutting-edge companies like Apple don’t require degrees, what does that say about the future of hiring? 

[5] I’m paraphrasing this quote from The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani:

“First, the big problem with life in many industrialized countries is that far too often, we’re expected to choose a career before we can legally buy a beer.” 

[6] From Paul’s 2005 essay, “What You’ll Wish You’d Known.” This should be required reading for high school and college students.

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Special Thanks to all the wonderful people in Write of Passage Cohort 11 who read drafts of this:

Anthony D'Apolito III

,

Dylan Kurt

,

Julie Nguyen

,

Sean Filipow

,

Alex

, Gianfranco Filice, and Raksha Joshi.