Why I Dropped Out of University
I am very confident that I made the right decision to stop pursuing an Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) degree at Oregon State University. The purpose of this blog post is to document most of my thoughts about university life, my decision, and life in general.
Warning: this is more of an essay (with an informal, first-person writing perspective :P) than a blog post.
First, I will explore what students get out of a university experience. These are the reasons people usually disapprove of students dropping out—and you've probably heard of all of these on a high level before—but please don't skip this section. Later in this blog post, I'm going to refer back to this section quite a bit.
Note that many benefits of going to college aren't tangible. For example, "students make memories they can't get elsewhere and get to have fun in ways drop-outs can't" doesn't mean that drop-outs have a lower quality of life, or a more risky future. The value of these reasons is immeasurable; are the memories students make in college 'better' than the memories they'd make outside of college?
Without tangible benefits, these reasons can't weigh heavily in my decision. I want to acknowledge that these reasons to attend college exist, but in this blog post, I will only focus on those with tangible benefits.
Note #2: I use "college" and "university" interchangably in my writing to refer to higher education in general (2 year college, 4 year university, etc).
College allows students to find and learn about the careers they want to work in a few ways. Each option has varying amounts of risk and depth associated with it:
Events such as career fairs: low risk, low depth:
They're more of a broad approach to finding interests. High school students are often required to go to these events, but early in their college career, many students will choose to go to these events because they need to find a career to work toward quickly.
Clubs: moderate risk, moderate depth:
The activities are usually hands-on. Students also get access to peer mentors. But students can't join every club for every subject in a field because there is a time investment (though it is relatively small).
Majors: high risk, high depth:
And finally, of course, colleges provide majors in various subjects. Switching around majors is an expensive way for students to discover their interests both time and money-wise.
First-year classes are shared among majors in the same field so that it's less expensive to switch early on. But majors allow students to really dig into their subject.
Each of these opportunities is appropriate for different people depending on how confident they are about their interests. The best route to take advantage of these opportunities is to go from the least risky, least in-depth to the riskiest, most in-depth (i.e. breadth-first).
Would you agree that the breadth-first approach is the best (i.e. fastest) method to find your interests and pursue them?
I hear people say this a lot about college:
"College will help you grow up! It's very important for personal growth!"
Grow up. Personal growth. What do these even mean? These ideas are abstract. Let's make them more concrete.
By 'growing up,' I think people mean having to take responsibility for yourself and your actions—having to make decisions on your own (having the freedom to do that for the first time in your life), and having cultural exposure. College is the standard time when people grow up.
In Real Grown Up Life™, you aren't sheltered by your parents. You're exposed to many ideas and beliefs in ways your parents can't show you. You have to interact with people who think and act in ways you don't. You have to learn to get along with them. You may even have to live with them.
For most people, college is when they first try to live with very different people, and the transition is (understandably) really hard—especially for people with less life experience or more sheltering parents. As a side note, I'd like to add that a consequence of this is that some drop-outs may struggle to tolerate differences in people.
Also, college is the first time many people have to manage every aspect of their living. Universities try to make this transition easier by requiring first-year students to live in dormitories with eating plans, which completely removes the stress of these concerns:
But all college students—regardless of where they're living—have the freedom to make decisions on their own, away from their parents. This is the first time many will have had this opportunity. They may use it to get drunk or try drugs at every opportunity. I don't think that's necessarily bad—just a result of the combination of immaturity and freedom.
I've talked with a lot of college graduates during my gap year, and have known many graduate school students who have the "been there, done that" type of mentality. After a while (and from what I've seen, usually sometime in college), people get bored of partying and settle down. More specifically, I think that the biggest difference is that these settled-down people have found that the list of things they care about in life does not include getting drunk every chance they get (i.e. they have decided on specific life goals).
So, I believe part of the purpose of college is to teach students maturity by helping them discover their life goals.
By the abstract "personal growth," people mean maturing emotionally and socially.
Based on my experience interacting with people over the last two years, it seems that there are two social extremes that many people can be categorized under:
Some students are very individualistic (often those who are quieter or introverted).
As with all freshmen, they are put in dorms with other students—forcing them to be involved in others' problems, and forcing social interaction.
On the other side: many new college-goers don't have a sense of self. For them to be happy, they must be around their friends all the time. Alone time is boring to them. They won't admit it (often even to themselves), but they care a lot about what other people think of them.
Before college, they may have fallen back on family whenever they were struggling socially. But throughout college, they learn that friends come and go and that relationships aren't necessary to be happy. Maybe while alone they finally get the chance to be more introspective and figure out what matters to them—and that depending on others to be happy isn't practical long-term.
After college, many students may find that they don't need to live with their parents anymore.
The less extreme a person is in these categories, the more socially mature they are. And, since socially mature people have fewer requirements to be happy, emotional maturity is the result of social maturity.
So, one of the benefits of college is that it teaches students to be happy on their own or when with others.
I don't know if I even need to say this. I know you've heard people say this 100x: if you don't go to college, you won't be able to find any jobs in the future. And it's (mostly) true. If you pull up any job posting in a 'skilled labor' field, it's probably going to require you to have at least a bachelor's and 5 years of experience or something. And statistically, those who don't attend college get paid significantly less than those who do.
Obviously—even if students don't learn anything from their degrees—college degrees act like a checkbox that allow graduates to find jobs far more easily. Regardless of if that's changing in 'modern times'... it is true now.
Another reason university is important for students' careers is because it gives them networking opportunities with faculty and fellow students. Ask any Ivy League student—one of the big reasons to attend a prestigious school is because of networking. For all you know, your friends may become successful entrepreneurs, so the best option is to take advantage of nepotism, right? I don't disagree.
I'm not going to comment further on this quite yet. Keep reading.
People drop out of college for many reasons:
All of these are valid reasons, in my opinion, except for work commitments; as I already mentioned, I believe college is important for career prospects. I cannot justify dropping out for a job.
The reason I am dropping out is this: There is nothing college can provide me that I want or cannot get elsewhere.
Don't get me wrong: I think education is really important. I have nothing against education in general. I do, however, have something against college.
My scholarships covered less than 10% of the price of college (which is roughly $30,000 per year). But also, consider the opportunity cost of not being able to work for four years with a high-figure job.
College in the United States really feels like a cash grab. It absolutely feels profit-oriented, at least:
Back to the point...
Luckily, I made all of these realizations freshman year, so I managed to avoid much of the cost. I don't regret the time and money that I did put into college, either; it was just another life lesson that helped me clarify in my mind what I care about.
It's also expensive in that I was spending time working toward a degree I have no desire to work in. I am interested in learning about electrical and computer engineering (ECE) so that I can understand computers on every level, but really, I want to work in computer science (CS).
By the time I made this decision to drop out, I'd already completed all non-major-specific class requirements. So I have the basic competencies students should learn from college (all writing classes, math classes up to differential equations, etc). The only classes left were ECE degree classes.
Right. So I want to work in CS. You may be wondering, why don't I just switch majors to CS?
I think that I would gain even less from a CS degree than I would from any other degree; of any field, CS is the one I have the most knowledge of.
Yes, I am self-taught, and yes, I see the benefits of a guided computer science education. Please see the companion blog post I released at https://aaronesau.com/blog/post/11 that explains why employers shouldn't be afraid of self-taught programmers.
For beginners, depending on your learning style, it may be easier to learn CS through a guided course because, by yourself, it is hard to figure out what you need to learn. This was also the hardest part of learning CS for me.
When I was younger, I didn't know any terminology. When I wanted to learn how to implement a backend (user registrations) for a website, for example, the best Google search I could come up with was "how to make a login form"—and no, I was not trying to write a Bootstrap login for a frontend, despite what Google thought. :P
Luckily, as I mentioned, I would not consider myself a beginner in the computer science field. I've been programming since I was 11 and have been interested in computer security since I was 14.
It took me many years to get to the point where I consider myself to be competent enough to not need a CS degree—way longer than it would've taken if I had just started with a CS degree. But I'm here now. And I feel more prepared than I would be if I'd waited to start learning CS in college.
As previously explained, a benefit of college is that it helps you find what you are interested in.
The final item I'll add the career-interest-by-risk/depth list is research and career—and, it's very expensive and risky to change fields mid-research or career. But also, a career allows you to really dig into a specific skill over a long period of time. My breadth-first approach tells me that—since I already know very specifically what I am interested in—the most efficient use of time is to dig in.
Any of my friends can confirm that my interests are always changing. I tend to be obsessed with something for a short amount of time then move on and 'stash away' or 'keep' the fun I had and skills I learned. Outside of CS, I've previously been (and/or are presently) obsessed with:
Okay, you get the point I think. I have lots of interests and zero of them were inspired by a school (college or high school). College can be helpful for people who want to find new hobbies, but the last thing I need is more hobbies. That's just the kind of person I am. I get interested in everything.
Perhaps at this point, I should mention that right now I have what many would consider a 'dream job,' working in blockchain security (smart contract auditor).
For one, it has flexible hours (contract-based). It also pays incredibly competitively. The work is fun, educational, and extremely satisfying.
My job allows me to work from anywhere. As I'm writing this, I'm sitting at a table at a hostel in Switzerland where I've been working the last week. I've been switching cities every week. I began in Miami, then visited Frankfurt, Berlin, Palma de Mallorca, Rome, Zurich, and now Zermatt. In a couple days I'll be heading to Paris.
It is important to reiterate that this job is not the reason I dropped out. It is only a tiny factor in the big decision.
So I know what I want to do in the near future. Let's consider the worst-case scenario: I get fired tomorrow for whatever reason, or the company just randomly dies. Is it the end of the world? No. There are a few alternative companies I have the skills and will to work for.
Okay, let's consider if the whole blockchain industry were to go up in flames. Am I screwed? No. Luckily, CS is a massive field. I have the skills to work in vulnerability research, web development, application development, systems administration, etc. I'm really just not concerned about the short term.
But don't I need that degree checkbox to get a job?
As far as networking goes, again, I have a decent amount of professional experience, and I took advantage of networking at my school a decent amount in just my freshman year. I know the professors at my school, and they know me. My Oregon State University friends in the computer security club are in the industry I want to work in. Really, I think I have networking covered.
I'm pretty confident about what I want to do with my life. Here's a quick, summarized rundown (talk with me if you want the more personal details)...
Short term:
Medium term:
Long term:
As I've mentioned many times, I really do agree that college is responsible for many people's growth in maturity. But college isn't the only way you can mature. Much of the personal growth I needed happened during my gap year.
For several months I was solo traveling. During this time—much like a new college student (but without the crutches that colleges provide)—I had the opportunity to be away from my parents, manage every aspect of my living, and make decisions on my own. Even bad ones. And my parents weren't there to support me financially, physically, or emotionally. So whenever something bad happened, I dealt with it alone.
Everyone talks about the pros of solo traveling, like that you get to do what you want to do, etc. They also talk about the cons of solo traveling: you are, of course, alone a lot of the time, and it may get lonely.
Yet again, there's enough stuff here for another full blog post. But what's relevant is that the best strategy for a solo traveler is to learn to enjoy doing activities alone. For the social extreme I was closest to prior to last year, this is what I would've otherwise learned in college.
I have always been a more independent type of person. But my gap year experience made me much more comfortable being independent.
And, having lived in hostels for many months (cumulatively), I've been exposed to a large variety of people who are culturally different from me. I've met (and shared hostel rooms with) the wittiest Columbian people, the toughest Romanians, the loudest-snoring of the Dutch... you name it.
Learning to understand other cultures (i.e. cultural awareness) is a never-ending process for everyone, but in my opinion, I am ahead of most of my peers in this sense; I realize that my struggles are very small.
In Corvallis, I lived with people who are decently different from me. We disagreed about things from time to time, but I know that they are just like me in that they were only doing what they believe to be right. So, I can't judge them. We all grew up under different parents.
No matter how big a conflict seems, our struggles are nothing. So, there is no point in getting worked up about anything. This is the way of life.
All I'm saying is that it's not the same experience, but I came away with the same lessons. People can mature whether it's done in college or outside of college. I may not be 100% mature, but I don't need college to grow up.
You've heard of Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, etc dropping out. These people are the exceptions, not the rule. But college is also nothing more than the path to mediocrity for most people. What makes these crazy billionaires different is a combination of inspiration, risk-taking, initiative, and, well, pure luck.
A lot of people go to college because it's the 'normal' thing to do. They're too afraid to take a risk because college is what 'successful people' do.
I'm not particularly special. A lot of people know their interests before entering college and have the same opportunities/alternatives I've been blessed with. The thought of dropping out scares those students because they don't see the bigger picture—they don't realize how much opportunity they have.
It may come as a surprise to hear that there isn't anything I am especially scared or worried about. The pros of dropping out strongly outweigh the cons. I am reasonably confident about what I'm going to do for the next 5-10 years. So, I am very confident about this decision.
What worried me the most before I told my parents about my decision was what they would think about me after breaking the news. As an internet stranger, you don't know my parents. They are not strict or sheltering, but I love and respect them very much. I hate the thought of them being disappointed in me.
Both of my parents took the college path and have always been strong proponents of academic excellence. My three siblings are all very successful in college, and I was worried my parents would think "welp, that's 3 for 4." Luckily, they're reasonable people and support me in my decision. Once I turned 18, they allowed me to make decisions all on my own—right or wrong—and I'm very grateful for that.
Many people see college as the 'correct' path—especially those who have a college degree. I think for many people, college is the correct path. But not for me; I don't need what college provides most people.
If you are a student considering dropping out for a reason that is not out of desperation, please consider taking a gap year to solo travel first. Make sure your life goals are clear. Do you know what you'll do with your newly-found free time?
When I was younger, I never thought I would be the person to drop out. As a part of my 'high achiever' type personality, I get stressed when I think I am not taking the best possible route, or when I feel that I am not staying occupied.
For that reason, I made the mistake of looking down on dropouts—assuming they are all lazy and destined to be unsuccessful. What I didn't realize is that college doesn't mean 'success'. And I learned that it is indeed possible for some people to justify dropping out.
I hope you aren't quick to judge like I was and that you fully understand and agree with my decision.