I wish I never went to college

About a month ago I encountered the following question on a Young Adult forum I belong to:

As a Young Adult, what is one thing that you would say to a bridging senior youth? what advice would you give them that has helped you navigate the young adult world? ( topics can range from college to getting a job to friendship or even spiritual growth) Thanks guys

I replied:

If you’re not dead set on what you want to do in college, don’t go to college.

Once you decide what you want to do in college its better having that driver behind you. (Or if people in your life aren’t going to accept that, go part time to college and take your general education courses, and work full time.)

I’ve learned as much if not more from my work life, and from what I know about that I would’ve gone a completely different way in college.

Much of college seems aimed at preparing students for academia. When classwork does emulate a real world product, I believe that its lack of actual implementation it is ultimately poor substitute for actually real work it ultimately denotes a result with little consequence.

In his paper Paul Lockhart, A Mathematician’s Lament he paints the picture of a world where music education is mandatory, but where students spend their elementary through high school years studying the theory of music, while never touching an actual instrument. He argues that this is how mathematics is taught in our schools.

Many people, including me, learn best by actually doing. If I had learned music in Lockhart’s hypothetical world I never would’ve gotten to touching an instrument. I actually am a pretty good musician. Music theory isn’t my strongest point, but its something I’m getting better at. I’ve recently picked up a wee bit of arranging, and working with a friend who is solidly grounded in music theory I’ve begun to pick up bits, and I really see the value in putting the time and bit of rote learning into learning more music theory.

In both high school and college I was often more interested in those things that had a direct real world result. This resulted in me being more interested in implementing a new layout for our store registers at McDonald’s, working on developing specifications for a container tracking system at Chiquita, producing and directing plays in college, and putting together peaceful protests as a member of a student organization. I learned valuable skills during all of these times.

One of the most amazing classes I had was Wright State University’s Small Group Communication, we executed a community service project sending fifteen boxes of clothing to Saint John Bosco Home for Boys an orphanage in Jamaica. That class was awesome because we both learned about the theory of communicating in small groups, while actually using it to perform a community service project.

So what would an ideal college look like? Kettering University is an excellent example where students intern for one term then do classwork for one term. They also have business administration students who do the same thing.

What about turning the whole college idea on its hea?. Take a company or a non-profit, perhaps one with a strong service culture, and run it with students. Up and down the chain, have students everywhere. The company would likely have many part timers instead of full time employee students, but you’d also have professors advising them in the trenches.

I’ll admit this example is likely too far out there, but I think there are more opportunities to have students do real work in the real world, and not just make believe work projects.

So does this mean that I would never go to college? No. Its just that its tough for a twenty something year old to know what they need to know before they need to know it. Thats why my suggestion in the initial comment was to go to college after you have a real idea of what you’d like to do with your life.