I shared some thoughts a little while ago about lectures. I want to play a game now: what if your goal was to drop out of school? What skills would you need to be successful? How much of the stuff in class could you do without? Would you be better off?

Lots of other people have done it

It doesn’t take much effort to find successful people who dropped out of school. The most intriguing aspect of that list is that it’s not just entertainers that can drop out and become famous, so can physics geniuses and programming wizards. Entrepreneurs seem to admire the moxy required to drop out. Dropbox, a fantastically successful internet startup, was founded by two MIT dropouts: Drew Houston and Arash Ferdouwsi. They used to have a pretty funny description about dropping out being “startup cred” on their About page, but they have since removed it.

What does school teach you about relationships?

Real relationships are incredibly educating things. The amount that you learn from lectures and homework assignment doesn’t even compare to the amount that you can learn from a knowledgeable someone who cares about your future. Part of the problem is logistical: how can a professor genuinely connect with 200 people in a lecture course? Part of the problem is the student/professor relationship: why do we spend so much time in contention with the men and women that are supposed to be helping us realize our dreams?

A boss of mine expressed the opinion that hiring from well-regarded universities usually doesn’t work out. He went on to explain those employees from big name schools were less useful in the group because they tended to be close-minded in a room full of men and women from smaller colleges. The difference in educational background vanished when skills needed to be applied in a team setting. Isn’t that funny? You should be developing open-mindedness rather than squeezing in one extra course on fluid mechanics. Where is that on the syllabus?

Detaching from school

I trained for three years to secure a spot on the three-person team that won a trip to the ACM International Collegiate Programming Championship World Finals last year. I also got my first C in a class. I was surprised to find that it didn’t matter to me; I had found something that was worth more than a 4.0. I have gotten more phone calls from companies because of my involvement in that contest than I have for any grades in my classes. The feeling of freedom and competence knowing that there’s more to achievement than GPA is incredibly motivating.

Vigilance is key

Professors have paid their dues; they know what they’re talking about. And working diligently is an incredibly useful skill. However, how many people have you heard of that just decide to continue to grad school because they don’t know what to do next? Georgia Tech recently introduced an option to get a Master’s degree without writing a thesis. You know, so that you don’t have to come up with anything original to get the “Master’s” stamp on your diploma.

There is an obvious conclusion from these thoughts: class work is not transcendent. If you don’t care about it, then it will be pointless to you in the future. Be more critical of what is taught to you in class. Some teachers have noticed this and ask students to call BS on their history textbooks. Obviously, I don’t think that class work is pointless. I just think it’s pointless if you resolve to forget about it when your finals are over.

Implications

I want to close with two extraordinary messages: one scary and one optimistic. In October of last year, Andrew Lahde dropped out of the hedge fund game with a short letter. Here is an excerpt–

I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

There is an optimistic interpretation to the dropping out question that I ran into recently. I started writing this entry about a week ago, and since then Clay Burell posted an article on The Wisdom of Dropping out: Steve Jobs’ Must-See Graduation Speech at change.org. Here is the video, and a list of my favorite quotes.
From Steve Jobs–

• “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and I had no idea how college would help me find out”
• “[Typography was] artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture”
• “If I would have never dropped out then I would have never dropped in”
• “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. “
• “…the confidence to follow your heart.”
• “the heaviness of being successful was replaced with the lightness of being a beginner again—not being sure of everything It was one of the most creative periods of my life.”
• “You’ve got to find what you love”
• “Remembering that you’re going to die is the cure for thinking that you have something to lose. You are already naked; there is no reason not to follow your heart.”
• “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”
• “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

I hope some of you will play the dropping out thought experiment, too. Also, Hearing your results in the comments would make my day.