College Dropout – 7 Reasons Not to Be One

Coming to the end of high school, most of us are required to seriously think about our future. Who is it that we want to become? If financially possible, the most logical solution would be to go to college. College is that first serious step towards a bright future, with a good salary, respectable position in society, and acceptance from people around us. Without hesitation, we choose college and some subject that we feel most passionate about… only to become a college dropout 2 years from then.

There may be many different reasons why we would want to drop out of college, such as the lack of interest in our field, or simply the unwillingness to keep on studying. Moreover, you may have heard of success stories of people that have dropped out of college, and proved to the world that education and success do not necessarily go hand in hand. And while this may sound convincing, try not to fall for it. Do not let your youthful maximalism, laziness and stress take over you and convince you that you are better off without education.

1. College dropout – physically demanding jobs are not for everyone

When I finished high school, I really felt like “livin’ la vida loca” and not caring too much about what was ahead of me; I just wanted to have fun. For a year I worked as a loader. Basically, I would load cargo onto a truck from at a warehouse, and then for the rest of the day me and my colleague would ride around delivering the cargo. You would think that this job has little stress, but this is not true at all. Apart from working really hard, there were a number of other difficulties, such as having the truck stuck in the snow in the middle of nowhere, or customers yelling at us because they don’t like the way we carried their heavy furniture. Sometimes people really do have a hard time feeling empathy for others that are doing all the work.

After a year of doing something I hated for almost no money, I finally decided that it was enough. I needed a real job in the future in which I could become a professional. Because my loader job was a difficult experience, it became clear to me that I can’t work the rest of my life carrying stuff around – I wanted to do something else.

2. College dropout – college forces critical and analytical thinking

I have heard hundreds of times people saying that college and university don’t teach you anything good. They use as their main argument the fact that anything that college teaches, can be learned on your own. In other words, college and university are completely useless.

Now, depending on how passionate you are about your major, I can agree to an extent with the previous statement. But I can agree only to an extent. One of the most important points that people forget when they make these claims is that higher educational institutions teach one to think critically and analytically. This is done through monotonous work of preparing for exams, essays and presentations. Practicing these things, you learn to pick up key points and findings from the total mass of information, and expand your ideas further based on these findings. You learn to glue different facts together and to make coherent claims, statements and reports based on them. You learn to doubt the things that are said to you, and to use science to help form your thoughts and opinions.

Sure, many things can be taught to yourself at home by reading books and watching the Discovery channel. But trust me, no place can teach you to be critical and analytical better than college and university.

3. College dropout – you are forced to be more intelligent

Here I am not referring to individual wisdom, but rather to smartness. College won’t teach you to be a wise or “street smart”, but it will definitely raise your overall level of smartness.

When I got into college, I was required to perform heavy exercises and tasks in the intellectual sense. I read journals, articles and books that I would have never otherwise even looked at. I also focused on all kinds of areas of human evolution and society, which made me more aware of why we are the way we are.

Some of you may wonder what is the point of learning something you have no interest in. Here I can agree with you because I too think that doing your whole life something you are not passionate about – sucks! But the world holds so many more interests than what we can possibly ever have. Plus, life is not only about doing the things that we care about, but it is also about becoming better in all areas of life. Therefore, it is important to expand our horizons. To understand what interests us most, we must know what the world has to offer.

Maybe I didn’t enjoy reading a certain type of literature in college… at all.. but I nevertheless went thought it, and I nevertheless learned a great deal from it! You don’t have to go against your will all the time and do the things you don’t like, but once in a while, it is good to shock your brain and to go outside of your comfort zone, at least so that you can hold up a conversation on many different topics with many different people.

4. College dropout – amazing connections

Some of the best friends that you will ever have, will come from college and university. I know this for a fact.

I made some good friends in college, but I also made best friends at college. The fact that you are already relatively grown up at that point, makes it possible to find friends that really have the same interests as you, especially if you study in the same field. Sometimes I regret a bit that I dropped out of my first college, but not because I wanted to finish studying that subject, but simply because I would have wanted to graduate at the same time with everyone else.

5. College dropout – extra time to think about your future

As paradoxical as it may sound, college can actually sober you up a bit, show you the reality of things, and give you that extra boost for you to really think about your future. If you are anything like I was, you might arrive to the conclusion that what you are studying is either not for you, or needs some serious modification. Based on these thoughts you can better coordinate your coming career path. This doesn’t however justify dropping out of college. Once you are already in college, you still have the opportunity of taking a new direction instead of dropping out and doing nothing. Think this through carefully.

6. College dropout – making discipline

Fortunately, this doesn’t concern me so much, but I knew plenty of people that had serious problems with discipline. This included everything from coming to class on time, to doing homework and preparing for exams. College and university are in a sense like army, but for the brain. They teach you to become more disciplined and prepare you for your professional future. While in college and uni you can still slack around to an extent, at work this won’t be tolerated. Therefore, use the time wisely, and teach yourself to always be sharp and attentive – become a better you.

7. College dropout – watch out for the stress

One of the biggest factors pushing you to make a rash decision of dropping out of college is the amount of stress.

Now, life does not exist without stress. College and university, if taken seriously, involve a whole lot of stress. As I already mentioned, you will pretty much be bombarded with tasks to do, presentations to make, homework and exams. One key point is to be able to manage your time properly and to be as productive as possible. But even then you can be overwhelmed by the amount of work that you need to do. This is that point where many decide that they have had enough and that studies are not for them. Then they decide to drop out, and it all ends there.

Please do not fall for this – stress is inevitable. You may think that your chosen subject is not for you, or you don’t want to study anymore, but in reality, it is just the exhausted you speaking.

Have you ever gone to a grocery store when you were hungry? Remember that feeling when you wanted to buy so many things at the same time? Well, it wasn’t that you needed them all then; it was your hunger talking. The same thing goes with stress. When you are under heavy pressure, dropping out feels like the right thing to do. But if you give it some time, if you live over that moment and have a break, you will notice how dropping out doesn’t feel as the best thing to do anymore.

Furthermore, if you drop out of college with the idea that you will start over with a different subject in a different college later on, you might feel very sorry about this decision afterwards. Again, I dropped out of my first college, but I had a solid plan of what I was going to do next. Moreover, education is free in the place where I live, so for me this was less of a problem – I could try as many different schools as I wanted, if only I wished to.

That being said, I know people who dropped out of college and couldn’t start studying again. After you drop out once, you just don’t have that interest anymore to keep going, which is why I very much recommend to make it though college, and only then have a break, if you really need to.

Conclusion

Dropping out of college sucks! Don’t let yourself do something you will regret later on in life. If you feel that you want to make your own business, and that college won’t help you in achieving that, go through college anyway! Have it as your backup plan. You can always use your real profession to support yourself when you need to, and to help yourself raise money for the real passion of yours. Hopefully, some of the reasons mentioned in this post will help you stay in college and go all the way through it.

In any case, before going to college or university, make sure you think about your future well. Decide on who you want to become beforehand, and do it well. Finally, always give yourself some time before you decide to become a college dropout. Be aware of the stress that is affecting your thinking, and instead focus on making in your studies at least one small step at a time.

If you feel that you have troubles in the context of education with one of the following topics, make sure to click on them to read the full post:

1. Overcoming procrastination
2. All about taking action
3. Best time management and productivity apps

Thank you and good luck!

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