Today a friend of mine made a status about how someone told her that the only way to “get ahead” in life, or to have any chance at being anything is to go to university and get a job. At one point in my life I was told that too, and because I didn’t question it and chose to accept that as fact I went to University. I went for the sake of going. I completed a degree for the sake of completing a degree that I had little care for. Although what I studied was interesting in its own right, I cared for it about as much as I care about the ground breaking news that Today Tonight and A Current Affair spew out.
“Please, enlighten me on the important matter of correctly fitted denim jeans!”
Needless to say I did not pursue what I studied and after my degree decided to study in a field that I was much more passionate about at the time. And I studied in an institute that was not a University. Because I was passionate about it, I enjoyed learning about it and did very well in my classes. A friend of mine also completed the same qualification as myself but went via an online course. So as you can see there are many routes that can lead to the same destination. There is no one route. There is no one option. In this day and age there are so many options out there. The harder decision is choosing which path is right for you. Are you a more practical learner or do you thrive on theory? Do you fair well in studying full time or part time? On campus or off campus? So as you can see, depending on your preferences, you can choose the route you wish to take in getting you to where you wish to be.
I feel society may have conditioned this way of thinking. That the one and true route to be where you want to be is to complete primary school, so you can complete high school, so you can go to university to get a degree, so you can get a job (to pay off your university debt). When in reality you can choose from so many different paths. Say you want to be an artist. Do you need to go to an art school? No, you don’t. You can very well learn from observation or tutorials, or an art mentor. Are there benefits to going to a school/college? Sure there are. But you don’t NEED to go that route to be a great and successful artist. What about a business owner? You don’t need a degree in business to start your own. You may be a natural entrepreneur. You may learn from experience. You may learn from attending a seminar. Now there are some career paths that require a university degree such as being a qualified counsellor, lawyer or doctor and even then you can choose how you wish to complete the degree.
Here is a radical thought. Why not make your own path? Find out what you wish to do with your life, and spend the money that you otherwise would have spent on university on learning something you are passionate about. Learn from seminars. Pay to meet experts in your field of interest. Acquire a mentor to guide you. Buy online books, audio books, tutorials. Create your own path to where you want to be. The beauty of this approach is that you can choose to study the things you need and have to know, instead of following a subject structure at university that will most like include subjects that make you memorise information that you will never need to know and may never use.
Jim Carey makes his own soupy path!
I think there is an unnecessary pressure that is placed upon people, particularly youths. That you need to do well in high school in order to be successful in life. You need to do well so you can go to university, get a job etc. If you fail at school now you will fail in life. Which I know for a fact is not true. Just to throw some examples out of well known people who dropped out of university to pursue different career paths (and for the better I would say). Steve Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Oprah, Bill Gates (Microsoft), John Lennon (The Beetles) , Jim Carey, Walt Disney (Disney) and Abraham Lincoln to name a few. This is not to say that you shouldn’t care about high school or your education, because you should. Continuous education and learning and are so important, especially in a world that is changing so rapidly. You need that knowledge to be able to adapt to that change. If you stop caring about learning and if you don’t try in school and don’t commit to your education that attitude could carry over later in life. Not caring about learning in high school could carry over to an attitude of not caring about learning in any area and that will be so tragic and detrimental to your life.
So I strongly believe there are definitely more ways than one to get to where you wish. Some paths may be short and straight, others may take the scenic route, but they all end up in the same place. The one big difference will be the attitude you have when you get to that end. Let’s hope you enjoyed the ride.
– Sash
Sash Mindflow 