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Steve Jobs In Praise of Dropping Out
atlacatl writes "Wired reports on Steve Jobs giving a graduation speech: 'Jobs, 50, said he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon but dropped out after only eight months because it was too expensive for his working-class family. He said his real education started when he "dropped in" on whatever classes interested him -- including calligraphy.' The irony: that most students were graduating. I wouldn't invite him for a high school graduation. Imagine all the 'hard' work teachers, parents and guidance counselors put into brainwashing every kid that he/she must go to University." (Jobs was speaking to the graduates at Stanford University.)
Ug... Job's touting dropping out will undoubtedly start a flurry of "ask.slashdot" questions similar to: Thanks, Steve.
...but a lot more drop out because they are stupid.
Beep beep.
He also dropped acid in his younger days. That a good thing too??
Sounds like good advice to me!
...and it worked for him AND Gates dropped out of Harvard and it worked for him, doesn't mean that it OK for everyone to drop out.
In general University/College is a GOOD thing. However, some people's paths take them elsewhere.
--Mike
I don't think the point of his speech was that dropping out is cool. It was that hard work and determination are what you need to be successful.
Say what you want about Jobs, he's a gifted businessman who knows how to sell. He had the right product in the 70's at the absolute best time.
Your mileage, of course, will vary :).
www.lonseidman.com
Education != College.
College can provide a wonderful education, if the student is ready for it. I started college when I was 16, but I was too immature even though the "test scores" said otherwise. I needed to grow up, get life experiences. I did these things (though I didn't realize it at the time), and graduated when I was 24.
Had I gotten through school by the time I was 19, which was the pace I was heading, I would have had a college degree and a job I would have hated. Probably would have been found hanging by a rope by now. Instead, I love what I do, and life only gets better by the day.
Summary: College is education for those ready to receive it. Same goes for life in general.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Of course, your post completely ignores the real issue: That they shouldn't have gone to college in the first place.
The US has gotten so fixated on sending kids to college that we've lost sight of the reasons why we wanted them there in the first place. As a result, the quality of education has been declining, while the amount of debt our kids pile up before ever starting a job has been rising. And how many of those kids use their college degrees to do amazing things like sell real estate or become plumbers. i.e. What did that degree buy them other than a wad of debt?
That's not to say that education is a bad thing. But people always get the best bang out of an education when they know they want it. Sending them to school before they know what they want to know only devalues it for everyone. Teach your kids to wait until they're ready. Then they can be sure that they really want to take on a college education.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I never finished college and it has yet to hurt me professionally, financially or emotionally (partly I didn't have the money, mostly I didn't really find it useful for my goals to bother coming up w/ the money - and I went to a good 4 year east coast school with an extremely good comp sci program).
If you're talented, smart, and *most importantly* not lazy, not having a degree doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. With those assets you're more than capable of working around and moving beyond the confines of the traditional 'system' most people end up dealing in (IMO, because they aren't talented enough, smart enough or lack the work ethic to do anything to change things).
Degrees are nice and they do make joining the higher class system (white collar?) easier, but IMO, a lot of people also use degrees as a crutch for rationalizing avoiding the need to do anything meaningful.
If you're talented, smart and actually enjoy hardwork, the world is your oyster. Persuing a degree may even be a distraction from you obtaining your purpose and potential.
$.02
High school was like that for me. Going to college---even state school---was like night and day. Suddenly, the kids who sullenly made it a pain in the ass to be there vanished. I got to learn from people who were really and truly competent; I had the time to take courses that just seemed cool at the time, that probably wouldn't be useful in any future job, but I took them because I wanted to learn about something.
Yes, there were a few fools and charlatans teaching, but I dealt with it; I got to work with some of the cleverest, brightest folks I know.
For me---who'd never known there were other geeks out there---it was a transformative experience.
Clearly, your mileage may vary. But what you get out of school is, at the very least, proportional to what you put into it. Blaming The Man for not hacking it in school is pretty damn weak.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You'll get out as much as you put in. If all you ever do is take engineering classes and do the required minimum work, you'll have wasted a great opportunity.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
If you're that weak, it wasn't meant to be.
(/me went to college three years after high school. You'd be suprised how motivating a shit job at minimum wage is.)
It's been a long time.
>but what are you supposed to do for the 12-16+ years of school before you're allowed to really get into what interests you.
Get into stuff that interests you?
Seriously, you can't pick up a book and read? You can't do things on your own? Does the only thing that interests you at age 12 involve pressing buttons on multi-million dollar toys and then reading the a series of numbers on a print out?
Who exactly are you waiting for to give you permission to do what you want to do?
Stop waiting to be spoon-fed.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I left college after 2 years because I was bored to tears. Joined the Marines. Went back to college 6 years later *highly* motivated and enjoyed the heck out of learning - took CS classes for fun. My fellow undergrads, mostly straight from High School, hated their classes and hated me - I was the jerk who didn't listen to them whine about how hard their schedules were, or how much different classes sucked. My experience - most of them were too immature to appreciate the opportunity they had, and they had insufficient life experience to know that they should feel passionate about anything at all, let alone learning. Long story short - if you are burning up to go to school, go. If you aren't, be honest with yourself and do 'something else' until you figure out what you want to study. Don't let $ keep you back either - I worked my way through school. It is possible, but difficult - and I wouldn't have it any other way. Whatever you do, light your own ass on fire to get something worthwhile done - no one will teach you that. Hard work is it's own best reward.
I am referring to physical good looks. The "Economist", a while back, reported on a study which indicated that height is important and seems to be correlated with financial success. So, too is good looks.
A good example is Pamela Anderson. She has little acting talent, but she managed to latch onto television role after television role.
Contrast her with Meryl Streep. Streep is less attractive but worked very hard to achieve what she accomplished.
Jobs, like Pamela Anderson, is blessed with good looks and a winning personality. Most of us have probably worked with people with such physical endowments. People with them have a much easier time in life than people without them.
Not surprisingly, the average height of a CEO is above the average American height. So is Jobs' height. Before he tells people how they should mimic him, he should first ask the people around him to forgive him for his arrogance.
That being said, I did learn something of great import while in undergrad. After getting mediocre grades throughout I somehow matured a little bit and taught myself how to learn. This was the most important thing I got out of undergrad.
:-)
The part about this that I find so frustrating is that it's such an expensive lesson for kids. I was a home schooler myself, and my mother constantly emphasized that what we learned was less important than learning *how* to learn. While I'm sure that many would take that to mean that she didn't teach us, nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather, I *wanted* to learn many subjects because I had practical uses for them outside of the classroom.
Do you have any idea how cool it is to look at a Trig book and think, "Oh, the raycasting engines I can make with this baby..."
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
For every success story you hear, the other 99,999 are never told. For every genius who dropped out of school to become CEO of an multi-national corporation, there are thousands of other geniuses who wound up broke and unhappy.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
The fact is that most people will have to go to college to obtain a successful career. I would imagine that the dropouts who become billionaires would average out to be a statistical fluke.
We live in a different world today than 100 years ago when the elite sent their sons and daughters off to college. Back then, those going to college didn't have to make a living. They already had all the money they needed. They went for pure academic reasons. Your argument is that these circumstances still apply today. They don't.
Today you have a wide middle class instead of just the poor and the rich. Today regular people can go to college. Today regular people can gain successful careers from an otherwise poor upbringing. But today most people must go to college to obtain the standard of living desired.
Sure kids should also want to learn new things and expand their mind. It is still an academic institution, after all. But you cannot discount the fact that the reason parents push their children into going to college is that they need it to survive. And, perhaps, to make sure they don't live in their basement for the rest of their natural born lives. Of yesteryear it may have been normal for children to live their whole lives in the ye ole log cabin.
Things change.
I've thought long and hard about this since graduating from college. I've seen a lot of people do some extraordinary things. The person who runs the division I work in (with about 15,000 people) never went to college, and I'm not sure he graduated from high school. He does happen to be a genius and I suspect he would have went to college if it wasn't for the fact he was successful by the age of 18.
If I interviewed two people for a job I'd always choose the one who had ambition, creativity and a great work ethic. College degrees and intelligence would be secondary. There is a place for that, but with good leadership you can get an ambitious person to do amazing things.
The other factor that counts is common sense. Understanding the requirements of a job and relating to customers is very important. In a sense, everyone works for customers - our bosses are customers of sorts.
For anyone still in school, don't get wrapped up in your GPA but don't drop out of college either.
----- obSig
It's a fair question. And here are some answers.
A college degree is not a commodity (yet); it is not like 87 octane gasoline dispensed at the pump. The college degree represents a period of time in which you study a lot of useless things in the hope that some of them will surprise you by being interesting; that the depressing or boring things will at least teach you how to wade through depressing or boring material for the rest of your life. It is a period of time when people stop being te