VA: College Will Kill Your Entrepreneurial Spirit While Simultaneously Turning You into a Worker Bee
Aug 8th, 2007
(23 votes, average: 2.78 out of 5)
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Original post: College Will Kill Your Entrepreneurial Spirit While Simultaneously Turning You into a Worker Bee
I’ve heard this before. Not that you’re not making a good point ,V. It just seems like I’ve heard or read this before. Not to mention, I’d love to at least talk to you face to face at some point, with complete understanding if you won’t have that.
Sincerely (as sincere as it gets)
Me to you.
I got one question. If there were blackberries available to mash up and sell, why didn’t she just eat the damn blackberries?
Also, it’s a Siskew county thing….
…or the State of Jefferson, if you will.
6 out of 10 rich people are college drop-outs? Who’s ass did you pull that statistic out of?
If you love being a penny-pinching middle man who makes money marking up candy bars, or under-priced apartments, by all means, don’t go to college.
Half of a university’s job is adding knowledge to humanity’s body of knowledge, the other half is disseminating this knowledge to those who might use it and grow from it. It may be over-priced, but I’d rather have a less ignorant populace in our little republic here than less people giving a shit about truth, knowledge and beauty.
Not that this is a shock, but I agree with V. There’s something to be said about people who spend most of their lives at a job you hate. I’m not saying people should avoid going to college altogether, but if you’re going to shell out that kind of money for a piece of paper, it might as well be for something that you have a passion for. Sadly, most of the high schooler’s heading off to college this fall are only looking at dollar signs. I don’t think they’re properly prepared for the work force, or how most of those degrees that are “popular” and “will make you TONS of money” aren’t even viable to obtain real work in the real world.
I’m currently going back to college. I’m pursuing something that I have a natural talent for, and that I truly enjoy. I went around it for a while, but found that in order to do the work I want to do, I have to finish my degree. This works for me. But not for everyone.
I think the point V is making is that everyone needs to decide for themselves what kind of life they want. And that the most sucessful people in the world didn’t necessarily get that way with a college degree in something they hate. They went with their passion and talent instead.
To quote the Daily Show re:POTUS, thinking outside the box is only for people who are smart.
For very smart people, not going to college is wise. Unfortunately, a lot of other people mistakenly think that they are smart, too. To them, we can only say, get back in the box! That’s what the box is for! You aren’t smart enough to be outside the box!
On this rare occasion I disagree with V. _If_ you go to college looking to make money and you choose a major based on the future earing potential of that major, _then_ college is a waste of your life. Not everyone goes to college with this attitude.
Most of my friends and I were either computer engineering or computer science majors, but we weren’t like the huge glut of people in these majors who got into them because they saw big fat $$$s at the end of their 4 years of torture. We were the geeks who stayed up late working on side projects, or adding awesome features and easter eggs to our assigned projects. We are the geeks who are now doing more than scraping by at the bottom of the programming totem pole. We are the geeks to get up and go to work every day because we love programming. We are the geeks who could easily retire early but have no reason to.
Now I say all of this, but at the same time I also often tell people that I much/most of what I know about programming I didn’t learn from my college classes. That’s entirely true, but I wouldn’t have learned it if I hadn’t been in the college environment. I learned some things from classes, especially on the computer hardware side of things, but I learned more from being surrounded by these geek friends. We all did; we fed each other’s curiosity and came up with challenges for each other and all of that.
The bottom line is this: There are some rare people who both develop an entrepreneurial spirit, and have the brains to make something of themselves. V appears to be one of those people. For the rest of us who really don’t feel that kind of ambition, going to college for something you truly want to do can be a great way to develop the high level of skill in that field needed to make a comfortable living doing what you love.
Wow, this person with an “amazing” entrepreneurial drive let an Art History class crush her soul? How pathetic.
The truth is that college gets you certain skills, and if you need those skills, you should go to college rather than trying to learn them on your own.
This is another bullshit V story. It just does not read as slightly true - not eating (except moss) for months, making $1500 reselling candy. I am starting to think V is a nut job - or just likes messing wiht us.
I went to the college and pursued a major in a field I liked for the sake of learning, not for big bucks when I got out of college.
It happened to be a nice generalist degree that opens doors in employment or for grad school if you’re so inclined, but going to college should be about learning something that you enjoy, not getting an MBA with dreams of billions right after you graduate.
The people in the business building were soulless drones long before they got into the workplace. Nothing really changed for them after graduation except that they get paid to put in their 9-5 after graduation.
Maybe a better rule to take from this experience is that liberal arts majors suck. At 99% of schools, you can literally bullshit your way to a degree in one. Disciplines such as physics, or bioinformatics, on the other hand are completely different- there are real, quantifiable requirements of anyone who completes that sort of program, and the material is very difficult to master without the aid of instructors and lab partners.
Looking forward to a new catchphrase on the VA site.
I’m guessing V. doesn’t have a four-year degree because she sounds rather bitter. Boohoo, V. didn’t get to go to college, boohoo. I’ve heard similar reasons about how much college isn’t worth it from those without a degree.
Some people actually enjoy pursuing higher education. A lot of people enjoyed the “college experience” of not having to immediately grow up and go into the work world so fast. At 18, I was still just a kid and not ready to work my ass off at some job.
As for “6 out of 10 rich people are college drop-outs” … how many came from wealthy families or had other advantages and connections that the average middle-class person does not? Very lame example, V.
If I recall correctly, V actually put herself through college. Read then post, fuckhead.
As for 18 being “so quick to grow up” we as a society are continually infantilizing our adults by pushing the age at which we expect mature behavior from anyone upward. At this point we don’t really expect maturity from 21 year olds and you know what that lack of expectation means? It means we don’t get it either.
If you were just a kid at 18, you needed parents who actually taught you some life skills.
What did this guy actually just say? I understand V put herself through college, but after that could someone with better communication skills please translate.
Good one, V. I made the mistake of thinking that education was about learning. It really is about societal conditioning.
I have learned 10X more on my own than I was taught. My biggest frustration was that so often we were taught not what was important but what the teacher knew or made him look good.
I’ve been saying that for years Joe, just thought I’d let you know, teacher.
The writing is shit and the posts are too long.
A few of you seemed to miss this, so just to make it clear. It was ‘6 of the current top 10 richest people in america’ not ‘6 out of 10 rich people’. The latter figure is just ridiculous, the former believable.
lostlogicx, she is a college drop out:
http://www.violentacres.com/archives/32/drastic-measures
And there is a reason they are called “college kids.” Society doesn’t even allow 18-year-olds to legally drink. And when was the last time you saw some college girls? They look so young! Overhearing their conversations in Starbucks would give you a prime example of their perception of the world (and hurt your brain with the overuse of the word “like”). There are also studies that the brain is still developing into the early 20s… so yes, I believe 18-year-olds are young, inexperienced and still “kids”, sorry you disagree.
Jonah: I don’t disagree with your statement that ‘18-year-olds are young, inexperienced and still “kids”‘. I disagree with the society which makes them so. I think that as a society we have a strong tendency to prevent children from learning any kind of responsibility until they are forced to as they leave college. I don’t know why we do this, but we do.
By the time me or my siblings left home at ages 17-18 we were each capable of supporting ourselves. We also each pursued further education which our families helped to fund, so I’m not saying that parents should not support their children. I’m simply saying that we need not infantilize people and that I believe it to be perfectly reasonable to expect 18 year olds to be able to support themselves.
You say that at 18 you were “not ready to work [your] ass off at some job.” I began working between half and full time when I was 15.5 years old. Not because I had to, but because I was sick to death of not being able to take some responsibility for my own life. From that point on, I never took more than 1.5 weeks off of work until last month (nearly a decade later) when I was transitioning from one job to another and moving across the country. I loved my menial service jobs when I was a teen. They gave me the opportunity to learn about the real world; to feel like to some degree I was supporting my own wants and needs.
I ask: How did your parents raise a child who didn’t have the inherent urge to support and take responsibility for their own needs and wants? How do so many parents today raise children who forever expect and demand that others maintain them? I don’t expect that you are in the latter category, but you are one small step away from it. Healthy children want to work, they want to be useful. Somehow we beat that out of them and create a society of driveless drones who consider working for a living to be a required chore instead of a matter of pride.
School’s made to kill one’s spirit in general, not just the your entrepreneurial spirit. I think it was a recent-ish thing that school was actually started being seen as opening up one’s mind and not training. That’s why corporations donate money to schools, to have better workers. That’s why the public school system exists today, because people wanted better educated workers. (Think of it as bootcamp for civilians)
However, college/universities aren’t so much as about being a school, as to about making connections and giving people an avenue of resources. Whether or not people realize that and take advantage of that is another story. That’s also the difference between a Community College and an Ivy League school, not the information, but the connections to resource they gain. (Resources being other people, or actual equipment/resources)
It gives people a forum to meet, and possibly give them a wider view of the world, without having to search for one. Sure, going to bars/cafes/other social places would give you a forum too, but chances are it will be hit and miss.
Geez, I hole up for Finals, and miss a good discussion=)
For all of you who do oppose to this article, are you rich? Do you belong to at least the 20% wealthiest people in the world or striving for it? Have you ever owned a business? If not, I don’t expect you to understand what V is trying to communicate to you.