I attended Elon University for less than a month before I realized I had rushed into my college education. I sat in well-equipped classes taught by qualified and interesting professors, and I met many people whom I am glad to call friends.
The necessity of attending college is imprinted in our brains from early childhood. From elementary through high school, we are bombarded with the idea that in order to find success in the working world we must attend a quality institution.
As early as middle school, students undergo “college preparatory” classes and activities to supply them with the tools they need in order to make the daring leap to a university. Parents and teachers point to manual labor jobs and say, “That’s why you need to go to college.” They drill into the minds of students that without a college education, they cannot find happiness or fulfillment in their lives.
Granted, many contemporary employment opportunities require applicants to have obtained a certain level of formal education.
These jobs have increased their requirements in recent decades. Occupations that once required only high school certificates now ask for associate or bachelor’s degrees from their applicants.
College proponents often use this fact as fuel for their encouragement that as many students as possible attend universities. Depending on the occupation a student pursues, his or her arguments have merit.
But this doesn’t apply to all.
Setting aside the sheer expense of colleges in the United States today, teenagers face many other circumstances that may compel them to not finish a college education. These circumstances are often legitimate and understandable. Students could decide to find work straight out of high school, travel abroad or pursue whatever their passion may be. These are all viable options, though sometimes the role models and authority figures in our lives make them seem otherwise.
I have been trained from birth to believe that I needed to finish my higher education in order to be a successful citizen, and the consistent encouragement from family and authority figures made me think this was my only option.
But it isn’t.
There are success stories about college and high school dropouts all the time. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, dropped out of college as a sophomore. David Karp, founder of Tumblr, did not even graduate high school.
Of course, not all school dropouts will go on to found a multi-million or -billion dollar company, but that is not to say they cannot find success in their own right. For some, success may mean starting a small business in one’s hometown. For others, it may mean getting married and starting a family right after high school.
What everyone must understand, particularly those who feel out of place in college, is that not all successes are borne from the same sources. If you have hopes to be a lawyer or professor, you need to attend college in order to create that opportunity for yourself. If you want to become a doctor, you need to attend college for everyone else’s sake. But for those who wish to start a business, raise a family or — in my case — write novels, college may not be a stop on our road to success.
I don’t wish to downplay the worth of a college education. I have found over the course of my first and only semester that the college path does not match my goals. And I hope any fellow students who wish to pursue a viable course outside school and have the opportunity to do so do not toss aside their prospects only because they feel pressured to attend college.
There exist a thousand ways to pursue your dreams. If that dream does not require you to attend college, then you should feel no shame for leaving that path behind. I know I don’t.