I’ve always thought that becoming successful meant having to get good grades, going to class on time, making sure you pass the class and sucking up to professors. But in the end, does it really matter? What is college all about? What is the promise of going to college?
Alan Watts, a philosopher from the 1950’s, thinks we’ve been deceived into thinking that taking on the traditional route in life will bring you success. This promise is why people go to school:
Do good in pre-school then move to first grade, then second grade, until you reach high school, then do well on your SATs to get into a ivy league university so you can get a good internship and finally a six-figure-income job.
You get the point. Realistically, it’s a promise with no guarantees. There are so many factors that can change your success rate weather it be the industry you’re in, the economy, and many other things we might not have seen coming. The things you really learn in college is your survival skills, not what you read in the textbooks. Its things like how you interact with people, handle stress, time planning, doing your laundry, etc.
Your professors and teachers don’t promise you how to get rich. If they knew, they probably wouldn’t waste their time on you. Remembering that private universities are very lucrative businesses is a sure way to make you think twice about your major. Times have changed, especially with the internet, you can learn many of the things you want to know by just searching Google or YouTube. Some of us just don’t bother looking for it.
The sooner you take control of your life and direct it, the faster you will get to your destination. Break out of your mold. Stop relying on the promise of educational institutions. There is no promised route to your success. The only sure way is to do what you love doing. Learn what you love to do. Somewhere along the way, the dots will surely connect.
You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
I’ve been to two Apple Conferences, one being WWDC 2006 (MacPro introduction, Leopard Beta) and MacWorld 2007 (iPhone introduction). It was a priceless moment seeing the introduction of new gadgets by Steve Jobs, but both times I had to save up $1500 plus dollars to attend! Extremely expensive, especially for a student in college. What I did learn while I was at WWDC is that some people got in for FREE. WHAT! I was gonna rip my head apart!
Students get in FREE if you apply for the WWDC Scholarship, savings of $1600! Thats like a free MacBook! All you have to do is apply before April 10, 2008 by following this link and they will notify the recipients at the end of the month.
Its truly an amazing experience, especially with all the food they give you during those events (think endless supply of Odwala OJ). They even have a day where students can meet employers and hangout with Mac programming legend Aaron Hillegas.
This year’s WWDC will primarily focus on the recently introduced iPhone-SDK, and rumors of a new iPhone with 3G. There are many classes to get you started on learning the SDK and many developers to exchange contact info with. Last WWDC I met CatFishMan of Adium fame. Go apply and start learning some Cocoa and Objective-C. You’ll be amazed.
Creative is the leader of high-end soundcards for computers. Their products are commonly bought by computer builders to achieve the highest level of sound quality.
With the release of Windows Vista, Creative has promised their cards to be “Vista Ready”. Unfortunately, as many customers discovered this is not true. What the users actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers.
So a proactive Creative user (under the name of Daniel_K) took it upon himself to rewrite the drivers for these soundcards enabling them full functionality (even adding features not offered by Creative) on Windows Vista. But what does he get for trying to support a company with a crippled IT department? A slap in the face.
I don’t want to be here any longer. Really. I just want to take a semester or perhaps a whole year off from school and start learning what I want to learn. I don’t feel like anything I am learning from school is going to be any use to me when I get out. I feel that I have gained all the necessary skills that I need to get myself in order. I want to just take a year off. Create a sylabus for myself, and just start learning what I want to learn. There are so many things I want to learn.
- PHP & mySQL
- Python
- Objective-C
- Java
- Open Source Community Involvement
Maybe I dont need to I guess the only fear that I have is not having a mentor. I want to learn all these things but where do I go if I have questions. What if I take all this time off and finally not have anything to do (or make it as a wasted year). I’m scared, and I feel my confidence is keeping me back.
I want to learn things that are relevant for me.
For one thing, I have lost confidence for the School of Information Studies. I attended an Information Session at our school yesterday that talked about Open Source. After the presentation, one of our iSchool highly respected professor asked, “how can we get our students involved in this? I have never been involved in Open Source and I only have been involved in stuff like this from the shareware days”.
Then it hit me. I cant rely on old people to teach a new technologies! My field is continually evolving and to be the best, I have to keep myself on top of the game. I cant rely on professors that think they know it all, but only teach what they interpret of new technology. Screw them.
The things that are most useful to me right now are things that I have learned outside the iSchool! I thought about this again and again and its true. Its the slack time that keeps me on top of my game. When I procrastinate, I dive into things that are interesting to me that make me more knowledgeable in the end. The iSchool teaches theory and hardly and practical useful knowledge.
Its a waste of time and seriously a waste of money. I can just go on:
- Lynda.com ($25/month)
- WROX book database ($50/3 months)
- Peachpit Press Books Online ($42.99/month)
and probably learn a lot more than I can learn through the iSchool. Perhaps even browsing different developer forums and hitting up developer blogs. It just doesnt make sense to pay professors to teach things that are just basics of bigger things. The real world needs real experience, not basic knowledge.
Today I’m breaking out of my mindframe of chasing grades. Grades are just an innacurate mis-representation of knowledge.
So with this, I would like to start this blog about dropping out of Graduate School and trying to defy the conventions of academia towards reaching success.
What is more important to an employer? Your diploma? GPA? School? Transcript? or is it just pure knowledge? I talked to a neighbor of mine about the idea of taking a year off and just learning what I want to learn. He then pointed out that employers would want to see proof of what I have done. Proof of knowledge. It got me thinking, how can I prove my skills if I don’t have a transcript to prove it? Will being involved with open source coding prove enough or is it just not convincing enough? I’m thinking of getting in touch with a few HRs from various companies to see what their take on it is. I believe that I’m not the only one with this dilemma. Got any suggestions on questions to ask?
