There are many signs that college isn’t for you. If you experience most of these signs, you need to take action. Staying in college may be a waste of time for you.
I feel privileged to write this article because college wasn’t for me and I dropped out after my first year. I eventually went back to college after spending three years outside college but I still maintain that college wasn’t for me.
Just because college isn’t for you doesn’t mean you have to drop out. In my case, I decided to go back to college, even though it wasn’t for me, to stop my dad from nagging me about it.
Nonetheless, it is totally fine to feel college isn’t for you. In fact, count it as a ‘privilege’ if you know college isn’t for you.
Most people are not wise enough to see the drawbacks of college. If you can see them, you are in the top percentage.
I have compiled five key signs that I personally experienced and which I believe give a conclusion if someone is college material or not.
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You may not experience all the five signs but if you can relate to at least three, you are definitely not college material.
Here are five signs that show college isn’t for you:
Signs College isn’t for you
1. College isn’t for you if you don’t want to be employed
Let’s be honest with one another; the main reason why anyone goes to college is because they dream of getting employed someday. Not everyone who goes to college goes for this purpose but it is the most common reason for going to college.
Let’s also be real about something else; the main reason we want a good job is because it pays us well. Since childhood, we are told that if we don’t work hard in school we won’t get a good job.
Of course good grades are not a guarantee of a good job but let us give the system the benefit of doubt in this analysis.
If you hate the idea of working for someone else and you want to be the person other people work for, college immediately loses value.
Someone may argue that you can still learn business in college but honestly speaking, business is best learnt in the process of doing business, not in college.
That is why if you have no dream of ever getting employed, college isn’t for you.
If you don’t mind, you can go to college but be assured that after college you won’t use a big chunk of what you learned.
In my first year in college, I decided that I never want to get employed. Right away I knew college was worthless. That is how I divorced college for good.
2. You are Bright but your Performance is poor
Bright students know that they are bright whether they pass their exams or not. I am yet to see a young person who says college isn’t for him if he is not a bright student.
In many cases, students who don’t like college are ‘street smart’ even if they are not academically smart. These are students who see beyond the four years of sitting in college.
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They know that if they invest their energy in a different venture for the four years they are to stay in college, they will still reap big if not better than what college has to offer.
If your performance in college is dismal yet you know you can perform well if you choose to, you are one of those people who should not be in college.
If your failure in college is a conscious decision, college isn’t for you.
I have seen students who intentionally stop working hard in college because they don’t see need for it. In most cases, these students spend a big chunk of their time pursuing their own ventures. Some of them own startups which take up majority of their time.
When I was in my first year in college, I fell in love with writing and I knew I wanted writing to be my full time career. It was only a matter of time before I lost interest in college studies.
My performance dropped drastically but I didn’t care. In fact, the poor results made me happy; they gave me a reason to hate college all the more.
Read my story of how I dropped out of college and see how much I hated college.
3. You love learning but not academic material
I had a number of people ask me why I dropped out of college yet I loved reading books. My response was simple; what I was learning wasn’t taught in college.
There is a rare breed of young people who would rather sit alone in their room devouring a good book on investment than attend a business lecture.
The truth is that the knowledge you get from an actual millionaire has greater potential of making you a millionaire than the knowledge you get from an average professor.
It is simple logic that if you want to make millions you ask millionaires. I’m sure even the professor is looking for a way to make millions and if he knew how to, he wouldn’t be wasting his time in a lecture room.
If you happen to be a naturally curious person who is never satisfied with knowledge but for some reason you hate the so called ‘knowledge’ that is taught in school, definitely, college isn’t for you.
Your great learning is far beyond the college philosophy and there is no way you will be at peace learning the regurgitated information offered in college.
Academic knowledge is highly impractical. No matter how much of it you have, you can still live a miserable life. But real world knowledge transforms you in every way imaginable.
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Bright students know this fact and that is why they are hesitant to sit in a college class. Clearly, college is not for such students.
If you are one of them, you have every reason to be grateful.
4. College isn’t for you if you run a Business
I know so many people who dropped out of college because they had a successful business. It is true for the famous billionaires as well as for average guys.
Running blogs was a major contributing factor in making me feel college wasn’t for me. This point reflects the first point; if you don’t want to get employed, there is no reason to be in college.
If right now you are running a startup and you feel college is not for you, you are right. Running a startup is just as hard as college studies and in most cases, even more difficult than college.
In college, you are given an outline of the units you are to cover but when you start your own business, you have to figure out everything by yourself.
Since business is tougher than being in college, you will easily lose respect for college. College education will become useless since you are able to achieve more than what college offers.
Truthfully speaking, a successful business person who dropped out of school is far richer than a successful student who got a good job after graduating from college.
Therefore, if you are running a successful business and you feel college is worthless, that is a clear sign that college is not for you.
5. You generally hate College
Some students hate college because they struggle in class. But there is a breed of students who hate college because it is ‘college’.
They know that college is not easy but that is not a problem. Their problem is that they can achieve way more than what college offers with less stress.
They have a better way of investing the thousands of dollars they spend in college. They know they can get bigger returns from their money than to throw all of it into college studies.
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The constant feeling of being wiser than the college philosophy leads students to hate college. Out of nowhere, you get so many reasons to hate college.
One day you hate college for charging so much money yet they teach useless philosophies. On another day you hate college for teaching impractical policies.
The spiral only gets worse by the day and the only conclusion you can make is ‘college is not for everyone’.
What to do if College isn’t for you
These two things are what you need to do if college isn’t for you.
1. Grow in Knowledge
The main reason why we go to college is to get knowledge. However, sometimes the knowledge we are given in college is outdated and impractical.
If you hate such kind of knowledge and you want to quit college, have a plan of how you will acquire the type of knowledge you want. Nowadays, you can get so much knowledge on the internet.
The truth is that the more knowledge you have, the greater your chances of being successful. It doesn’t matter where you got that knowledge from.
The biggest mistake you can make if college isn’t for you is to drop out and not seek to increase your knowledge.
In my case, I dropped out of college to get more time to learn about making money online and focus on improving my dating skills.
After I dropped out of college, I was growing in knowledge faster than when I was in college. I read more books and watched more educational videos after dropping out of college than when I was in college.
I’m sure I was learning more hours in a day than most of my age mates who were in college.
Getting more knowledge should be your first priority if college isn’t for you.
2. Get a Mentor
Life after dropping out of University is not easy. There are many uncertainties you will have to deal with. It is also important to be sure whether dropping out of college is a good idea for you even if you feel college isn’t for you.
In my case, I dropped out because college wasn’t for me but I eventually went back because, even though college wasn’t for me and dropping out was a good decision, I needed a college degree to save my relationship with my dad.
With all these uncertainties, it is important to get someone to guide you in making some of the critical decisions. You may be running a successful startup but your relationship with your parents is in jeopardy because of college.
In such a case, you will need someone to mediate the case between you and your parents. It is never a good idea to sacrifice your relationship with your parents for anything. Always try as much as you can to maintain a good relationship with your parents.
Get mentors and coaches in various professions to walk with you. You’ll make better choices when you have a mentor and your life will be a lot smoother.
I made the mistake of not finding a mentor after dropping out of college and my life took a turn I never expected. There were so many things that caught me by surprise. My eBook tells the full story.
Conclusion
There is great life ahead even if you forego college. Just make sure you take the right steps when navigating the situation.
Focus on gaining knowledge and get someone to mentor you in whatever field you choose to venture into. If you hate college but don’t know what to do, read this other article to get direction.
All the best!