I desperately wanted to see a reason behind what you did and while I can absolutely appreciate your poetic rant about happiness and how you have come to see life so differently in the past semester, I wish you understood what you are promoting. You are lucky. You were given an education that I and many others had to fight for and you chose to give it up while simultaneously shaming our efforts.
Maybe my experiences as a student are so vastly different that I cannot understand this the way that you have meant it. One of the few things that I can agree with from your manifesto is that yes, education absolutely needs to be free on all levels. The student debt crisis is paralyzing to our generation and something needs to be done about it.
But the solution is not to force everyone to simply “become a computer scientist for almost free online without paying tens of thousands of bucks in an 'education.'" Because I’m sorry but not everyone can do this and the fact that you did does not mean you have outsmarted the educational system. So much of the world desperately needs and wants the education that you have essentially thrown away.
You also mention that you don’t feel like any of your teachers “inspired” you (while also admitting that you rarely ever attended class anyway) and I wish that you could recognize how much you missed out on. Every day that I am in class, I am grateful that someone is willing to stand up and educate me. I do my best to show up to every class so that I can learn and respect those who have decided to dedicate their lives to help me do so.
A teacher’s job is not necessarily to inspire their students every day, after all they are normal people who chose a rather difficult and emotionally trying career. But I am hard-pressed to not find plenty of teachers and professors throughout my academic career who have done so much for me and truly helped me to find my passions through teaching. I don’t feel sorry that you never found yourself “inspired” in education because someone who doesn’t show up to class will never understand what a teacher has to offer.
Most importantly, you wrote quite a bit on passion and living. I simply wish that you had given some recognition to those who find passion in learning and live out their best lives with a college degree. You seem to believe that our educational system is holding us back and while in some ways it can be limiting, it is also an incredible privilege.
No one should be defined as a better or worse or smarter or dumber person for having a degree, but people who choose to get educated do regard it as an important part of their identity. I have always wanted to go to college and rather recently I decided that I really want to go to law school as well.
These choices are not a waste of my time and I know that I am pursuing my passions. Just because I will have a degree (hopefully two) does not mean that I won’t be able to live and experience life to the fullest, in fact I believe that having a stable and well-paying career will help me find even more happiness in life.
Just as I don’t agree with most of the letter that this article references, I know that some people will not agree with me. I really do hope that this person finds success as the entrepreneur that he strives to be. I also hope that everyone is able to follow their passion in some way or another, but if you are presented with the opportunity to receive a college education, please do not do what this man did.
Take advantage of every opportunity that the university will present to you and PLEASE go to the class that you or someone else is paying for. If you end up deciding that this isn’t the world for you, it’s okay. There are millions of other ways to be happy in this world. But despite what this former valedictorian professes, there is so much value in a degree. Not the value that society puts on it, but the value that you assign when you recognize how hard you worked for it.
