During the second half of senior year, I started to notice a shift happening with my peers. All of a sudden, university or college was upon us, and the race seemed to have begun. How many applications can we get in? Which schools are going to look best on paper? What will people think of where I decide to attend?

Then, once I was in college, I noticed a different, but still intensely ongoing rush. How many credits can I cram into this semester? Why would I take a “fun” class, when it offers one credit less on my journey to get a degree? What’s the point of that? Now of course, I am not speaking for everyone. There is no way in which to do that, regardless. Still, these questions represent a fairly large portion of students that I was surrounded by and were in constant communication with.

My questions were these:

Why are we racing? Why are we trying so hard to memorize, instead of to learn? Why does everyone say they can’t wait to “get this over with,” when it is a blessing, and a beautiful privilege, to be given the opportunity for an education? What is going on, and when did life become a rat race at such a young age?

So two years in, after having given it a fair chance, I left.

I became a proud college drop out after two years of enduring what, in my mind, was University of California Davis hell. I was not built for strict academia, and I am not ashamed to admit it. Despite being a nearly straight A student, I’ve always hated deadlines, presentations, pressure, and competition. In my mind, education should come naturally, by internal inspiration. Perhaps I am biased because my “to-do list” for desirable knowledge could stretch miles if I wrote it all out, but I simply don’t feel like I have time to do countless, endless amounts of busy work. I don’t know if that sounds egotistical or what, but I know that every second that I unhappily spent inside of a classroom, could have been instead spent outdoors, reading Thoreau. Or learning a new instrument. Or finding a workplace in which I am happy, and able to move up, instead of into debt.

Or hey, something crazy that academia rarely allows time for; simply thinking. Which is precisely what I began to do. A lot. Consistently. Happily.

Of course, a degree holds a lot of validity. I have wondered, though, whether that piece of paper is fact representative of having learned something, or having been physically and mentally capable of taking massive quantities of Adderall for days at a time…personally, I know I am not capable of learning under those kinds of pressured circumstances, and I wish that reality were more openly accepted by society. Perhaps then, I would have have taken school a little more lightly. I would have been armed with the strength of knowing that the worst case scenario; proving my abilities by showing them instead of having a degree, is actually not so bad after all. In fact, it can be pretty empowering. It’s not for everyone, but hey, neither is a four year university.