Dropping School to save time? Drop the mindless scrolling instead

It was the happiest day of my Life...

I was not only happy for myself but also for my father.

He was a 60-year-old bookkeeper with a 35-year career.

His diploma had been fundamental for him, and even though I chose a different area, we thought it would be the same for me.

That day in 2006, I graduated as IT Scientist…

…and promised I wouldn't return to University.

20 years passed, and keeping the promise was extremely easy. I never wanted to start another career or master's degree.

But why is that?

Formal education and learning

I'm not a huge fan of formal education in adulthood.

My learnings in the last decades came from:

• Work experience and contact with colleagues
• Reading books and articles
• Workshops and Specific courses
• Experiment, investigation, and studying what others did

This doesn't mean that I'm against it for everyone. I don't see the benefits for me today. But it was essential to form my character.

For this reason, reading the hate message about formal education is uncomfortable for me.

In this article, I refer to "School" as any formal education type: Elementary School, College, University, or Master's.

School vs Experience comparison in social media

Social media is… Well, social media.

But out of the many trends we are exposed to, hating the school is the most dangerous to me.

The common message is "Experience > School."

Fancy, I admit. But non-sense.

This message reduces the school's relevance (or efficiency) in favor of "Creating your Business."

So you start at an early age to work on something, spend your time learning and doing "what you like" so you can iterate and improve in a specific direction.

The arguments are:

• Learning by doing.
• School falls short in teaching leadership and soft skills.
• 6 months of doing something teaches you more than a 5-year career.

I may agree with some of these affirmations, but that's not the point.

The point is that these arguments are uni-dimensional. They only consider a small part of the school and the learning process.

And with that poor analysis, we receive the message that school is useless.

The question arises: Does comparing school vs Experience in those terms make sense?

Bananas and Apples

What are we comparing at the end? What's the school's objective, and what's the aim of the Experience?

• Schools are wide-range. They should be general enough to serve the 100% of the population. Only a few of the many disciplines you study at school will be closely related to your professional career.
• School and Experience usually come at different ages. We can't compare your maturity and priorities at school and work. You are 2 different people in entirely different situations.
• Schools are a solid base that will introduce you to many subjects and should give you enough tools to build your chosen path. Experience, on the other hand, is focused on a small range of activities and allows you to go further within those limits.
• Schools are hands-on. But the truth is that we don't put much effort into it. We only do what is necessary to pass. And bars should be low so any person can pass them. In the professional World, not every person can do any job beyond a certain level.

School Benefits

One of the best benefits of school is creating a broad knowledge base in different areas. This is useful not only to know what you like but also to be able to interact outside of your expertise area.

Schools are also a safe environment to develop non-technical skills:

• Interaction with peers and working in groups
• Learning to cope with activities you don't like
• Learning to suck at something
• Responsibility, deadlines, prioritization
• Working under pressure

A big part of formal education is oriented to these skills, which are general to every career.

You have teachers to orient you and colleagues in the same situation to grow together.

The path is already defined, making it easier to follow.

Personal Experience

My feeling is that formal education made me a better professional.

It taught me the importance of the fundamentals and gave me the tools to build on top of them on my own.

By having contact with different areas, it helped me to decide the path I wanted to take.

It also gave me good general knowledge, allowing me to interact better with colleagues and multiple functions.

Conclusion

I'm not aligned with the excessive formal education. I don't think masters, expensive degrees, or certifications will make any difference in today's World.

But formal education is a must for most of us, mainly at the early stages of our lives and even until University.

Diplomas are just papers nowadays. But going through the Experience is a different story.

The mistake is thinking we only learn in Formal Education or with Experience.

Both are complementary and required for most of the population. Of course, you are not prepared to be a multinational CEO when you leave University, but that's not the idea.

The idea that dropping school is cool and winners do that can't have anything but harmful consequences for the general population. People who succeed in doing so are outliers, but not the rule.