Life’s been relatively adventurous for me over the past 12 months, and during that time I ended up on college campuses either for production scouting, speaking events, or video filming. Each time I found myself wincing at just how painfully unaware the youts of the day were within these delicately curated adult day care centers.
I’m not about to devolve into the classic “Back in my day” or “You kids don’t know how good you have it” threads here, I’m actually aiming towards academia itself for this write up. For those of you who read Attitude and Altitude, this is continuing along the same vein, namely the increasingly superfluous nature of the college experience.
I can’t heap blame upon the people attending the Universities because even throughout my lifetime I recall the constant pressure and praise surrounding the concept of “Getting a degree.” It was bunk then, and it’s bunk now.
The study of, the theory of, the analysis of - you name it. All of it is just a flowery description of being too hesitant to actually execute. There’s a joke to be made here about surgeons skipping med school, but it’s besides the point.
Outside of a very few specialties, there’s almost nothing in the current college curriculum that can’t be learned independently via research and/or apprenticeship without digging yourself into 6-figure debt over a four year span of wasted time.
Of course the biggest barrier to success using this method is the red tape. Trying, failing, adjusting, and repeating is the best and fastest way to become an expert at something. Sadly, there’s an incredible amount of careers that are built entirely around punishing this type of behavior. Didn’t fill out form 6.3-9b and submit a notarized addendum F when you sold that lemonade on the corner? Well now you owe money to some entity, or worse.
So perhaps Jocko’s approach when starting a business is a bit too blunt, but the philosophy is sound. Maybe mix it with a bit of Naval, but the point remains the same.
This thread of thought began when one of the students on campus I was having a conversation with said something like “I just have to keep my head down and drink the kool-aid until I get the degree.” Unfortunately too many people don’t realize that the lies you live become the failures you’ll fail to acknowledge. Knowingly participating and dedicating time and money to something you fundamentally disagree with is one of the most detrimental things you can inflict upon your psyche.
And yeah sure I’m making this all sound real easy to say, “But Jess!”, you’re probably thinking right now, “YOU got a degree so didn’t YOU play the game to get that piece of paper?” And I’d reply indeed I did! However, I fully believed in the piece of paper at the time. I was gung-ho for my Business and Language degrees and fully convinced that they were my ticket to a great job and fulfilling career. Yes, I admit I totally fell for the psyop. It wasn’t until after graduation and a whole lot of unexpected life smacking me in the face that I began to look back and wonder why I wasted my time learning equations that didn’t apply to the problems of reality.
But the point remains, don’t live a lie. If you’re finding yourself lying daily just for an accolade, you’re destroying yourself. I’ve said many times before that academia has become a scam, but it’s more than that, the entire practice of education is in and of itself counter-productive to actually learning. Instead of experiencing and integrating real lessons from living your life as an ongoing system of personal growth, academia has turned a set of requirements and nuggets of written concepts into the sought-after goal.
Education, in the real sense, is not preparation for life. It is actually living. It is participating.
-Alan Watts
I think the best thing that could possibly happen to Academia would be the success of something like the Peterson Academy, but until then, consider its name mud and start living.