College: Should i quit is or stick with it?!?

[PeteLife]

-ALL OPINIONS ARE WELCOMED-

I've been reading this forum for months now, long before I signed up, and have even read MJ book (great read btw). so i figured this is the people I want to ask...

here is the scenario:
Im 20 years old (21 in august), and I have one more year left in college.
I have business aspirations, REAL ESTATE BEING MY BIGGEST FACTOR right now, but also have other business website ideas and concepts Ive been working on.

I am currently majoring in Electrical Engineering, a subject I now hate after three years of studying it. I must say that I understand that this is a very rewarding direction for a successful career in the engineering field, HOWEVER, i have bigger goals and aspirations. I am in this field only because it sounded "cool", only becuase I was told I could graduate making a starting salary of about $60-$70,000 (my slow-minded days smh), and thats about it. sounded cool when the girls asked what I did, and it also promised that "ok" paycheck.

After my first year, I started to realize that I didnt like this particular field however, I didnt want to disappoint my mother, so I stuck through with it a second year. Im 2 years in and now I know for a fact that I HATE THIS FIELD, but being me, once I start a task I never quit, so decided to stick through with it a third year. Sigh...
:shruggie:
So im finished with my third year now and i will be a senior in the fall (September), with my expected graduation date being May 2012. I currently have no drive for this at all, and spend my time, researching business ideas and doing a few start-ups. Now that, I LOVE to do. BUSINESS and/or MARKETING... (that probably should have been my choice for a major, but EVERYONE is majoring in business now, and it just didnt have the notoriety that engineering had, so yea i picked the thing i hate just to be different and to have that "cool" major)..sigh ...

So yea, when im not doing engineering Im doing business ventures, im making deals, im creating opportunities for my friends, im startin businesses, and this all makes me happy. Even when i fail im happy (i find myself laughing at my business failures sometimes - not sure if thats healthy or not lol), but failure just means I wont make the same mistake again so I appreciate the moment while it lasts.

I constantly ask myself why dont I like engineering half as much as I like business and I just cannot come to any conclusions. I try to love it but i just cant.

I think ive been rambling on too much so let me get to the point.
I have a business plan that im sure will be fastlane however with engineering being a blockade to my business pursuits i wont be able to stay in school while completing the task.

I just want to do what makes me happy. and clearly engineering doesnt. and on a broader note, college doesnt either. i must say that most of what i have learnt about making a living, and earning an income has been through street knowledge. NOT COLLEGE... For me college has just been a maze that you are forced to go through, never finding the path to true value, but livng to the standards that the system wants. "GO TO COLLEGE AND YOU WILL BE SUCCESSFUL ...GO TO COLLEGE AND YOU WILL MAKE MORE THAN THOSE WHO DONT..." ...well im tired of that misconception. I find it hard to complete another year in this "system" because i find true knowledge thru the work i have already done in trying to create my own business. I want to work smart, not hard. and college is 4 - 6 years (engineering degrees generally take longer that the regular 4 yrs) that i could have been working on a business venture.

So this is my dilemma. I do not have family or close friends (that I trust) to talk to about this, so im leaving this in the hands of the fastlaners. Yea, I think MJ mentioned that its best to listen to people who has the same mentality as yours (fastlane, which noone i know is).

So please be completely honest with me on this topic. I have mentioned this issue in another forum and recieved great feedbacks. Now i just want more people to weigh in on this.

other factors to include:
1. I HAVE A FULL ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIP CURRENTLY (which has been a blessing because without it i possibly wouldnt have gone to college because, for lack of better words, im broke and I dont have family support, except my mom who already has it hard).

2. I CURRENTLY HAVE AN INTERNSHIP WITH THE GOVERNMENT, Department of Defense, but the pay is mediocre and I may have to go for my masters (another 2 years in school) in order to start making "ok to decent" money .

THE END - WHAT SHOULD I DO ..??? Quit or not?

p.s. I know i say I do not like engineering alot, but please do not get the idea that i want to quit because its "difficult". I have managed to maintain a full scholarship, as well as on track to complete in 4 years (most my peers will take them 5 or 6 years). I will say that my GPA has dropped somewhat over the years because of my lack of interest in it, (mostly the reason for the drop because my heart is not in it).sigh.. HELP PLEASE!!!!!

 

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[Milenko]

Here's my advice - don't think of this as an "either/or" situation think of it as an "and" situation. Stick with EE, get your degree, and start working on starting the business you want to be in after graduation. Think of EE as a back up plan that you hope you never have to use.

It's easy to fantasize that another path will make you more successful more quickly but until you start going down that path you don't have a true idea of what it will take. Use this year to prove to yourself and anyone else you feel the need to prove things to that the other path you envision is viable. If you get to next May and your alternate path isn't working out as quickly as you had hoped, you have a way to pay the bills until you can make it work out.

 

[garyfritz]

Pete, you're in a tough situation there. It's hard to realize you've invested so much of your life in something you DO NOT want to do. Thank your lucky stars you're at least not going deep into debt to do it.

Personally I *loved* college. What I learned in my classes was secondary to what I learned socially, and in self-responsibility, and in some personal projects I worked on. I also started out in EE. I did well in it, loved the early calculus &etc, but kinda hit a wall when I got to transistor electronics. (Kinda like I did in math when I hit DiffEq. ) Meanwhile I'd been playing with computers -- understand this was in the mid-70's so computers were a bit different then!! -- and I loved that. I ended up shifting to a computer emphasis and graduated with a Computer Engineering degree.

That worked to get me a job with Hewlett Packard, which in the late 70's was about the cream of the crop, so I figured I'd hit the jackpot. It took me a lot of years to realize that wasn't really the direction I wanted to go either, but I wasn't quite sure what I DID want. I left HP and have been self-employed for 20 years, but basically just doing hourly contract gigs. Wish MJ had written his book 20-25 years ago!!! You're VERY lucky that you can make this realization while you're still young.

So, back to you. Suggestions I have for you:

* Don't worry about the people majoring in business. 99% of all "business" profs have never run a business in their lives, and they know NOTHING about the real world. They teach academic stuff that might have some application to what you'll actually face in your business, but IMHO for the most part the "MBA mindset" is not what you want. Just ask MJ about that. Take a few business / finance courses to get the fundamentals you need, but don't worry about a major.

* You hate EE. Is there a related field you would find more interesting, so you could shift over like I shifted to CS? If you decide you really don't want to do EE, you could make the best of that scholarship and develop skills in an area that interests you more. It might be useful to have a fallback career in case you need help funding your business ventures. It's a tradeoff between the scholarship -- which lets you invest in yourself, without having to go into debt -- and your time.

* You've invested years of your life into a technical education. That gives you an unusual skill and a potential competitive advantage. It would be a shame to throw that away. Is there some way you could focus your business passion into a technical direction? Invent something, import and market some technical product, something like that?

* See if your college has an Entrepreneurship class. Hook up with the profs that teach that, or ask around and see if there are any profs that have actual entrepreneurial experience. (Unlikely, or they wouldn't have ended up where they are, but you never know. My 14-yr-old had an awesome "shop" teacher who taught for fun, because he'd made his bundle in his business -- and he brought lots of his amazing inventions & products to school to wow and inspire the kids.) Maybe you could use that as an incubator for your business projects.

You've invested a lot, and you have the opportunity to invest more without having to pay any $$ for it. You'll have to decide if that's worth the time investment and running through the university rat-maze. Good luck!

Gary

 

[dreaminBIG]

Pete4life90,

I am in the same situation you are, only I am 22 and have a year and a half left. I have gone back and forth as to whether or not I will finish as I have never liked school, and we all know you don't need a college degree to become ultra-wealthy! Here is the conclusion I have come to (maybe it will help you): I will stay in college, but will start a company within the next month or so. If the business becomes successful while I am still in college and I need to devote more time to the business, I will either try and slide by in all of my classes or drop out all together. With all the information we could ever need at our fingertips nowadays, it seems a waste of time to sit and listen to a lecturer teach things we will never use again. However, why should we drop out if we don't have anything on the table right away? If you decide to drop out anyways, I will still salute your decision because it takes a lot of balls to not follow the sheep. The majority get slaughtered in financial mediocrity anyway!!!

 

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[garyfritz]

Something else I forgot to mention: as dreaminBIG said, much of what those profs think is so incredibly important (because THEY'RE teaching it) will, indeed, never cross your path again. There's no denying that much of college is (or is often) wasted time.

But that's just the level-1 picture. If you pay attention to the meta-game, you can come away with more valuable life skills than most of your classmates.

One of the most important things I learned in college was problem-solving skills. I'd always been fairly good at that, but several of my classes really honed those skills. Obviously most college programs are designed to create corporate drones, but that's mostly because that's what most students want to become. You can take advantage of the learning opportunities there but focus it in the direction YOU want to go.

"Learning how to learn" is probably the most important thing that a lot of college students gain. Maybe you've already mastered that, or maybe trial-by-fire in your business ventures is the best teacher. That's something you'll have to decide.

 

[TommyBoy]

Stop right there! You have a free ride and ONE year left of college? and you want to drop out? Doesn't make sense! Focus on the positive (no debt, in-demand degree = credibility).
Enjoy college while you can. You may not realize how much of the social environment you'll miss once out of it.
Now that you have absorbed those facts and realize not to be too idealist, let me paint you a picture.

In your senior year you will have either a thesis or senior project. The class will most likely be group-oriented, self-driven, and minimally supervised. This will be your opportunity to engineer a solution/product to launch your business. There is a recent thread about an article of an Australian kid in high school imported mp3 players from a Chinese vendor at Alibaba, wrote a marketing plan, and sold them on eBay. He used the marketing plan for his business class.

I hope that's a definite solution to your minor dilemma. I don't know what your focus in engineering is, but I'd recommend the following steps:

1) Seek a current engineering problem
2) Improve an existing product or start a new one
3) Build blueprints
4) Build prototype
5) Manufacture prototype in China
6) Market product
7) Sell product online, to stores, wholesale

 

[PeteLife]

Thank you guys so much for your input... really appreciated... i will definately take this into account as i make my final decision (should hav a final decision by the weekend as i have been thinking about it for months now).

@Milenko: great advice, i understand that its probably best to stick with EE for the final year so that I can have something to fall back on in case my alternate plan doesnt work... but honestly, i think i would more likely to fall back on another project im working on rather than back in the field. it is something to keep in mind though as it would be a guaranteed income rather than being in a "hit-and-miss" situation with start-ups.

@garyfritz: i respect your advice as u can relate to what i am going through right now. I too started out liking the early calculus, but got a smack in the face when i reached DE and classes like micro-electronics circuits... As far as a related field in the technical aspect, I would say im interested more in computers and website design. I could make this my concentration in my final year but thought it would b much easier to find a mentor to teach me this on the side (dont think i need college for that, im a fast learner, so im sure that wont be a problem learning especially with my technical background). I really like your idea about hooking up with one of the professors for the entrepreneurship class. If i do go back to class in the fall, ill be doing this my first day back at school. this will give me a network advantage as well as a few knowledgeable concepts ill need to be successful in my endeavors.

why should we drop out if we don't have anything on the table right away?

@dreamingbig: u got me with this quote ... because technically all i have are plans... why not wait until its getting somewhere before quitting? ... sounds simple but my situation is this: my plans are still only plans becasue of school. i have the resources and the research all down just waitin for me to execute... but thats it...why i havent executed these plans are because of school so as much as i would love to start now while in school, its difficult to balance being an EE major while executing my plans. EE literally takes up ALL my time. so i know for a fact that if i did both at the same time, ill be putting either school in jeopardy (gpa drops/lose scholarship/fail a class) or my business in jeopardy (the business fail because i was busy building a digital circuit with a counter when i was suppose to be monitoring the business). . . sigh, but great thinking tho, i like your plans, and im thinking if you think u can do it, why cant i...? ill think into it more...

@TommyBoy: I like your straightforward approach to my problem. U stated the obvious and u also gave me a plan that i can execute while in college. in other words, take advantage of my final year and develop something using my senior project as the target... ive thought about inventing something but having looked into it, i realize that is an expensive endeavor (manufacturing and marketing is an expensive quest), so had plan on putting this on the list of future plans when money is right. but being that its a school project, im sure more funds will be available.. great idea...ill look into this.
p.s. i have a few inventions in mind, but had planned on takin action when I had generated enough income to build prototypes etc and lay out the groundwork, then pitch my idea to investors ... but this sounds like the opportunity i needed... my senior project... ill look into it ...

 

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[garyfritz]

I really like your idea about hooking up with one of the professors for the entrepreneurship class. If i do go back to class in the fall, ill be doing this my first day back at school.

Don't wait! Start checking into it NOW. Find out if there's one there at all -- that may influence your decision whether to go back or not. Also can't hurt to hook up with the prof early, make connections, find out what's available, make sure he'd support your plan, etc. Execute NOW!

 

[PeteLife]

***UPDATE****

AFTER MUCH DELIBERATION, IVE DECIDED TO QUIT.

THANKS AGAIN FOR THE RESPONSES AND INSIGHTS, HOWEVER, I REFUSE TO SPEND ANOTHER YEAR IN A FIELD THAT ISNT OF INTEREST TO ME.
ALSO, THE PAY ISNT ALL THAT FOR AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEEER MAJOR WHO ONLY HAS A BACHELORS DEGREE. IN ORDER TO MAKE REAL MONEY IN THE FIELD U NEED TO HAVE ATLEAST A MASTERS, PREFERABLY DOCTORS... (ALOT MORE YEARS IN SCHOOL AKA NOT MAKING MONEY).

I KNOW ILL BE SUCCESSFUL BECAUSE THATS JUST WHO I AM.

IF I PUT MY HEAD TO ANYTHING, I KNOW ILL SUCCEED. I KNOW I WONT HAVE THE SUPPORT OF ANY FAMILY OR FRIENDS ON THIS MATTER BUT THAT MEANS NOTHING TO ME (EXCEPT FOR MY MOM, IT WILL HURT HER BUT IM SURE SHE WILL UNDERSTAND).

WILL BE OFFICIALLY DOING MY START-UP ON AUGUST 15TH.

WILL KEEP YOU GUYS UPDATED.

p.s. im just praying that this is the right decision, but even if its not, ill still have all my credits so ill just be able to go to any college and finish my final year.

 

[PrincessK]

Congrats on ur decision

Congrats on believing in yourself and knowing that you have the power to create what u want !!

Love Always

PrincessK

***UPDATE****

AFTER MUCH DELIBERATION, IVE DECIDED TO QUIT.

THANKS AGAIN FOR THE RESPONSES AND INSIGHTS, HOWEVER, I REFUSE TO SPEND ANOTHER YEAR IN A FIELD THAT ISNT OF INTEREST TO ME.
ALSO, THE PAY ISNT ALL THAT FOR AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEEER MAJOR WHO ONLY HAS A BACHELORS DEGREE. IN ORDER TO MAKE REAL MONEY IN THE FIELD U NEED TO HAVE ATLEAST A MASTERS, PREFERABLY DOCTORS... (ALOT MORE YEARS IN SCHOOL AKA NOT MAKING MONEY).

I KNOW ILL BE SUCCESSFUL BECAUSE THATS JUST WHO I AM.

IF I PUT MY HEAD TO ANYTHING, I KNOW ILL SUCCEED. I KNOW I WONT HAVE THE SUPPORT OF ANY FAMILY OR FRIENDS ON THIS MATTER BUT THAT MEANS NOTHING TO ME (EXCEPT FOR MY MOM, IT WILL HURT HER BUT IM SURE SHE WILL UNDERSTAND).

WILL BE OFFICIALLY DOING MY START-UP ON AUGUST 15TH.

WILL KEEP YOU GUYS UPDATED.

p.s. im just praying that this is the right decision, but even if its not, ill still have all my credits so ill just be able to go to any college and finish my final year.

 

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[dreaminBIG]

Congrats!

Congrats on making a decision! Much respect. I know what its like to not have your family support your life decisions but as Ben Affleck says in "Boiler Room," see how they like it when your making their F------ Lexus payments!! Stay positive and busy brother! :fastlane:

 

[Jon Snow]

Congrats!

Wow you have such self-belief and determination.
I know you will make it happen.
Congrats man!

 

[JackrabbitD]

Go to University to learn, not to study

Your experience meeting people is just as important as your classes, when that comes to a halt, that is when you stop going!

 

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[Journey2Million$]

I think being an engineering major in college is much more boring than working in a job as a real engineer.

 

[Vigilante]

The OP hasn't been here since October 2014. Sometimes it is better to let sleeping threads sleep.

 

[Silverhawk851]

Go to University to learn, not to study

Your experience meeting people is just as important as your classes, when that comes to a halt, that is when you stop going!

I think being an engineering major in college is much more boring than working in a job as a real engineer.

Thread is 4 years old.

My Boy @PeteLife already started a revolutionary company, raised 6 figures on Kickstarter,
moved across the country, done hundreds of interviews,
came on multiple TV shows, flew across the world to close deals
and He's successful....just like he said

Do your homework guys

 

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[Journey2Million$]

Thread is 4 years old.

My Boy @PeteLife already started a revolutionary company, raised 6 figures on Kickstarter,
moved across the company, done hundreds of interviews,
came on multiple TV shows, flew across the world to close deals
and He's successful....just like he said

So what kind of business did he start? Do you have a link?

 

[The-J]

3 1/2 years later, @PeteLife has since taken a break from the forum... and has been on a serious grind.

Like @Silverhawk851 said, he's been on TV, raised 6 figures on Kickstarter, started an awesome company , recently got back from a flight to Indo-F*cking-nesia to close a deal, and is doing quite well for himself. He's always on the move, always on the grind. I don't think he sleeps, even.

For those who are thinking of quitting college themselves, you need to understand that you will not be successful, college or not, without a hustle and grind mindset. If you quit college and you don't have the drive or the inclination to work hard, commit fully and put some serious time in, you will end up in a rut. Possibly jobless living with your parents (if you're lucky enough to have parents who let you stay). If you continue with college and you end up with a useless degree with a shit GPA, you'll end up in the same rut... except with debt.

I think this thread should be closed and stickied somewhere, just to show what's possible if you hustle and grind.

 

[Mattie]

For those who are thinking of quitting college themselves, you need to understand that you will not be successful, college or not, without a hustle and grind mindset. If you quit college and you don't have the drive or the inclination to work hard, commit fully and put some serious time in, you will end up in a rut. Possibly jobless living with your parents (if you're lucky enough to have parents who let you stay). If you continue with college and you end up with a useless degree with a shit GPA, you'll end up in the same rut... except with debt.

Couldn't have said it better.

 

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[daivey]

lol another one of these threads

 

[1step]

PeteLife,Jul 19, 2011

And I just saw you on TV yesterday - crazy that this thread just popped up - crazy that this version of you was only 4 years ago... and now look where you are! Shit, a lot has changed just in the last year that I have known you, you're killing it @PeteLife , congrats man!