I feel lost

[Aurelius]

Hi there,

I decided to join this awesome forum after reading the Fastlane book. Glad that I found it !

I feel a bit lost in my decision making, if you guys could help me figure this one out.

So here's my story:
I m a 18 years old and still in high school (last year). I hate going to school, and I guess I m not the only "edgy teen" who says that. School made me hate even the topics I used to love before. Philosophy was a great interest of mine, until I started doing that in school. I m still greatly interested in it, but I was surprised that I get bored in class while the teacher's talking.
School lasts from 8am to 5pm, and my road to school is like 1h20 long. So that makes me nearly 3h to get to and from school. I try to listen to audiobooks since I can t read in the bus (getting headaches if I do). But even then, I m so exhausted that I can t even propely dedicate myself mentally listening the audiobooks.

My financial dreams are: - Building an Ecommerce empire
- Invest in lots of real-estate
- Create a company that offers jobs to people, something such as UberEats/Shopify, or create a company involved in innovative tech, like Apple in his early era.
- Then after being enough financially stable, I will help those in need. Like building schools, houses, opportunities for the poor.
- Coach others

The problem now is that I don't want to go through college. I feel so "dead inside" while sitting in a chair listening to a teacher talking about random numbers and theories that help you find more numbers. I feel that my ideas, and motivation are gone. On the other side, while I m working on my Ecommerce, I feel so alive, with so many ideas wandering around my mind.

My mother wants me to go to college, I live in Europe so it s free education basically. So no huge debt. She wants me to get good grades in high school (which I could if I really get into it) but have no energy left for it. I get home at like 7pm and can t do nothing more but sleep.
I told her that I don t want to go to college because I feel like it s a waste of time for me. She insists that if I want to be an entrepreneur, college enables me to meet people that think just like me. "Steve Jobs went through college, Zuckerberg made Facebook thanks to the people he met at Harvard, Bill Gates got to Harvard too, and then when he felt like being on the too of the pyramid, he left because he could. You are still in high school, at the bottom of the pyramid, and thinking that you can be just like them. You gamble. Get a college degree and only then, you could do whatever you want. "

I find what she says a bit true. I have a hard time finding people in real life thinking like me (only found 2 that are not motivated enough to take action).
The only time I can do my ecommerce stuff, is on saturday, when I get to the library's computers. The only time I read paper books is when I have some free time at school.

What should I do? Go to college ? (assuming that it s free) Getting better grades in highschool but leave my side hustle ?

 

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[lowtek]

Welcome to the forum, thanks for sharing your story.

From what I'm reading, the biggest problem is that you base your decisions on your feelings.

Eventually, the eCom stuff will get hard and, unless you learn to change your decision making process, you'll give up on that because it will no longer make you feel alive. You'll feel just as dead trying to source new products as you do learning new stuff in class.

To succeed, you have to work in spite of how you feel. This is true in any job, career, business, or relationship.

That's the best advice I can give, based on what you wrote. Whether or not you go to university really isn't the issue. How you approach doing things you don't want to do, but have to do, is the issue.

Good luck. To be fair, I wish I was asking these questions at 18.

 

[KAA]

I am a mom to a millennial, and I see both sides. Your mom is right in that college can open up a whole new world for you and expose you to people you wouldn't meet otherwise. It's an amazing experience for a young person, especially if you don't have to take on the burden of student loans like many people in the US. You could find a subject that somewhat interests you, suck it up for a few years to get your degree, and then have an accomplishment that no one can take away from you.

On the other hand, the argument can be made that there is no better school than entrepreneurship. It is a different type of education because you have to be self-taught in multiple areas and constantly apply what you learn. Your professor is the market and your grade is how much money you make.

Why don't you strike a bargain with your mom and take a gap year and use it to focus 100% on your business? (Or do a non-demanding job to pay the bills if necessary so you'll still have energy while you work on it.) If you are going to take risks financially, now is the time to do it before you have a mortgage, spouse and kids! You would be happy because you give your business dedicated attention and your mom will be happy because you will have a definite time-frame to start school. If your business is very successful, you can justify not going to school by the money you're making. If the business hasn't produced like you want it to, you can go to school and still work on the business but with a year's worth of valuable experience to make your progress faster.

Good luck!

 

[Vegvisir]

I can relate to alot of what you said about feeling like you are wasting time in school. I wanted to drop out halfway through college to pursue starting my own businesses but am glad I didn't. Why? bottom line is it takes capital to startup most businesses, sure its possible to do it scaling from almost zero or getting a loan but it's alot harder. At 18 i was dead broke, I had some business ideas and almost zero capital to put into them. If you have a degree you can get a better paying job as a stepping stone to save up capital to invest in your own business. Its very hard to save up money working minimum wage jobs.

There HAS to be some major you can take in school that will directly help you in building the businesses you mentioned (coding, accounting, marketing, business courses, etc) these are all useful skills you can use to build your own business.

Going to college will also afford you alot of free time and resources to work on your side business. I read almost 200 books on my own in college studying useful business related things I cared about. There will be lots of resources on campus you will have access to you otherwise would not(think of all the departments and professors you can tap into)

The only way i would say not go is if you already have a concrete business that is producing income and a plan to grow it, if not use the resources in college to get prepared to do that.

 

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[Primeperiwinkle]

School sucks ppl’s souls. It’s NOT real education. Real education inspires you, challenges you, and welcomes you into the lives of great minds and great events giving you a passion for learning more.

College is NOT like high school. Most of the ppl who loathe high school find tons of joy in college because you’ll have more control over your time and your learning. I hope you find joy again, soon.

 

[Aurelius]

I really appreciate all your replies !! This forum is a gift from God.

Based on your answers, I decided to go to college and work hard in high-school despite my hate for it.
I already started my Ecomm shop, but it doesn’t require much time though.
Thank you all for clearing the fog inside my mind. I really needed it. Bless you

 

[Jon L]

This might explain why you feel lost:

Do schools kill creativity? (a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson, with 65 million views)

School is awful. I took ONE class during my entire 17 year journey in school that excited me. It was a senior thesis seminar where one professor and 6 students discussed research methodology. The professor didn't lecture, he taught. He'd present us with a research problem, and ask us to design an experiment to study it. Then, he proceeded to poke holes in our methodology. It was glorious. He was like a lion toying with a pet dog. But, I learned so much in that class. I wanted more.

My 12 year old daughter loves to learn. She came home from school one day saying how boring George Washington was.

What?! I exclaimed. Boring?

I proceeded to tell her about some of the amazing things George Washington did, how he inspired an army of very non-professional soldiers to fight, even though they weren't getting paid much, had little food, etc. I also talked about some of the more unseemly parts of his character.

Her eyes lit up. Then, she got mad.

Why didn't they talk about it this way in school today, she demanded.

Indeed.

Except for a very small percent of the population, people learn because they get excited about something, and they want to know more.

...

If you don't end up going to college, you definitely need to learn how to think, write and speak effectively. College helps with that. Beyond that, unless you're going to study a profession like medicine, law, engineering, etc, I'm not convinced that college is necessary or helpful.

And yeah, I know that people that go to college make more money. What's sad about that statistic is that is repeated ad nauseum by people who went to college, supposedly took a course in statistics, and should know better. The most we can say is that going to college is correlated with earning more money. Well of course it is. People who have the discipline to study for four years and jump through a bunch of hoops will have the discipline to perform better on a job, too.

 

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[Entre Eyes]

I really appreciate all your replies !! This forum is a gift from God.

Based on your answers, I decided to go to college and work hard in high-school despite my hate for it.
I already started my Ecomm shop, but it doesn’t require much time though.
Thank you all for clearing the fog inside my mind. I really needed it. Bless you

What Wait? Thread started and cured the same day hahahaha wow this Forum will be on a talk show soon.

There have been alot of internet superstars that started while still in college so I like your chances of success. Absorb everything you can eCom it will pay off.

Sold auctions are a goldmine....they share how they got traffic, outsourcing so much.

 

[Kevin88660]

College help you with critical thinking ability. You learn to think like a researcher and not get lost in the latest fad or “guru teaching that this is everything you need.”

You look at how a research paper is structured.
-background info
-existing literature
-hypothesis on an issue
-test and empirical evidence
-conclusion and discussion

I have benefited enormously from this when I want to understand something new.

Likewise for your case it is not either or. Glad that you have chosen to go college. You can do a business degree that give you ample time to develop your own side entrepreneurship activity where you can make use of yours school’s resources.

 

[Aurelius]

I can relate to alot of what you said about feeling like you are wasting time in school. I wanted to drop out halfway through college to pursue starting my own businesses but am glad I didn't. Why? bottom line is it takes capital to startup most businesses, sure its possible to do it scaling from almost zero or getting a loan but it's alot harder. At 18 i was dead broke, I had some business ideas and almost zero capital to put into them. If you have a degree you can get a better paying job as a stepping stone to save up capital to invest in your own business. Its very hard to save up money working minimum wage jobs.

There HAS to be some major you can take in school that will directly help you in building the businesses you mentioned (coding, accounting, marketing, business courses, etc) these are all useful skills you can use to build your own business.

Going to college will also afford you alot of free time and resources to work on your side business. I read almost 200 books on my own in college studying useful business related things I cared about. There will be lots of resources on campus you will have access to you otherwise would not(think of all the departments and professors you can tap into)

The only way i would say not go is if you already have a concrete business that is producing income and a plan to grow it, if not use the resources in college to get prepared to do that.

Dropshipping doesn’t take much capital. And even if, let’s say, I need a couple of grands to finance my project, I could always work as a barman or waiter. Plus, since I m still young, I stay at my parents’ house, which means I pay no mortgage or taxes, things like that. If I do college just for a job, I would be too old to stay at my parents’ house (since business school here takes like 7 to 8 years) and I ll have to pay a big part of the paycheck for food, mortgage etc.. Sure I ll get a slightly better paying job, let s say 600€ more, but the time I spent in college, I could’ve make more.

If my business keeps failing, I just come back at McDo and save a couple G and repeat the process

 

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[PowerJen]

I am studying my third course. First one, a BA in Communications at 29. Paid by self. Second one, a marketing certificate. Now, I'm doing an Applied Business diploma online through Ducere. I am usually the one who comments the most.

If you find your interest area, then you will no doubt learn to apply yourself to studies and see how it applies to your real business or career. I always learn more than everyone else and it's how I like it. If you like knowing more rather than guessing and going blindly into the night, then study.

 

[Vegvisir]

Dropshipping doesn’t take much capital. And even if, let’s say, I need a couple of grands to finance my project, I could always work as a barman or waiter. Plus, since I m still young, I stay at my parents’ house, which means I pay no mortgage or taxes, things like that. If I do college just for a job, I would be too old to stay at my parents’ house (since business school here takes like 7 to 8 years) and I ll have to pay a big part of the paycheck for food, mortgage etc.. Sure I ll get a slightly better paying job, let s say 600€ more, but the time I spent in college, I could’ve make more.

If my business keeps failing, I just come back at McDo and save a couple G and repeat the process

I guess what it comes down to for me is there is no reason you can't do both(college and open a business).

Some people to subscribe to the theory of "Don't have a backup plan" when pursuing entrepreneurship or in this case don't go to college without a solid business. Sometimes these people are successful if they are serious but I also know of people who dropped out to pursue a business and he never was able to make anything of it. At the end of the day nobody on this forum knows your situation as well as you, so this is a decision you'll have to make. I already put in my opinion of which i think is wiser so I'll leave it at that.

I guess getting a degree in Europe is different than America, here with STEMdegree I make about 50K more than I would have if I didn't have a degree. This has allowed me to get my rental property, and invest in 3 businesses.

Good Luck!

 

[André Casal]

Hi Aurelius and welcome to the forum.

This question is very important, so allow me to go deep.

Decision making is an extremelly valuable skill to have and most people don't know how to make decisions, because that's not taught in schools. When faced with any decision, ask yourself what your decision criteria should be.

Let me help you make some decision criteria I detected from your post explicit:
- Pleasing mom
- Doing whatever makes me feel good or alive
- Contacting with smart people in college
- Increasing the number of people I know about
- Making more, higher quality, friends

Does any of these sound like a good decision criterion? No, they suck. They are all really terrible decision criteria. Realize that trying to decide on whether to go to college is really a decision about what to do in life. So, to find the right criterion for this decision, you really need to change the question: what do you want to do in life? And what's the decision criteria for that?

To answer this question I recommend you do the Life Compass exercise in the Designing Your Life book by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

After you have your life compass and an explicit, clear and coherent view of what life and work means to you, you're ready to brainstorm some decision criteria about what to do in life. With that decision criteria, you'll easily answer the question "should I go to college".

I hope this helps and let me know if you need clarification on anything. Cheers!

 

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