Dropping out of college never seemed like an option to me before my freshman year. Dropping out of college was for slackers, burnouts, and losers who couldn't cope with the stress of academia or stop partying long enough to study. My image of the typical college drop-out was the person stuck in a dead-end job, slowly growing angrier and more disillusioned as the years passed. Maybe she watched Mexican soap operas on television when she wasn't beating her children, nursing a beer along with all her dead hopes and dreams.
I remembered sitting in freshman orientation with the rest of my class when the speaker told us that one of the people sitting next to us wouldn't graduate. I knew damn well that person wouldn't be me. I was an intelligent, motivated girl who had been labeled gifted and talented by the school system since kindergarten, and I wasn't about to throw my life away like all the girls who stayed home after high school to raise junior prom babies and work at Subway.
And despite what high school teachers and concerned mothers had told me about how difficult the curriculum was, I found my college classes ridiculously easy. I made a 4.0 my first semester despite skipping classes every other day. I figured out quickly enough that most of my professors taught straight from the textbook. Instead of attending nauseously boring lectures I could just sleep in, take a leisurely walk to the cafeteria, and eat breakfast while reading the chapter on that day's syllabus.
Far from being the pinnacle of learning that I'd been taught to believe it was, my college experience was a monotonous, sepia-colored haze of endless routine and empty days. People would ask me what my major was and when I said "English literature" they'd give me a bug-eyed, sideways glance like they were watching a woman who just lit herself on fire.
"English," they always said, "what are you going to do with that? Are you going to like, teach?"
Either I would shrug and tell them I had no idea what I was going to do with that degree, or I'd look at my shoes and tell them I wanted to be a writer. If I told them I was going to be a writer, they'd usually chuckle and tell me maybe I'd be the next J.K Rowling, then walk off.
I preferred to shrug.
I found myself realizing that many successful writers did not go to college, and that many of the professors with writing degrees were only published in obscure, erudite venues. It seemed that much like genetically engineered plants created to survive only on expensive fertilizers, many writers taught by universities could only write in the incestuous structure provided by universities.
As I was dreaming of heading out for the open road like Jack Kerouac in "Dharma Bums," I stayed up late at night to write stories, read books, and research. I felt awkward in the college atmosphere - as an extreme introvert, I became overstimulated by the parties, the girls running down the hallways at all hours of the night, and the boys who didn't know that 'no' did not mean 'try harder.' I didn't enjoy drinking, drugs, or putting soap in the water fountains outside the library. I was out of place at college, and not just because I had no reason to be there.
Everyone told me what a huge mistake I would be making without a college degree. Everyone had an anecdote about their dim-witted cousin who lived in a trailer park out on a swamp, or the chain smoking woman who always regretted not going to college after marrying her bread winning husband. Yet no matter how many horror stories people told me about the people who became huge failures because they didn't go to college, I heard equal amount of horror stories about people who were class valedictorians, athletic champions, 4.0 out of 4.0 ivy league scholars, and saviors of mankind who ended up having to take a job grooming animals or pushing shopping carts.
Success didn't seem so much to be about whether or not someone went to college, but seemed to have more to do with motivation, tenacity, intelligence, and luck. Even as the college of my choice emptied my pockets and the pockets of my parents, they kept repeating there was no guarantee that college would determine if you would land a job or not.
I endured for two more semesters, then I dropped out of my third. I haven't regretted the decision. Though college education wasn't for me or for the goals I wanted to accomplish, I am still receiving an education everyday. Instead of learning until I'm 22 and then stopping once I obtain a degree, I have dedicated myself to continuous, life-long learning.
In Becoming Educated Without College, Part 2, I discuss ways that people can learn and grow outside of an academic setting.
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