Do you have a degree or are you smart?
Do you have a degree or are you smart?
In case you're wondering, yes, I did go to school, and yes, I was desperate to get that piece of paper that would show the world, hey, I'm employable.
At this point, I gotta say, I'm ashamed that I fell for it.
Sure, it's nice to have a certificate. But that's the thing. It's a nice to have. Nothing more. I mean, it does serve as proof that 20-something-you is capable of enduring ridiculously high levels of stress and making it through life with a shitty sleep schedule and a questionable diet, but other than that, it looks grim.
Halfway through my undergrad studies, I realised that this study bulimia was not sustainable at all. At least not for me. I find it hard to summarize what I have actually learned at school, let alone apply any of these theories in real life.
How little studying had actually benefited me became clear after I graduated.
First of all, nobody gives a shit about your degree. In fact, a diploma is hardly worth anything these days. Just like the purchasing power of that little paper money left in your old winter jacket, the actual value of a diploma has dropped drastically over the years.
Okay, nobody cares about you or your feelings. Fair enough. But since I studied economics, I thought that when I had to fill in my tax declaration or start my own business, the things I learned at school would come in handy. Right? Wrong.
Over the past few years, the most sustainable knowledge has been acquired through actual work experience, advice from people who have done the exact thing I was trying to do, and my own selective knowledge-hunting. It turns out that you retain information much better if you actually care to know more about a particular subject. Mind-blowing. I know.
This essentially meant that studying did not bring any value, at least not in a traditional sense. This isn’t to say that I regret having chosen this path. After all, the alternative would have been worse, right?
For the longest time, I failed to factor in the opportunity costs associated with it. Ironically, it was during my undergrad studies that I learned about this concept for the first time, so thanks for that.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Collins Dictionary defines it perfectly:
“An opportunity cost is the cost of not being able to do other things with time and resources because of doing the chosen activity.”
Don't get me wrong, I was aware of the apparent opportunity cost, such as not being able to go on vacation whenever I wanted, not being able to work full-time and earn more money, not being able to make time for all my hobbies, seeing my friends and family less frequently in favour of those glorious study sessions, and so on. But there's more.
*Throws confetti in the air* Introducing the hidden opportunity cost.
Since I was studying part-time and was able (and expected) to work at the same time, the contrast between the real world and school was more apparent to me. I've had a number of jobs and experienced different working environments, team dynamics and company cultures, but oddly enough, and regardless of the actual role, I've found that certain character traits always seem to rank high. The vast majority of people who commit to learning new skills for a particular job will eventually succeed *slaps the table* - that's just the way it is.
Things like previous work experience and the amount of online courses, certificates and university degrees you have accumulated over the years are hardly proof that you are "street smart" or rank high in overall common sense. Some of the smartest people I've met have swapped a degree for real life experience, and some of the hardest people to work with have a LinkedIn skills page that makes me wonder if I'm just exceptionally lazy.
While universities usually have strict guidelines regarding the word count of an essay or the duration of a presentation, no one in their right mind cares about these things as long as your message is concise and your input valuable. In fact, the shorter, the better. How many times have you sat through a meeting because someone kept babbling on without actually saying anything or were forced to read a lengthy article that could've been summarized in a single tweet? It's outrageously annoying.
If you're someone who's naturally curious, likes to ask questions and tries to understand things, then congratulations, you're a very valuable employee. And guess what, it takes time to master things, and that's not only okay, it's normal. And while you're at it, you'll realise something else. You will suck at first and you will make mistakes. And as every wise entrepreneur out there will tell you, failure helps you get better and is an integral part of that magical learning curve of yours.
If you are afraid of failure, don't be too hard on yourself, for you have been conditioned to fear failure and avoid it at all costs. :)
Though obvious to most people, I think we grossly underestimate the power of such conditioning. Being creative, staying curious, allowing yourself to fail, trying new ways and not following orders is an absolute necessity if you want to make it in this world.
And hey, if you want to dismiss everything I've just said by saying you're not a naturally curious person, I, or better yet NASA, have news for you. There's a 98 percent chance I'm talking to a former genius. In a longitudinal test of creative potential, they found that a staggering 98 percent of the 1,600 children aged 4 and 5 scored at the "creative genius" level. This dropped to 12 percent at the age of 15, and tanked to 2 percent among the 30+ crowd. As Dr George Land revealed, there's a very simple reason for this. He explained that we humans apply two types of thinking. One is called divergent thinking - which is used for imagination, generating new ideas and new ways of doing things. The other is called convergent thinking - applied when we're making decisions, judging, criticising or evaluating things.
What school essentially does is teach you to use both ways of thinking at the same time, which results in your neurons fighting each other, reducing the power of your brain and judging the practicality of new ideas as soon as they're introduced. Sounds inefficient, because it is.
As Ken Robinson famously said:
“We are educating people out of their creative capacities… I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it."
(I highly recommend watching his TedTalk on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY. It's an absolute gem.)
Even if you are reading this as an adult in your 30s, know that not all hope is lost and that divergent thinking can indeed be trained. As Land insists that capability never goes away and is something we exercise on a daily basis when dreaming. He goes on to explain that we use a smaller part of the brain when we're operating under fear. In contrast, our brains literally light up when creative thinking is applied.
At this point you may be wondering why the F is it that our education system is essentially designed to dumb us down. Well, I'm glad you asked because I was wondering the same thing.
If we look back in history and dig deeper into the origins of our globally recognized and widely adopted education system, we find some answers to this predicament. The public school system as we know it was inspired by the Prussian model back in the 18th century, which was essentially designed to feed the flourishing industrialization with obedient factory workers. This model was later adopted by John D. Rockefeller and his General Education Board to build and fund schools across the US. I don't want to point fingers, but he did state the following: "I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers." Make of that what you want.
Oh, and if you think Rockefeller was the only madman with zero chill, the Prussian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte was also quite vocal about the actual motive behind education and made this statement years before:
“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished.”
What a lovely man. He must have been fun at parties.
So what's the takeaway of this?
Universities alone aren't to blame. Surely. These institutions are an integral part of a faulty and outdated education system with questionable motives at best.
In an ideal world, we need to completely change our approach to learning and create an environment in which our amazing genius children of the future can embrace their magic and creativity.
And if the only question was whether I wanted to get a degree or not, I would conclude that the hidden opportunity cost of manipulating my brain to essentially work against me is an extremely high price to pay. So, yeah, I think the potential downside of choosing to attend university is far greater than the alleged benefits we are promised. Also, once this highly ineffective way of thinking is ingrained in our brains, we first have to unlearn it.
To get anything done in life, we need to get comfortable trying new things, not judge new ideas immediately, and invite failure to join the chat. And that is easier said than done, especially if you have been conditioned to follow orders and stay in line to "pass that class".
As with most things, the first step to recovery is to become aware of the underlying problem.
As Gavin Nascimento so aptly put it:
“School teaches us to conform, but the imagination teaches us to create.
Authority teaches us to obey, but curiosity teaches us to question.
Society teaches us to follow, but the heart teaches us to lead.
The path we seek is within, do not be misled from without.”
In that sense, be smart, stay curious, act playful and allow yourself to be a little delulu.
