|
I went through the same decision 6 months ago. We had a company going and were ready to raise capital and drop college, but we decided otherwise. I am also 23, self-taught and I never liked college. Ever since I was allowed to surf the internet by myself (at 9, in a dial-up connection), my curiosity and patience permitted me to absorb a lot of knowledge "ahead of time". Because of that, college was boring for the most part of it, even more boring when I got into entrepreneurship and decided to start my first company with a friend. The feeling of actually creating stuff and seeing people test what we built and give feedback was amazing, even though most of the feedback was negative. Before deciding to either drop college or close the company, we talked to many entrepreneurs, angels and people we trusted. Our decision to close it, instead of dropping, basically came down to a few points. We didn’t have a working MVP that tested our idea, what we had was a solid beta team and a half finished MVP, so dropping out of college would mean that I would not have a solid foundation that would allow me to get back on my feet, in case things went wrong (I live in Brazil, entrepreneurship and failing aren’t seen as good things here; on average, degrees are valued much more than the life experience of failing a company). I also ended up having my doubts if we actually needed to drop out of college to build this, or if I was just trying to escape the frustration of going to classes that mostly wasted my time. So, I ask you two things: Are you sure you are not thinking of dropping college as a way of dealing with the frustration you (might) feel when going to it? Don’t you think you can use the college as a sandbox for testing ideas and working on interesting projects without having to deal with a) social pressure, b) financial health and c) failing consequences? If you aren’t sure, don’t drop it. If you think the frustration of going to some classes, is a lower cost than a), b) and c), don’t drop it. I would also suggest you use the social experience of going to a college in order to meet other people like-minded, possibly even a cofounder for future projects, because the friends I made through college are the ones I am taking with me for the rest of my life and certainly the most valuable thing I am taking out of college with me. |