{"id":4098,"date":"2014-06-16T15:45:15","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T15:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=4098"},"modified":"2014-06-16T15:45:15","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T15:45:15","slug":"linked-dont-go-to-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2014\/06\/16\/linked-dont-go-to-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Linked: “Don\u2019t Go To College”"},"content":{"rendered":"

via Marco<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

My philosophy about being a C student and not needing to do 80% of the work should also be taken lightly. That strategy works well if you want to follow a path like mine after college: working for small companies that care less about your GPA, or that you can convince to hire you by other means (showing impressive personal projects, advanced skills, etc.). But my GPA was so bad that no big tech company \u2014 not Microsoft, not Apple, not Amazon, and definitely not Google \u2014 would even consider hiring me. (I tried.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m trying to find a transcript from the panel I was on at Teens in Tech conference back in 2009. I did find this page<\/a> which reminds me who was in the panel with me:<\/p>\n

\n

2:00-3:00 (Teen to Entrepreneur Panel) \u2013 Daniel Ha, Eric Kerr, Adam Jackson (Moderated by Daniel Brusilovsky)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anyway, this panel sort of went off the rails at the time because we were coming on just after lunch and after a few speakers basically drove home the fact that college was overrated. The great thing about a weekend conference in the bay area for teens interested in technology is that most of the teens there were accompanied by their parents. By the time 2PM rolled around, the Q&A from the audience was people shouting out things like, \u201ccan you guys please stop telling my kid that going to college is unnecessary?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

I totally agree.<\/p>\n

Groups like Uncollege and books around hacking your education pose an interesting scenario and, with college costing as much as a house now, buying a book that gives you a different perspective to college is a good investment. I think teens should challenge their peers and mentors in their life on the social norm of going to college that we are seeing more and more. The debt, time and commitment is huge and there are a lot of reasons to not go but I would never tell anyone that college is unnecessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During that panel, all of us were successful without college yet I still touted the benefits that I saw college should bring, most importantly that college is a fall-back. Even the most entrepreneurial boy genius may one day need a degree.<\/p>\n

I echo Marco\u2019s statement above. I also was a C student, mostly D student in high school. My GPA of 2.4 in high school and fact that I never took Algebra 2 or Calculus or even Trigonometry shows that I was truly a slacker. I cared more about blogging, traveling and making HTML sites in my spare time. When a printer went down in my school, they\u2019d call me over the PA to come and fix it. I got out of a lot of classes being unofficial tech support for our school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then I got out of school and had to work very hard to get where I am today. Having a degree would have made things much easier. I haven\u2019t hit a salary wall yet but maybe one-day I will and will regret never doing 4 years of school. Then again, I hear 6 years of school is the minimum\u2026a bachelor\u2019s means nothing. Oh how times have changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I will never get hired at Google or Facebook as every job there requires a BA or higher but I still ended up okay. If you don\u2019t have the drive to do great things with what little your brain has been taught. Is college worth it? Every teen should ask themselves this. If you\u2019re too lazy to go to college, then you\u2019re likely too lazy to create a career for yourself and make substantial money in this lifetime.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"via Marco: My philosophy about being a C student and not needing to do 80% of the work…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-linked","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-146","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":263,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/05\/01\/speaking-at-sdforum\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 Speaking at SDForum: “Tech Titans of Tomorrow: Teens Plugged In”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"May 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been very fortunate to be invited to speak at SDForum this month as a panelist. 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I honestly had no clue\u2026.I really should open a web browser more often and also he linked me to this post from TechCrunch (when did Darrell start\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5031,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2015\/09\/25\/linked-people-are-paying-for-car-tech-they-arent-even-using\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":3},"title":"Linked: “People Are Paying For Car Tech They Aren’t Even Using”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"September 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"via Jalopnik\u00a0and Reuters: The most underused feature was in-vehicle concierge systems that can recommend nearby restaurants or gas stations. It was not used by 43 percent of respondents and followed by mobile routers that turn a car into a Wifi hot spot, unused by 38 percent. Automatic parking systems were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5521,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2016\/03\/10\/linked-tech-too-big-to-fail\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":4},"title":"Linked: “Tech too big to fail”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"via Scripting:\u00a0 Sanders may think that campaign finance is the primary issue but imho it's not. The means we use to communicate is privately owned and at least one of the companies is wobbly. Twitter could be acquired by a Chinese company. Or go out of business. Or unilaterally change\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8271,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2020\/07\/19\/linked-daringfireball-no-longer-about-tech\/","url_meta":{"origin":4098,"position":5},"title":"Linked: DaringFireball no longer about Tech","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 19, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Twitter:\u00a0 Remember when @daringfireball was about Apple and tech? The occasional political commentary was OK but this is just too much. I love @gruber\u2019s take on most about anything, but I came for the tech commentary and it\u2019s almost absent of it at this point. pic.twitter.com\/dHWnS0mxBT I don\u2019t follow\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}