I eschew academia.

College Confidential Community
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<p>I eschew academia, and rightfully so. I realized the pursuit of formal scholarship was detrimental to my mental state. What’s more, it would take me a long time to completely identify this fact and attack the problem at its core (which was, undoubtedly, being enrolled in formal school).</p>

<p>So in middle school and early high school, I cared about my grades definitely. Albeit, only because society demanded me to. This is a fact that would take me much time to identify- I was so deeply entangled in being forced to do something I hated, i felt like a robot destined to work his course without any sort of independent action.</p>

<p>In my subconscious, fantasies of simply neglecting the class work entirely were constantly going on. However, I was convinced- by media, by peers, by parents, by teachers, by everyone except myself- that neglecting academics was an UGLY and WRONG thing to do.</p>

<p>This is an important explanation. The idea of leaving formal schooling behind, in this day and age, isn’t at all portrayed as an alternative choice or even merely an innocent decision- children are trained endlessly to believe it is an ugly choice. It is the wrong choice- it’s immoral even. Much like stealing or lying, to leave school is offensive and you will die slowly and deservedly so if you do. This is the mantra, absolutely barring any exaggeration, that was constantly drilled into my youthful head for many consecutive years.</p>

<p>So I balanced between despising classwork and actually doing it, for fear of what might happen should I not. My grades were volatile. Eventually, the hole in the dam widened. By 11th grade I was bringing home 1.0 GPA.</p>

<p>That was when I made the most important decision of my life up until that time- to eschew academics. I was no longer going to do the work haphazardly. No more waking up 30 minutes early to finish those last current event paragraphs. No more scrambling to write down my heading in the upper left corner, as all the other kids papers are being neatly passed forward and stacked. No more homework. fu­ck your homework! No more glorified crossword puzzles. That’s all it is from kindergarden to university, glorified crossword puzzles. I find that three word phrase can accurately define nearly all class work.</p>

<p>I went from trying very hard to make C+s to not trying at all and getting Fs- a damn fair trade! There’s no difference between a 58% and 0% when it comes to the letter grade, so if you’re gonna F it why even bother scrolling your pencil to begin with? I was often without a binder or pencils of any sort. I remember totalling a 12% at the end of the semester in Statistics. I also turned in zero assignments for photography but the teacher gave me a 59% D-, because he cared as much as I did.</p>

<p>Ultimately I was transferred to the fu­ck-up-kid school, but I never actually attended it physically. Once they found that out I had to leave and I started independent study, but never actually did any of the work aside from fabricating PE work outs on paper. After a month I got my 2 PE credits and got kicked out. From there I achieved an adult high school diploma from Mount Sac (the only schooling experience i ever enjoyed). In total I attended four different schools in my senior year alone.</p>

<p>My goal was always to get my high school diploma or GED, that much I believe is very important to a successful career. Aside from that though, academics become blurry and meaningless.</p>

<p>How do you guys put up with this shi­t? Doing glorified crossword puzzles for many consecutive years- and without getting paid? These are sincere questions.</p>

<p>I moved into the business of capital gains, and by the age of 18 found myself to be more wildly successful that I could have ever imagined. I accumulated $11,000 after taxes in a good season of commodities speculation. This was big money for some 18 year old drughead. I realized that my school career was completely meaningless, and that my destiny was many millions.</p>

<p>I blew most of my windfall on failed entrepreneurship (and sterio equipment)- which is the best thing to spend money on. Now I am rebuilding a stake to trade securities with, as an equities technician. I plan to obtain an account balance with two commas faster then I can a Bachelor’s; admittedly I have always aimed high for my goals.</p>

<p>I became fascinated with equity. I noticed something along the way, equity is the opposite of debt. And the university route is one riddled with debt. All of the jigsaw pieces finally fit together with these two realizations- the career of an equities technician is the exact opposite of that of a scholar. It would be completely backwards for an equities technician to take on massive amounts of debt so willingly.</p>

<p>Conclusion; children shouldn’t be brainwashed to believe leaving school behind is bad. The Nazi-like encouragement (forcing?) of higher education should be greatly lessened in schools and replaced with lessons on the process of gaining capital- something that I noticed is entirely absent from formal school. I am a capital gains artist. That is the one profession formal schooling discourages and detests; i nearly didn’t realize my true meaning in life because of how fu­cked up formal schooling is set up.</p>

<p>teach the kids about equity not debt- seriously though. I believe that simple shift could completely alter the nation over the subsequent decades, in ways encouraging college never could come close to.</p>

<p>The thing is if you teach children about gaining capital and not about incurring debt, they’ll be more successful.</p>

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<p>schools provide more opportunities…true, it doesn’t guarantee a good life (debt), but it creates new bridges towards a better future</p>

<p>anybody can invest and profit, but not everybody can become a CEO or an operations researcher…also, think about how much more money you would’ve made if you had a background in math or econ</p>

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<p>The words “academia” and “pretension” are pretty interchangeable.</p>

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<p>So of us genuinely enjoy academics, by and large. You, clearly, do not. But you possess what many(both college educated and high school drop outs alike) do not, and that’s motivation and drive. For some, education proves as the only means to achieve their ends, whether that end is law, medicine, accounting, or teaching. Their curriculum is practical and vocational. The academics you seem to be lambasting against were of the type you were familiar with in high school–classes that seem to have no foreseeable use to you in making money.</p>

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<p>That’s a thoughtful comment. That gets the point across fairly well, in a sentence.</p>

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<p>True. Nuerosurgery is one of the few practices that truely requires a sort of academic work load, that does infact impress me.</p>

<p>But the theorem remains, one of my most broad and main points derived from experiences with both capital gains and academics;</p>

<p>The nation as a whole would progress noticeably, to the naive unbelievably so, if we began teaching financial literacy and capitalism (in a sense) to our children. Dare I even say this is an equally important subject, back seating literacy, but on the same level as the obscure levels of math they shove in kids faces after pre algebra. How are we constantly berating 9th graders about geometric triangles yet we never bother to teach any of these kids about creating equity (the very thing that feeds people and keeps them alive!). Then an economy like this brews over decades and people wonder where it all went wrong. it went wrong in the schools, this is where we never taught our children to avoid debt, to raise capital, to preserve capital, to treat equity as something valuable and not as a means to obtain big screen TVs and mansions you have no business living in, given your lacking net worth.</p>

<p>The mortgage crisis is a direct reflection of the nation’s miserable failure of teaching its children to avoid debt, and preserve capital. If anything formal schooling encouraged the idea of borrowing heavily, with the student loan crisis- an industry nearly as speculative as Nasdaq itself. At times I see these poor kids getting totally confused and all these adults and stuff saying “yes, debt debt debt, exponential debt, AND NOW!!!” and i almost feel sorry.</p>

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<p>So, augmenting public education with an increased emphasis on personal finance curriculum would be satisfactory to you?</p>

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<p>I happen to think capitalism is the root of all evil. But I do agree that if you’re going to live in a capitalistic society a little monetary and economic theory would do you well. However, I think most of the basics of economics are fairly self evident to anyone inclined to critical thinking.</p>

<p>Also to that literacy should take a back seat to economic theory is pretty ridiculous.</p>

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<p>So you’re saying the study of economics is more important then the ability to read and write. Unfortunately for those who argue this point, actually studying economics without knowing how to read wouldn’t be very possible in the first place.</p>

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<p>No I agree with you. The other person was saying that economic theory should be more important than literacy.</p>

<p>Hooray for poor sentence construction!</p>

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<p>"I happen to think capitalism is the root of all evil. "</p>

<p>No other economic system has proven as effective in increasing the standard of living for people on a large scale. Like everything in life, it is a harsh system that some would liken to Darwinism. There are losers, yes, but ultimately, capitalists say, the greatest number of people benefit in the end as opposed to, say, a planned economy.</p>

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<p>Dude seriously, anything but Barack’s steal-from-the-rich-and-give-to-the-not-rich socialism tactics. Barack, I find, may be the king cobra when it comes to promoting college and holding disdain for capital gains artists. Stop taxing my capital gains and blowing it on scholarships; just let me keep the money.</p>

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<p>What? The only thing I have seen Obama do is give tax money to banks and big business. You know, the exact opposite of stealing from the rich and giving to the not so rich.</p>

<p>Please spare yourself and me from going through this debate.</p>

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<p>Capitalism isn’t the root of all evil, hypocrisy.</p>

<p>hypocrisy –> selfishness –> Capitalism</p>

<p>(Not that any other economic system works)</p>

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<p>I think a balance between capitalism and communism would work quite nicely. Of course then the weak link would be government, because no government system works right.</p>

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<p>Would? Good luck finding a country that doesn’t have some mix of capitalism and communism.</p>

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<p>well, I am unsure exactly how you gauge a “balance” of communism but I assert that communism in any measure is nasty tasting. The main idea of communism is to give the people what they do not deserve; one either achieves more then they deserve, or less then they deserve.</p>

<p>As for Barack, I was referring to his proposal (or action?) to raise capital gains tax a few percentage points (!). I know much of this money goes to college related funds and other inconsequential misadventures- Barack lectures about it constantly. Also, as for the $850,000,000,000 bail out or whatever, I know loads and loads of that money is going to aimless nonsequitors like building extra roads (of all things), simply to employ random people.</p>

<p>None of those were what I had in mind when I mentioned Barack favoring the unsuccessful (who simply deserve no extra favoring). I was particularly thinking about this banter I hear of him lengthening the amount of weeks one can receive unemployment- isn’t that a crazy idea. Why not just quit your job at such a luxurious rate?</p>

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<p>Pure capitalism requires no government. </p>

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= anarchism</p>

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<p>let’s get back to your original point</p>

<p>so we’ve graduated from elementary school…we know how to read and write and add and subtract</p>

<p>the world needs engineers, to build roads, bridges, houses and translators to facilitated inter-cultural communication</p>

<p>where are we going to get training if we ‘eschew academia’? on the street? lol</p>

<p>and how do we keep the stock market running and in control? how do we keep the nuclear power plants safe and running? how would the work if it only had uneducated people?</p>

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<p>Engineers and investment bankers aren’t really academics. They do owe a lot though to the theoretical physicists and economists that do reside in academia.</p>

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<p>tl;dr
sparknotes plz?</p>