4 ms·
"It's not about the degree: it's about what you can get out of the university while disguised as a student." Could you elaborate?
by joelburget 16y ago
"It's not about the degree: it's about what you can get out of the university while disguised as a student."
Could you elaborate?
- frisco 16y agoYour university has more resources than you need to do whatever you want to. Identify these and talk your way in. Want to develop something that must be microfabricated? Figure out who runs the cleanroom and contact them. Want to do synthetic biology? Work for a relevant professor and earn your way up to proposing your own projects. Use a teaching lab while there's no class. Figure out who runs the university surplus and grab old oscilloscopes and high-CO2 incubators when they're thrown away. Get the department behind you in order to open doors -- figure out where you want to spend your summers and get there, beating out the unknowns not coming from a research institution. You can do all this while spending the time on your classes required to get by as an average student. When you graduate you might not be able to get a job at McKinsey or Google (well, that's not even true: they like to hear what you spent your four years doing other than partying), but then again, your diploma alone doesn't automagically make you successful in having changed the world regardless of how good your GPA is. Dropping out makes sense when you read the above and go, "wait, I don't need anything like that": largely internet and software.