The following content was originally written as a speech exercise for Toastmasters Club, but I want to share my thoughts here, in the hopes that someone will benefit from them, as I did upon coming to these realizations.
These ideas were inspired by this YouTube video from the School of Life entitled "You Should Finally Leave School". You can watch the video through this link.
Have you ever read about the stories of those famous, immensely successful people who dropped out of school? People like, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey; All of these cultural icons of wealth and success voluntarily dropped out. The fact that they chose to do this sounded crazy to me, because it contradicted everything that I believed in up until that point. Parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, teachers, classmates; everyone drilled it into my head that the key to a path of wealth and success was to do well at school. For 20 years, this was what I believed in, and the thought that the educational system was flawed was something I could not accept. I gained my college degree, but I was still lost and confused with what I was going to do with the rest of my life, almost as if I wanted to go back to school instead. After some self-improvement, I realize now that there were certain beliefs that I built up over my many years of schooling that have helped me to thrive in the schooling environment, but have been detrimental to me finding success in the real world.
First, I had absolute faith that parents, teachers and everyone in a position of authority knew what they were doing, and that they did what they did because they were all-knowing and benign. It was therefore my job to follow their orders without question, and overcome any challenges that they set for me and my colleagues.
Second, I believed that in exchange, these figures of authority would lay out a concrete, specific curriculum that would lead to success, as long as I followed it. The type of work I was given felt very boring and almost pointless. “But it can’t possibly be pointless!,'' I thought to myself. “There must be a reason why they want me to do this!”.
This lead to my third belief that when work is going well, it should feel dull and repetitive. It was hard to find motivation within myself to complete all this work, so my parents and teachers provided that motivation for me. “Study hard, make us proud! We’ve given you so much.” Even until college, my fourth belief was that I was doing all of this for someone else, for an audience. What mattered was the performance, and not any sort of inner satisfaction. At the end of all this work would come the examinations.
As my last belief, I thought that these examinations, with their letter grades and number grades, were perfectly accurate indicators of my intelligence, skill and value. As a result, my feelings of self-worth were tied to this number. I genuinely believed that if I received anything less than a B grade, my life had no worth. This also applied to my post-college life, where my feelings of self-worth would be tied to the wages of my job instead.
After I identified these beliefs and how they might negatively affect my path towards success, I worked to change my way of thinking. I created new beliefs that would help me unlearn all of these old, problematic ones. First, I recognized that there was no one guaranteed path to success. Authority figures cannot claim that there is only one path. No one can! Everyone has different circumstances, different skills, and most importantly, different definitions of success. Second, I needed to accept that authority is not, by definition, competent or benign. A person being in a position of authority does not necessarily mean that they know what they are doing, nor that they know what’s good for you in the long term. For the most part, authority figures do not have a set plan for you, unless it benefits them as well. Third, my feelings of boredom are a tool. They are an indicator of a lack of fulfillment, and a reminder that we only have a limited amount of time in this life. And finally, I learned that my life is mine to live. I learned that it is my responsibility to develop my own character, my own personality, and to have something to believe in. We must always strive to be good, decent people that can communicate well with our fellow human beings, but the nature of the human condition is that we are all different and unique. This will inevitably lead to some people disagreeing with me, maybe even considering me their enemies. That’s okay. Ultimately, my choices are mine to make. As I graduate from my Masters degree this month, I can make a conscious decision to finally leave my inner school.
