Ever since I was a kid, it was clear that college was my destination. The reasoning from my parents was strong: you want to live a stable life where you can be happy and pursue your dreams. After college would be a job at a big company that pays well. It’s a simple formula. I’ll call it the stable formula — follow these steps and you’ll have a stable life.
The narrative unraveled when I showed up at college but the initial doubts crept into my mind during my teenage years. I always had loved learning and had sought any way to do so. In high school, I entered a Neuroscience competition, took online courses in data analysis and python, and read non-fiction voraciously.
So, when I finished my first quarter in college, I couldn’t ignore the message: anything I can learn here, I can learn online.
In retrospect, anything is exaggerated. If you want to be on the cutting edge of research, you have to spend time with the people doing that research. That information is far from democratized.
But basic skills like calculus and coding? It’s all online. This isn’t a critique of college (I’ve done that before), but it is a critique of the stable mentality. There’s a more pernicious problem with this mentality other than the fact that it relies on a system that doesn’t fit everyone (i.e., college). The problem is that along the…
