On the Wisdom of Dropping Out: Steve Jobs' Must-See Graduation Speech
Published June 04, 2009 @ 03:10AM PT
"I dropped out of Reed College within the first six months, but then stayed around as a 'drop-in' for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?"
So begins Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement address. I discovered it last school year, and showed it to my AP Lit students for its heretical wisdom: dropping out can not only be okay, it can be transformative. Better still, 'dropping in' to college, only for classes of personal interest, can be a better path than 'staying in' for a piece of paper. Jobs dropped in to school a lot, but not to chase that paper. He never graduated college, and he obviously did okay.
My first year of college was 1981. I quit within a semester too. Everybody told me not to, that I'd never go back - and everybody was wrong. I dropped in and out over the next decade plus as the spirit moved me. I'd often take a class in, say, philosophy, where we'd read only snippets from philosophers that intrigued me, and then move on. Classes like that often spurred me to drop out for a semester or more in order to read some of those philosophers' complete works independently. After drinking my fill, I'd drop back in.
It took me way longer than the norm to finally get that degree, which I wasn't really chasing. In fact, I graduated because my college told me I had too many credits as an undergrad to receive any more financial aid, to which I responded, "Really? I've got enough credits to graduate? I had no idea."
I'm not recommending this as a model, but I am pointing to it as an example of paths less traveled by that might benefit a certain type of student. I'm no Steve Jobs, but I can say I have no regrets for learning and growing in my own way, at my own pace, against the common wisdom of the beaten path crowd. And I think any graduating high school student who hasn't figured out what path to take, hasn't applied to college, and thus may be hearing all sorts of dire predictions about a life of failure - maybe that student needs to hear this different narrative.
Better still, those students who have it all figured out at 18 - probably because their parents have figured it out for them - maybe they would benefit even more from Jobs' speech. It's a very rightly acclaimed 15 minutes that is well worth a student's time.
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Comments (13)
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Author
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Clay is an American high school Humanities teacher, technology coach, and Apple Distinguished Educator who has taught for the last eight years in Asian international schools. According to law, he's married to his wife. According to his wife, he's married to his Mac.
Granting, for a moment, that life offers us a variety of paths, I tend to grow weary of the "look at the interesting, successful, evolved people who decided to forego college and wound up as leaders" - it's one of those American Dream notions that, you know, if Brad Pitt dropped out of college and became, well, Brad Pitt, you too might want consider the road less taken. Most of us are not Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or, well, Brad Pitt; and in the end I was proud of my commitment to four consecutive, consistent years of college if only for showing I could start a project and see it through to completion. I also got, what I still think of as a great education, and incredibly valuable life lessons.
I think the bigger, less discussed question is "does everyone need to go to college", and it's the one where prejudices and prejudgments really come out. It ought not, I think, be a given that not having gone to college in turn allow such class assumptions and perceptions of people as uneducated, or insufficiently educated. "I went to college and it wasn't for me", really, gets more respect than "I graduated high school and went straight to work." That's odd, and just, it seems to me, as unfair.
I have a fairly free spirited nature and I'm blessed to know a variety of people who didn't follow the "traditional path" or play to meet the expectations of others. In many ways - especially blogging and working a minor part time job just now - I'm not on some traditional path of corporate professional living myself. I'd encourage anyone to consider the road less traveled (although I remember being floored when my 11th grade English teacher pointed out that Frost's poem actually suggests that both roads are prretty equally traveled)... but there are reasons that the conventional route many people take is... well, what they take. It's also fine, and good, and even admirable to do the expected trip from high school to college, and even onto grad school, in the usual 4 year time frames. Allowing for all the possibilities, and respecting them, is just that - and realizing we're not, really, all going to wind up as Brad Pitt or Bill Gates... Or Steve Jobs... That's okay too, and quite possibly that's a healthy way to suggest to some people that they should focus on their studies, and not expect to magically become movie stars. Partly because quitting college is only the start of the story... not the end of it.
Posted by NYC Weboy on 06/04/2009 @ 05:09AM PT
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Maybe my attempt to say folks like me, who didn't turn out to be Steve Jobs, still turned out just fine, didn't succeed.
At the same time, Jobs makes clear that he wasn't from a privileged background, that affording college was a challenge, and so that gives some feasibility to the notion that more of us can become Steve Jobs than we might think, I dunno.
I'm with you on "does everyone need to go to college?" Obama-Duncan are so hyping the affirmative position that again, I find Jobs' story a healthy counterfactual.
Posted by Clay Burell on 06/04/2009 @ 06:31AM PT
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Sorry, my wife distracted me and I hit send before done.
Like you, I hope trades and trade schools (or simply decisions to go straight into life from high school) regain their respect. As more and more knowledge jobs are ousourced, it makes more and more sense to consider knowing how to lay pipe, wire a building, fix an engine.
Anyway, if I implied that doing the 4-year path wasn't respectable too, that wasn't my intent. It was just to say that kids shouldn't freak out and buy the "you're doomed" hype coming from on high if they _don't_ take that path.
Posted by Clay Burell on 06/04/2009 @ 06:55AM PT
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Clearly, we can't all be Steve Jobs. But I think there is a lot to be said for investigating other paths and going to college only when/if/how it makes sense to us. I have written a post about this question:
http://siobhancurious.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/who-says-you-have-to-go-to-college/
Posted by Siobhan Curious on 06/04/2009 @ 05:20AM PT
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Yeah, like I try to say above, success shouldn't even come close to meaning "being Steve Jobs" - it doesn't for most people who _do_ get college degrees, after all. I was shooting for the idea that success can mean a satisfying life on one's own terms and time-frames.
I gave this link to you on your blog, but here it is for posterity on this one: http://www.slate.com/id/2218650/ On the guy who quit his job at a think tank in order to fix motorcycles instead.
Reminds me of the "willed simplicity" movement in Seattle in the '90s.
Posted by Clay Burell on 06/04/2009 @ 07:01AM PT
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I took ten years also to get my degree. Mine was mainly because was not financially able to go through in one long road. I graduated high school in May 1981 and college in December 1991 -- with two degrees (BSIS and BA). I ended up with way too many hours LOL.
But just by walking across the stage I doubled my salary from about $12,000 a year to $24,000 a year. I had a teaching certificicate and have used it and now make about $50,000 a year teaching.
My education was well worth it to me because it allowed my mind to see a greater and wider world. My two degrees are in nothing particular and in everything general. I nearly started a Masters Degree in General Studies just so that I could keep up that tradition.
I think that college degrees are important because they do to main things for people. One is that they broaden the minds of people in a way that many people can't and don't on their own. Two, it opens up the doors so that one doesn't have to toil away at jobs that might be unfufilling.
College education is not for everyone, but should be avaliable to everyone that seeks that path.
Later,
Marlin
Posted by Marlin Bynum on 06/05/2009 @ 03:08PM PT
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Yep, yep, and yep. :)
Posted by Clay Burell on 06/10/2009 @ 08:27PM PT
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It really is a cop-out to rationalize a high school diploma as a terminal certification. Our high school has a higher placement rate of vocational students in college (72%) than academic kids. The language now is "college or career-ready" and anything less is a failure of the public schools. At the same time, there is awful information coming from community colleges about how many kids face "remedial" courses, suggesting that that transition is even worse than Grade 9.
Posted by Joe Beckmann on 06/07/2009 @ 12:25PM PT
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Joe, "readiness" is one thing, feeling compelled by this "our" language thing that one must do college - whether one has a purpose thereby or not - is another.
One point I (and I think Jobs) was trying to make is that the piece of paper in itself can be secondary to other factors - self-direction, DIY, goals that college programs can't satisfy - in success. The "drop-in" model is another point worthy of inclusion in our language.
Posted by Clay Burell on 06/07/2009 @ 05:01PM PT
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A fresher commencement speech, and one that captures some of the Obama flame as well, is the one by my Congressman, at BU a few weeks ago. (It's here http://tinyurl.com/nhm4m4.) His theme was that making money is nice, but changing the world a lot better - and that the point of college is to give you more tools to do just that.
Posted by Joe Beckmann on 06/07/2009 @ 05:51PM PT
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Thank you. I'm seventeen and, honestly, terrified that I won't live up to everyone's expectation or even be able to find something that makes me happy to be doing. You're article helped to assure me that I will get there. It my not be the way that keeps the boat from rocking and it will not be the easiest, but I will get there. That is the best thing I've heard all through high school. Thank you.
Posted by Bree Murcko on 06/10/2009 @ 04:01AM PT
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Bree, that "terror" you mention is exactly the type of unconstructive side-effect of the college degree treadmill I wanted to question.
College is there. It can be wonderful. It can also be a going-through-the-motions waste of time.
It will always be there when you want or need it, as will the rest of the world. The Australians and New Zealanders have a wonderful tradition of spending the first year out of high school traveling the world. There's something to be said for that relaxed attitude. America is more and more similar to Korea, where I've lived for the last three years, which has one of the highest suicide rates among people in their teens and 20s - largely because of academic stress and toxic social expectations.
In my book - and it's only my book - as long as you keep moving and learning, whether in school or out, you're not stagnating. The world is a university too - especially if you surround yourself with bright, curious people out there. They're not all sequestered in colleges. You can find them and learn gobs from them for free.
Posted by Clay Burell on 06/10/2009 @ 08:25PM PT
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Bree,
Keep that boat rocking!
Posted by Joe Beckmann on 06/10/2009 @ 05:10AM PT
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