Land Your Dream Job: Ditch School and Get a Library Card | Zen Habits

What if you could do what you lovefor a living and make a great income at it? On top of that, what if youdidn’t have to go to school, spend hundreds of hours in a classroom andend up with a mountain of debt when you finally earn your degree?Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

It’s true that the average college graduate earns more than someonewithout a bachelor’s degree. However, a good chunk of the biggestinnovators and multimillionaires in the world were either high schoolor college drop outs. (See: Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Johnny Depp, BillGates and Quinten Tarantino.)

So how did they do it?

Is it really possible to make as good of a living being self-taught,as someone with an expensive degree? Each path has their uniquebenefits and drawbacks, and I’m not trying to convince you one way oranother. I’m just pointing out that the playing field has changed a lotin the past decade, and it’s more possible than ever to trail blazeyour own path. The biggest point is to determine what works best for you.

A lot of people don’t know this, but I never graduated from highschool. At the beginning of my sophomore year I just stopped having aninterest in going to class. The work was too easy for me and I felt Iwas being forced to learn about things that I had no interest in. Ifelt like I had no participation in my own education. So I stoppedgoing.

A few years later I ended up attending a community college. I neverfinished that either, but I did like it a lot better than high school.I didn’t choose a set major; I just took whatever classes interestedme. I had no desire to actually obtain a degree, I only wanted to learnabout the things that interested me.

Honestly, I think taking classes that you find interesting should bea greater focus in college, because too much emphasis is being placedon partying and fulfilling course requirements. College is your chanceto study the things you care about. Who cares if they don’t apply toyour major? I didn’t.

In case you’re wondering what kind of options are out there, hereare a few career opportunities that don’t require a college degree:

• Pro-blogger
• Author
• Life coach
• Actor
• Musician
• Software developer
• Sales
• Entrepreneur
• Chef
• Social media consultant
• Public speaker
• DJ
• Professional photographer

The possibilities are only limited to your imagination. Most of the skills needed for these pursuits can be learned with a simple library cardand self teaching. You can obviously study most of these career pathsin a formal setting as well, but it’s not necessarily required.

It’s my opinion that over the course of the next decade, we’ll see alot more people on the scene of the self starting career path. Theamount of free information and self educations resources is exploding.Places like Wikipedia and Personal MBAare changing the playing field. Not only that, but it’s becoming easierto establish yourself as an expert and build your network than everbefore. Things like blogging and online content publishing platformscan allow you to demonstrate your expertise without decades of climbingyour way up the corporate ladder. Social networks like Twitter andLinkedIn can allow you to cut out the middle man and build direct,mutually beneficial relationships with the people you need to know.

Despite how romantic this all sounds, this path isn’t always bed ofroses. There are some qualities you need in order to be a self-maderenegade:

• Be a self starter. This means that you have to be self motivated to learn and immerse yourself in the knowledge of your field.
• You have to have passion. Your source for motivation will come from your passion. If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, it will be hard to keep going.
• Self-reliance. Since there’s no course to follow, you’ll have to pave your own way. You need a certain amount of creativity and self-discipline to remain persistent.
• It helps to have a tribe. It will be much easier to stay true to your goals when you have support from a group of like-minded people or from a mentor.

I’m not claiming that the traditional path doesn’t have any value.There are benefits and disadvantages to each side. Let’s take a look atthe pros and cons of a college graduate vs. the self educated person.

College degree pros:

• Curriculum is laid out before you. You don’t have to do much work researching what you need to learn about, you simply follow the course structure.
• Network is built for you. If you do things right in college, you can likely come out with an already strong network of business / professional contacts.
• Credibility. A reputable degree proves you’ve thoroughly studied your profession.

College degree cons:

• Curriculum can be too rigid. If you’re learning the same things everyone else is learning in your profession, how do you differentiate yourself?
• To put it bluntly, college is expensive.
• You are forced to learn things you don’t really care about. Course requirements for a degree often require that you to take classes with hardly any relevance to your major.

Self educated pros:

• No strict curriculum allows you to be more flexible in building a knowledge base. If you’re highly motivated, you’re likely to pick out things that a traditionally educated person would miss.
• Has the possibility to take less time. If you’re smart, you can establish yourself in a profession in much less time than by first getting a degree.
• You’re more in control of how long it will take to become established.
• Less expensive. A library card and access to Wikipedia are free.

Self education cons:

• Not easy if you’re not disciplined.
• You have to build your own network. Hanging out at library doesn’t give you much opportunity to network with others in your field.
• You have to establish credibility. If you don’t have a degree to back you up, you’ll have to demonstrate your competence through past successes. This is kind of irrelevant anyway, because college degree or not, a client or company will want to see not just what you’ve studied or your grades, but what you’ve actually accomplished.
• Some fields require a degree. There are some fields where being self-educated isn’t enough to practice your profession legally. See: doctor, lawyer, etc. This is, however, a small fraction of the career spectrum.

So if you’re thinking about the DIY path, here are some good resources to get you started:

• Google Scholar - Easily searched peer-reviewed papers, theses, books and articles on your topic of interest.
• Wikipedia - Information and background on nearly every subject.
• Personal MBA - Follows the philosophy that you can teach yourself everything you need to know about running a successful business.
• MIT OpenCourseWare
• Finance Your Freedom - A great blog on creating your own career path and ditching the mainstream by Clay Collins.
• Career Renegade - An awesome book by Jonathan Fields on unconventional career paths and doing what you love for a living. It also has a solid chapter on self teaching resources.

Closing thoughts

If you’re looking to become a chemist, anthropologist, a doctor or alawyer, the self-educated path is probably not the best choice for you.If you’re looking for a career in technology, social media, writing orstarting your own business, self teaching is probably your best bet. Itall depends on what you want out of life. You can obviously have ahybrid of both, too.

In the end, what really matters  is real world experience, something no library, classroom or teacher can offer.