Any College drop outs on ES? Care to narrate?

Dude, if you have a company started thats going to make you millions, drop out. Otherwise stick it out. Every EE (including myself) thought about dropping out a few times, but it's totally worth it. It's one of the most worthwhile I've undertaken in my life, even with the educational system as it is. Stick it out buddy! :mrgreen:
 
Yup..
Did 2 semesters at my local college.. was looking for a degree in IT.. saw people getting laid off at my work ( doing IT ), some who already had degrees. Got laid off at the end of the 2nd semester and said screw it, so i moved to Portland, OR.. looked for a job in IT.. oh guess what, everyone's trying to find one since they got laid off and outsourced.

So i said frock it, India can have my job, i'm not gonna fight it. Got into web development, where there is no degree to obtain really.. so as long as there is work in this industry, i'm not gonna pay thousands of $ every month to learn what i already taught myself !
 
Sophomore year was the worst for me. Questioned what it was all about... Dad encouraged me, and junior year was a blast and senior I started my thesis... looking back, it was all worth it!

PS: I thought that was you in your avatar! :shock:

Oh.... from below... Larry David... co-creator of Seinfield... Yea, I don't miss much... :oops:
 
I wish I was Larry David (but then again, I don't)

I'm one of those people that has difficulty bookin' it. Studying sucks, and motivation is lacking. I'm no steve jobs at this point, but that's not out of the question ("Apple Bicycles, Inc." is coming. sorry guys, you will only be able to use a proprietary type of electricity).
 
Dropped out at the end of my freshman year from EE university. It worked out so well I did it again two more times. :shock: The first time I was just too young and at the wrong school for me. Second time I was married expecting my son and needed to support the family. The third time I just didn't see the point in contining.

Finishing my degree would have put my earning ability ahead by 20 years.
 
Never drop out because it's too hard. That makes you a puss, and it's only going to lead to failure in life.


Drop out because it's too EASY, and you're looking for a real challenge to test yourself.
 
steve jobs dropped out of college after one semester. he decided the only place he wanted to go to school was here at reed. his parents tried to talk him out of it because they could not afford it, but he came and took a course in calligraphy from a guy by the name of reynolds who made a big impression on a lot of reedies during the 60s and 70s. that was how steve became a zen buddhist. he spent a few years here in portland dropping acid and hanging out, and then went back to cupertino in '74 and he and the woz developed the blue box for long distance phone hijacking. that was when he met captain crunch. when steve wozniak developed the original hacked up computer, he got the bug. and together with several members of the home brew computer club, they went to the zerox sparc facility and were able to see the new devices that had been developed there, and steve was totally blown away by the alto computer and the mouse that allowed one to select the computer program by using the mouse to activate the program. this is where his total inspiration came from, and why all the devices he developed since use the gui or graphical user interface, and eventually just the finger as the pointer, up to the most recent devices.

steve dropped out because he had dropped acid and in the course of tranforming his life, he realized he did not wanna waste his parent's money after all, so he decided to seek his path on his own.that is what buddhism does for you. he was not mathematically inclined or a student of the physical sciences, just a small time hacker originally, and the ideas were developed by people he brought into the fold around him. his skill was in driving people to achieve things they thought impossible, so clean and elegant they are simply art used in the service of providing technology to humans.

i dropped out a few times early on from drinking a lot, but had an epiphany while smoking some of the black vietnamese pot on the bow of a steamship in the middle of the pacific ocean sailing back to vietnam. that was when i heard 'Hey Jude' for the first time, the song john lennon wrote for his son, that sobered and inspired me so i decided i had to go back to school and get it together and do something good for humanity, like a lot of people also find their focus. i have never looked back. multiple graduate degrees, but really inspired by my girlfriend who studied really hard so i never felt good about wasting my life on booze after that.

i find that the learning is the road, the path is through education, finding new areas of knowledge to conquer, and then opportunity will find you, sometimes when you are not even looking, but you have to know when to grab it and go for it. school is easy actually, when you have to do the job they supposedly trained you for, you realize the stuff you learned is irrelevant in a way since you never really use it, but the ability to learn and do is what will make you successful. imo

ps, i had to skip circuits when i wanted to get a grounding in electronics while getting my masters in solid state physics, and just took the junior and senior level courses in EE. i read the book, figured that was enuff. it wasn't until i started trying to understand what richard and others like jeremy were doing that i started really learning electronics, but nothing like what richard does. it is neat to be able to understand how the switch mode power supplies work though, and how the controllers work.
 
im in college now. at the moment, im sure that im not gonna drop out, but my fear is actually flunking out. im in EE school as well. i went into this major because i actually wanna learn that stuff and im hoping that will be a good motivation for me to keep going. right now its tough, but im hoping everything will get better.
 
Get yourself a real manual labor job over the holidays and again over the summer. That will both make a man out of you and teach you the need to tighten up and focus on school. No more whining "It's too hard" crap...buckle down and man up. The harder it is, the more rewarding it will be for you once you're done.
 
John in CR said:
Get yourself a real manual labor job over the holidays and again over the summer. That will both make a man out of you and teach you the need to tighten up and focus on school. No more whining "It's too hard" crap...buckle down and man up. The harder it is, the more rewarding it will be for you once you're done.


+1
 
I never dropped out just got exteremely sidetracked when i was young,went from EE to hydraulics then started building old harleys. well i would need to write a book to tell the rest :lol: .but i will say something very positive,my good friend got schooled in diesel mech and is retired with mucho dollars at 50 yrs old.shoulda listened to him :wink:
 
I spent four quarters at UC Davis following high school in the EE major track, quit as my grades were falling. Went to community college for the next 2 yrs studying machine tech primarily. Got a job through one of my instructors at a R&D startup which was setting up an in-house machine shop, have been working there full time for the last year. I've learned a lot and saved some money, but the most important result of working has been realizing that I need to go back and finish university- for myself, not for anyone else.

If you can't make yourself do the work required to pass every class, right now, you should be best off quitting, getting a job to learn about how life works and come back to it when you've found a reason to be there.

Nothing is more important than passing your classes while you're in school. Your ebike, your extra-curricular activities, TV, the ES forum... Very few people really like studying. Most of the people who finish school on time right out of HS have found some reasons- whether it be because they are convinced its the only way to achieve what they want in life, or because they are simply good at being a student. Just because you don't naturally tend to be a good student- that you see yourself doing other things- doesn't mean that you are "too good for school" or will flourish without finishing it. 99.9999999% of people are not the next Steve Jobs.

Getting a degree is a bit about gaining skills, and a lot about gaining a common background- the ability to prove to anyone you might want to work for or with that you've been able to persevere through the tough classes. Without the degree you will have an immensely hard time convincing anyone in a position to hire you to even look at you. Getting the degree proves to them that you're able to be disciplined about putting aside flights of fancy in favor of someone else's agenda, and working hard to make it happen. Since 99.99% of us don't get to set our own adgendas in life that's a pretty important thing to be able to prove. To yourself, too.

You can build your dream career from the ground up- teach yourself everything you need to know to build and sell amazing ebike parts or whatever- but be aware that it will likely take you decades to get there. Working for someone you must follow their agenda, but you will have the invaluable resources of tools, parts, smart co-workers to learn from- things that will allow you to achieve so much more in so much less time. Insurance, housing, transportation doesn't pay for itself- once you get out into the world you will realize just how much of your life goes simply to living. Unless you put yourself in a position where you can do something close to what you want to for a living there's a good chance you will not be able to do it at all.

So stop hanging around ES, thinking about cycle-analyst clones, or whatever else seems more important than your schoolwork. If you go study the classes won't be so hard. It's not your predisposition, it's the choices you make. No one's going to hand you the opportunity you're dreaming of. It's your job to prove that you're worthy, and then go show the right people. Luke once called you "one of the least engineering minded and folks we've had on this forum" here on ES. So, I think you maybe you might need to step up your study-game a little? Get the degree, do the senior project, write the thesis, get the engineering job then come back and see how your attitudes and presence might shift. (http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32050#p463984)
 
I dropped out twice. Once for Computer Information Systems and again for computer animation, this was both in the mid 90's. Both stints were short and at private colleges because I have very little interest in doing all the BS courses. Both times I dropped out my GPA was 3.8 and I was always cutting classes because learning in a classroom for me absolutely sucked. Almost through High School I thought I was stupid until I took all the drafting and programming courses offered, once I did all the available ones with scores above 100%, I was offered something so totally awesome by my high school it changed my life. In both programming and drafting they allowed me to join "special" unsupervised learning classes. One for drafting 2D/3D which had a total of 3 of us and one for programming which had 4 of us total. We had no teacher, only ourselves. There was a teacher present to make sure we didn't goof off too much. In drafting our "teacher" asked us how to do things (I was a macro writing king from programming) so the 3 of us and him all acted as equals. In programming we did what ever we felt like, 4 nerds. We did, C++, Pacal, and some VB. Had a total blast.

By the time I started my first college I quickly figured out that I wasn't stupid (I was always told I was by my abusive mother), tested out of most of the basic courses and then quickly realized I knew more about coding than most of the profs trying to teach us. Landed a gig as a graphic artist doing computer animation, loved it, dropped out after a year, changed college to computer animation. While in college for art I landed a job as a part time systems integrator, managing our clients networks as the network administrator, fixing pc problem etc. Realized this was my true calling, dropped out of art school after 6 months and began working full time for 36k/yr @ age 19. Somewhere between 18 and 19 I did a 6 month stint at IBM as a computer tech for Lucent Technologies. 3000+ computer network, campus with it's own power plant, chip fab facility to go from raw silicon to finished product (got some bad ass tours) and was the only guy on the computer support team who knew NT4 which all the bell labs guys used so I became the go to guy for tech support for the Bell Labs geeks, felt pretty awesome for only being 18yrs old. I think I made like 16/hr but I only stayed for 6 months because I left to go back to college, what a mistake. They offered me a perm job.

To summarize, my short stints in college taught me that structured learning does not work for me. If I'm interested in something, I just learn it by reading a book, internet, experimenting. I've been doing electronics since I was 8 yrs old and I'm now 34, but it's just a hobby. I am very happy that I dropped out twice because it put me financially ahead in life. Without the massive college debt, I had a hell of a jump start because I was in a career where college degrees are pretty much worthless and even certs seem to becoming less valued. With all this I'm saying, I DO NOT encourage anyone to drop out! I know I'm an exception and figured it out pretty quickly then too, but only because I was given the gift of being able to learn quickly on my own without structure.

To tell you the truth, if I was rich and didn't have to work, I'd probably take a few years and do nothing but go to technical colleges (MIT, Cal Poly Tech, Georgia Tech, etc) and take all the awesome courses I've always wanted to. I love learning. My biggest downfall is once I know something to a point that is usually quite a bit above average knowledge, maybe a B student in that subject, i get bored and move on to something else. I'm a master of nothing but highly skilled in most everything that interests me.

For anyone who is into Psychology and Carl Jung... I'm an INTP, it helped me understand myself much once I learned that a few years ago.

I do wish I had at least a BS in EE, but the right time for me to have gained it would have been by dropping out in 10th grade and starting college then. I despised high school and the teaching methods. I really wish I could do it over.

Finnish your degree. I got lucky and am a mild exception from the norm (I'm middle class with no degree and there aren't many jobs out there that will pay you 50k+/yr without a degree or a long time putting in your dues). I don't know if I'd be better off or financially worse had I stuck with it, but that stats show sticking with it means you'll make more over your life so I think most people should finish.
 
I "dropped out" of the biology dept in 1977. But I stayed at school and went down to the Ag colledge, where I was not so dumb compared to the farm boys.

Don't leave school completely. The problem solving skills they taught me there really did make me more money on every job I ever had. It's supposed to be hard, so finish even if you end up in a different major in the end.
 
I first planned to go into chemical engineering, as this was when fuel cells were all the talk and I wanted to get into alternative energy and all that. I dropped out after 4 weeks, freshmen year. A few months later, after working full time as a painter, I went to CC, thinking about mechanical engineering. I dropped a LOT of classes, but eventually got an AS in general studies, yeah, I know :oops: I continued to the university for a BS in Business (Finance) because I thought at least it was something. It was essentially useless, especially considering I graduated in summer of '09. I didn't and don't truly believe in working in that field.

Now I work in IT, sort of. Remotely, from my bedroom, have a great boss who lives 200 miles away, and enough pay to save a little. I'm about to register for Calculus 1 at the CC here for spring semester, and maybe intro to engineering. The math is THE hurdle I am worried about.
 
I went on to college because it was what everyone did after high school, I didn't really care about it. I partied and skipped classes until early sophmore year I got kicked out for poor grades. I moved to Boston, drove a Delivery Truck for 'Au Bon Pain', and had a lot of fun. It was nice to have money and no homework, although I noticed that people treated me differently from when I was a college student. Fun devolved into boring routine. I soon realized that I didn't want to drive a delivery truck for the rest of my life, and that college was my ticket out.

That was enough to make me care. I went back to school (lucky they re-accepted me and reinstated my scholorship), went from a 1.8 gpa to 3.8 on my (second) sophmore year, got elected president of my fraternity junior year, and was hired pending graduation by the company I interned with.

My socioeconomic status has changed hugely since then, but that has not happened for many freinds who did not make it through school. An interesting demographic is the breakdown of recent unemployment rate by education level - I'll see if I can find it - but the rate for high school education was double that of a bacholers degree, which is double that of a PHD. Bottom line, education gives you more options, and more security, in a very uncertain future.

Stick with it. Invest 4 years of your time, into quality of life for the rest of your life.

-JD
 
oatnet said:
Bottom line, education gives you more options, and more security, in a very uncertain future.

Stick with it. Invest 4 years of your time, into quality of life for the rest of your life.

-JD

Absolutely. Having more options means more freedom. While you're studying, sometimes you crave having the freedom to set your studies aside to go do something (anything) else, and this can build up enough to make you want to drop out. Especially when you're taking the more tedious classes. The irony is that for the rest of your life, much more freedom comes from finishing your education.

Anyway, by the time you finish the math, you're probably done with the most tedious stuff. I expect the classes will be a lot more fun past that point.
 
Good point about employability. Most of my construction carrer I had to lie about my wages. Sworn to secrecy by the boss, who in some cases was paying me more than his lead foreman made. Eventually, if I stuck around I'd be lead foreman. Often I was able to pick and choose which jobs to work on. I'd make so much money building one McDonalds, I could skip months of dorking around doing remodels and repairs, and go skiing till the next mickey D's was ready to go. Then another 60 day sprint, with the last 30 days working a loony, "on the clock if I'm awake" work schedule while camped at the job. End up with 60 hours of overtime a week and shit like that. None of the high school diploma guys on the crew were doing this, just me. Raking it in baby, because I could do it perfect, eliminating huge costs to fix stuff the McDonalds inspector found. I had a 5 year, perfect record of no defects.

They did NOT teach me that stuff in high shcool. It was learned in the big school, rubbing elbows with really smart folks that brought me up to speed. 30 years later, I finally have a job that involves my horticulture degree. And yes, they pay me a lot more than the going wage for gardeners. The big deal is that any type of training in science teaches you how to see, when the huddled masses merely look at things all thier life, and never see a thing.
 
I'll just echo what pretty much everyone else said (and Billy Madison), stay in school.

I went through the same thing my sophomore year of EE. EE can feel a little soul crushing. In part, because most of the guys that go into it were smart in high school and never really had to work at it. Now almost all your classmates are smart. The course work is challenging and you're going to do badly some stuff.

Once you're working you'll find that it pretty much works that way in the working world. You mess up and you have to more on.

It won't kill you and it will make you stronger.
 
Back
Top