I learn by trying to build something, there's no other way I can discover the devils-in-the-details. Unfortunately that's an incredibly inefficient way to gain knowledge. I basically wander around stepping on every rake in the grass, while the A Students memorize someone else's route and carefully pick their way across the lawn without incident. My only saving graces are that every now and again I discover a better path, and faced with a completely new lawn I have an instinct for where the rakes are.
(via Pete Warden)
-o-o-o-
So many of the founders of start-ups that I have met over the years never finished college. My father is one of the smartest men I've ever met, and he has yet to achieve a degree (though Lord knows in the past 30 years he's taken far more college courses than I ever did to get my B.A.). He's also one of only a small handful of men in the world who is capable of doing his job - something to do with satellites for the military: it's rocket science and I'll never really understand it - because for the last thirty years he's had to troubleshoot myriad problems, and each test has taught him more about his craft. He pioneered the lawn, and he has a natural intuition about where the rakes are. More importantly, when he hits one, he knows that he's still ok because it's not like he's never hit a rake before. And most importantly, he has a better feel for how to deal with the proverbial rake that's hit him because he's an expert in hitting rakes.
I have a lot of concerns for the education system in our country, because I feel it's encouraging memorization of facts rather than promoting critical thinking and creativity in problem solving. Indeed, so many successful professionals can navigate the lawn with no problem avoiding the rakes, but they will never discover new lawns, and should they accidentally stumble upon one, they would doubtlessly collapse under the disappointment of hitting rake after rake when they are used to knowing how to avoid them.
I value curiosity over academic conformity any day. While I appreciate that I was fortunate enough to go to college and get a degree, and that without that piece of paper there are plenty of jobs that would turn me away instantly for lack of a tic in that box, I believe that college degrees - especially liberal arts degrees - are paradoxically overvalued and simultaneously worthless. Overvalued because they shouldn't be the gold standard for a person's worth in a marketplace, and worthless because so very many people who achieve one will never actually apply the knowledge they learned during their four-plus years of study. I know I won't.
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