Society often encourages its members to pursue education. In fact, it encourages more of a continuous pursuit over one’s lifetime. And I’m all for education. Sure, my views on education may differ from others’, but I still strongly believe in education. Reading, writing, math, science, the arts — they’re all important.
But why, then, is the first question (maybe second or third) out of peoples’ mouths when you first meet them: What do you do?
Now, I don’t want to debate why we ask each other this all of the time.
But I do want to say that it seems to me people don’t really care about where you went to school, what your GPA or SAT score was. They may at first (e.g. in the first quarter of your life as your entering into the job market after you’ve received your undergraduate degree). But I think only at first.
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It’s widely known that the Google Guys (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) left graduate school to work on a project: “Search.” And today, Google is one of the biggest companies in the world. Larry and Sergey have done really well for themselves — one guess says they’re each worth $12 billion.
And did you know that Apple Computer was near bankruptcy in the mid to late 90s (I believe that’s the correct time frame)? As the story goes, Steve Jobs took control of Apple as CEO when Apple bought his new technology company, NeXT, in 1997. He then led Apple out of bankruptcy by creating revolutionary products such as the iPod, iMac, and iPhone, among many others. (Fortune recently named him CEO of the Decade.)
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So it seems to me that what’s really important (and what’s most revered by society) are things you do, or did. It’s not really about where you studied, or how well you studied.
So, as Nike says: “Just Do It!” — which means to me that if you’re studying music or engineering, or finance, or whatever, you should really be doing it.
