JamesAndrix comments on Open Thread: November 2009 - Less Wrong
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So, I'm having one of those I-don't-want-to-go-to-school moments again. I'm in my first year at a university, and, as often happens, I feel like it's not worth my time.
As far as math goes, I feel like I could learn all the facts my classes teach on Wikipedia in a tenth of the time--though procedural knowledge is another matter, of course. I have had the occasional fun chat with a professor, but the lecture was never it.
As far as other subjects go, I think forces conspired to make me not succeed. I had a single non-math class, though it was twice the length of a normal class and officially two classes. It was about ancient Greece and Rome, and we had to read things like Works and Days and the Iliad. Afterwards, we were supposed to write a paper about depictions of society in the two works or something. I never wrote the paper, and I dropped the class.
Is school worth it for the learning? How about for the little piece of paper I get at the end?
This depends on a lot of things: How much debt will you be in at the end? If you press on now, will you actually finish? Do you have the personality to make money without a diploma?
I made the mistake of pressing on early and incurring extra debt, but not pushing through to get a diploma.
Not having a diploma is hard if you want the kinds of jobs that often require one arbitrarily. Doing something freelance or taking a non-degree job are hard in other ways. Fortunately you can test this with some time away from college.
There's also a difference between what you CAN learn on your own and what you will actually take the time to learn. I know there are things that I would have been forced to learn which I have neglected to.
If you're probably not going to finish, then cut your losses now, but make a clean break that will make it easy to go back. Finish the semester well.