The Lie We Have Been Told

I believe that a lot of students have been influenced by the statement “you don’t need to go to school to become successful” and I agree. Success is defined, by most people, as the monetary value attached to your name, although that is not necessarily true. For many, success can be the relationships they built with friends and family, building good habits, being healthy etc. Success is a subjective term which can be measured using a variety of different factors. It may seem extremely contradictory to the purpose of this article, but success is not solely obtained through academic pursuit. In fact, school does not guarantee you success in life. It is undeniably an important factor, but performing well in school does not give you an open path to success. By no means does this discredit school. School is still extremely important and the main premise of this book, but this topic is crucial to touch upon. It is imperative to understand that success is the final destination, but there are countless roads and paths which one can take to reach there. School is simply something which you can leverage to put yourself on the track to becoming successful. Basically, school is a stepping stone on your path to success. For some people, it doesn’t have to be but for most, it is. Obtaining a post secondary degree and branching off from there is one of the numerous ways you can achieve “success”.

An example of someone who achieved success without formal schooling is Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Inc. Jobs famously dropped out of Reed College after just one semester, but his passion for technology and design led him to create products that revolutionized industries from personal computing to music and telecommunications. Jobs’ journey demonstrates that innovation, risk-taking, and relentless drive can lead to success, even without a traditional academic path. However, the toxic lie we have been told — that school is pointless in terms of achieving success — could not be further from the truth. While school may not be the only path to success, it remains a valuable stepping stone. Education provides foundational knowledge, resources, and networks that can open doors to future opportunities. Success is a multifaceted concept, and for many, school is a critical component on the journey, serving as a platform to build skills, explore passions, and lay the groundwork for a fulfilling career and life.



People argue that school isn’t really about “learning” but rather “memorization”. We sit in class, the teacher teaches a lesson and we are expected to memorize it for the test and then afterwards, we forget it. We are given these formulas which we will most likely never use in our lives. It is important to mention that certain courses, such as biology are much more memorization oriented than something like math or physics, which are more conceptual. I actually agree with this. A lot of the information we receive is temporary and is forgotten after a short period of time. This is how school has always been and will mostly likely continue to be like. Rather than complaining about something which we have absolutely no control over, we need to change ourselves and adapt to the situation at hand. We spend too much energy trying to justify why the school system is broken and isn’t an appropriate measure of intelligence because of the amount of memorization involved, teachers, questionable tests etc. Rather, why not accept the fact that things are the way they are and channel your energy towards improving yourself as a student? Simply put, and this is something teachers refuse to admit, our primary goal as students is to get good grades. Those students who consistently land in the 90's don’t remember the information much longer than you do. They know that it is about getting the grades. If you spend time studying and receive good grades, you will inevitably have a better and stronger understanding of the material. This is a critical part of “understanding the game”.

People often like bringing up successful figures in society. But upon further inspection, most successful people like Bill Gates, Zuckerberg and Musk actually got admitted to these renowned Ivy League Schools. Yes, Zuckerburg and Gates did drop out and so did Musk from his P.h.D program. As mentioned above, school is NOT the only way to become successful. These individuals sought out a larger opportunity and chased it, which paid off. It is important to note that timing, hard work, connections, luck and multiple other factors contributed to their success. However, one cannot ignore the fact that they were worthy and capable enough to get into these large schools like Harvard, UPenn and Stanford in the first place. This is a trend you will see amongst many successful people worldwide. This does not mean that you cannot reach a high level of success if you did not get admitted to or attend a prestigious post secondary program. It is just to prove that successful people (monetarily) did in fact, get admitted to large schools, despite attending them or dropping out. This proves that they were exceptional students and extremely intelligent as well.

Social media has made it seem like many individuals who did not attend post secondary are financially well off and are living their dream life. Firstly, what is advertised on social media is fabricated and a distorted perception of reality. Secondly, you are only shown the stories of those who are “successful” or at least act like it, but what about those who aren’t? There is a form of bias, known as survivorship bias and it perfectly describes this phenomenon. Survivorship bias is the tendency to only focus on the successful individuals - the survivors - rather than the unsuccessful people. For example, let’s say there are 100 people and each of them are told that in order to seek financial success, they need to work hard. Every single person works hard, but despite that, only 3 people actually become “successful” financially. What happens is that people will fixate their attention towards the 3 who succeeded, but ignore the 97 others who failed. Essentially, they are being biased towards the “survivors” or the minority group. Social media amplifies survivorship bias by constantly showing you those who became successful with the absence of formal education. How many people choose to voice their failures, to such a large potential audience? Little to none, which is why you only see the individuals who succeeded. On social media, it’s the ones who end up succeeding who make the videos, making it seem like schooling is obsolete. As more people talk about it, the ideology is amplified and influences other people who were also successful, to make a video about it. Hopefully you see the spiraling effect of this. The same goes for CEOs like Zuckerburg, Gates or Elon Musk. They all dropped out, but people use that handful of exceptional individuals to justify why you do not need to pursue college or university, while neglecting all the others who were unable to obtain similar results.

Yes, times are now extremely different and there are a plethora of methods to generate active and passive income through our devices but this does not make school redundant. Pursuing these new income generating methods is not as facile as online influencers advertise it to be. They know their audience is easily impressionable and are desperate to find ways to become successful and make money. Does this mean you are unable to do it or cannot become successful at it? Of course not. In fact, you should pursue something on the side besides school, which will be talked about later on in the book. Something you should always remember is that anything that is worth doing in life will consume time, energy and require hard work. For every successful person who dropped out, didn’t attend post secondary or didn’t try in school, there are numerous who are unsuccessful, filled with regret and wish they did try. When we see dropouts online flaunting their success through methods like dropshipping, affiliate marketing or trading, we need to be consciously aware that it’s not as easy as it looks. Remember to take whatever you see online with a grain of salt so you do not make the same mistake. A wise person is one who learns from the mistakes of others, so they do not make it themselves.