It’s About Taking Risks, But Not Dumb Risks

Passion can drive to get over that hump; just make sure it’s a hump and not a cliff.

I got an email from a university student who got so excited about following his passion that he wanted to quit school. The problem was that he was not sure what he was passionate about, and should he quit school. Here is his blurb:

It seems to me the most difficult step is the first one (perhaps as you get further and further other choices you are faced with become very hard, but once you are already knee deep some mixture of adrenaline, passion and excitement serve to keep pushing you forward). What have you found as being the biggest help for you in getting started? You mentioned changing around your work a bit — how do you know you’ve found the right project/product to work on? Once you get started what do you think the most difficult part of the work is?

For me, taking that first step is very difficult. This is in part also because I don’t want to disappoint my parents who have worked hard to allow me to be here. How did you overcome this worry, what did you tell your parents?

I have found in the last couple months especially, that I don’t enjoy school so much. Part of what draws me to working somewhere, especially a startup, is that the work you do matters, it is significant — you are building something people use and care about. This isn’t so true in school — projects for classes don’t matter so much, once the semester is over, all your hard work is lost and the class becomes irrelevant. This is something I’ve been struggling with a bit over the past couple months, I’m finding it more and more difficult to justify spending my time doing things that I don’t really care about. I just wanted to hear your impressions on school and especially to contrast them with my opinions.

I would love to hear your thoughts if you get a second to answer!

My advice:

1. Don’t drop out of school, especially when you have nothing to run to. For Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, the opportunity costs of them staying at school was too high. Their businesses were gaining traction and if they didn’t leave they would lose out on a massive opportunity. What is the upside of leaving if you don’t know what you are leaving for?
2. Finding your passion. There are groups you can join to help on that first to see what you ARE passionate about.
3. Internship I spent a lot of my time in school doing odd jobs, and internships to see what I was passionate about and learn more about what it was really like to work in that industry. But I wouldn’t do anything drastic until you know for sure. It’s about taking risks, but not dumb risks.
4. Once you do find your passion, there will be times where you won’t be 100% passionate about every single class, assignment, course or even teacher. (e.g. I LOVE tech, was not passionate about the networking class I had to take. You will learn resilience and dedication, the other side of making your dreams a reality). If you do find that startups are for you, then you WILL find that every little class, person you met has helped you along the way.