I’ve done a lot of stuff, and gone about them in my own unorthodox ways, and this certainly includes my education.
I never had any college or university education, but now I look back at how much my education never stopped, no matter whether I was in school or not.
In high school I lost interest being there. Not sure why exactly, but at some point I did the least possible to scrape by. I see now this had nothing to do with intelligence, just something about the school experience didn’t work for me.
I never even made many friends at high school, since I showed up 1 minute before the bell rang and was out of there 30 seconds after the last bell went. I had school “mates”, but no one I developed friends with.
Now, I did have something going on that was capturing me outside of school, and that was my part time job. That ended up being my social group, hanging out with people much older than me. I also ended up getting a ton of responsibility at a young age running that store, and then as I joined the head office taking on a huge roll with the company.
When my time there ended and I went on to pursue my music passions. I saw my lack of paper education as a huge liability because I didn’t have any papers with my name on them. Finding work would be hard if I tried to succeed in the regular work force. Now I see I really had 8 years of business apprenticeship under my belt, both learning good skills and learning from the mistakes I observed. Those skills served me very well as I was able to apply them to my next chapter.
I continued to read, study things on my own as I had interest in them, and some of the best education I received was being mentored. That was the platform for me to succeed as a student, and I’m grateful to have found it.
I’m also grateful I found my path as an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur means you get to make your own rules up and apply those life lessons.
I bring this up, because I want people to realize they are always learning no matter what the situation they are in. There are so many different ways to learn beyond being in a classroom. Life is a great teacher. Sometimes you can learn just by being around great people.
Find what works for you and never stop.
