My favorite author with a quick lesson on life and how school prepares you for it (or doesn't).
I fully agree with Robert. I graduated from Penn State University in 2004 and I have not used anything I learned in those four years in my professional life. Now granted, I didn't choose a "traditional" path of making a living, but the things I've done outside of basketball -- sales jobs, marketing, advertising, dealing with people/politics -- PSU didn't have classes for any of that stuff.
I have a business degree in management & marketing, and many of my professors had never marketed anything in the real world. They did what school teach us to do: Study, learn certain facts, memorize and regurgitate said facts, achieve high marks for this "skill", and move up in the traditional job world, i.e., being a teacher.
It should be noted that my other is a teacher and preached almost the exact equation I just described -- my sister followed it to the letter and is like the LeBron james of academics: skipped a grade in elementary, straight-A student all the way up through high school, Ivy League full scholarship, PhD from Stanford.
That's a "Wow!" resume for anyone, even if I didn't know the person.
But I always knew I wouldn't be following my mother's prescription, though I had to do enough to satisfy her as a child (in other words, as long as she was providing for me). As soon as I could -- after college -- I got on my own path. My continuing education, in lieu of post-grad studies, has been reading books (lots of books), listening to talks of people like Robert, and...
Living life! Doing stuff, failing at things -- a lot, succeeding enough to make up for all the failures and then some, talking, learning in real-time. Sometimes I wonder how things would've been had I skipped college and jumped into adult life. But, being a basketball player, college is the best option, by far, for beginning a career in the sport. So skipping school was not a realistic option. And the social experience of college could never be replaced. But this ties into what Robert says. Interaction with people is the real education many people -- in school or out -- miss out on.
#WorkOnYourGame