timo way

· first at timoway.com/hsguidance-travel-educate/

What My High School Guidance Counselor Didn’t Tell Me

You’re being rushed into a life of indentured servitude.

The education you’re going to purchase will be mediocre, and at times an insult on the intelligence of a kindergartner. To live more fully and to become a more well-rounded, broad-minded individual, take time off now.

Explore yourself and the world around you.

When your intellect compels you, listen, read, write, question. If you want to learn skills, purchase only the classes that excite you from an online education platform.

Take your time. Don’t feel the need to be rushed along with the rush.

Instead, I was rushed, and did what I was supposed to do: I rushed. I took on crippling debt, went to college, graduated, then got a job. When I got that first IT consulting job, it was miserable, so I quit, and left for Peru.

And in college, the biggest lessons I learned were from teaching myself on online platforms, or from traveling.

Instead of getting sucked in by the rush of societal pressure, I’d like to offer a look at how expensive the cost of college is, and the exciting alternatives avaiable in our social, digital world.

Warning: the alternative costs far less, may involve living in exotic places, and may involve developing skills that will broaden your mind.

The Numbers

Attending the fancy, brick-laden universities is expensive. Consider these numbers for the 2015–2016 school year:

  • $82The average cost of a new text book.
  • $1,298 The average cost of text books, per year.
  • $9,410The average tuition at a public school, for in-state, on-campus students.
  • $10,138 The average cost of room and board, per year.
  • $37,172 The average amount of student loan debt carried by 2016 college graduates — a new record.

As a business school graduate, I can say from experience that that’s an extortionate amount of money to spend learning how to be an employee, or a writer, or whatever it is you think you want to be.

Today, we get food, groceries, rides, dates, books, toilet paper and even spouses online. Why not get your education online, on your terms, as well?

Choose Your Own Path of Education

Today it’s possible to learn from anywhere on the planet with an internet connection. The education available online is specific, powerful, current, and taught by the best in the field.

Even the old, prestigious institutions are getting into the game with MIT and Stanford offering free online courses.

The leading online education platforms like Creativelive, uDemy and Lynda.com offer courses taught by pros. A few of the many courses available are:

Alternatively, you could spend $10,000 for one year at a university that will require you to take meaningless ‘weed-out’ courses on your way to a 4 year degree.

Just imagine how happy you’ll be spending 6 hours handwriting accounting journal entries, and the deep satisfaction you’ll have knowing you’ve just spent $200 per class for the pleasure.

Then, just imagine the deep insights and epiphanies you might experience in a business communications class that offers lessons such as:

  • How to sit at a table.
  • Where to place a fork, knife and spoon.
  • Talking on your cell phone while peeing is rude.
  • Yelling on your cell phone is rude.

These lessons, and more, available in a mandatory $82 text book. Add to your bill tuition, fees, room and board, and interest on the loan you’ve just taken out, and you’ve been scammed.

Thanks for that, Ohio University. *Deep Breath*.

For comparison, let’s break down what’s included in the $179 Fundamentals of Photography course available at CreativeLive.com:

For $179 you get:

  • 113 Video lessons in HD
  • Lifetime access, anywhere, anytime
  • Streaming and downloadable files
  • Available on desktop, mobile and tablet
  • 20,000 other students taking this class and sharing their work on the site
  • Take the class on your own schedule — No missed classes.

For about the average price of two new college textbooks you get an immersive, professionally taught photography course.

With the ability to take a class anywhere, what might a day of choosing your own path of education look like?

Dream Bigger

Imagine taking your photography class from a jungle bungalow in Costa Rica. You open your laptop in the morning to an immersive soundbath of jungle bird song, and the sweet aroma of Costa Rican honey-fermented coffee.

At your own pace, you dive into the day’s photography course, occasionally checking Facebook to see pictures of your friends getting faded on cheap beer and a complaining about their accounting homework.

Delighted with your decision of independence and a self-guided path, you step outside into the filtered sunlight, and a toucan lands on your shoulder. It’s time to apply what you’ve learned by taking photos in the surrounding jungle.

This dream is several clicks and boarding pass away from being a reality.

Enter the greatest form of education.

Travel

Americans treat travel like an exotic, unobtainable activity reserved for the elite. And if you’re not staying in a resort, you’re probably a hippy vagabond.

Those people who say travel is expensive, and warn others to not travel are scared. They’re also severely uninformed.

Thanks to sites like airbnb and couchsurfing, living in exotic locations around the world is affordable. Depending on where you stay, living in an exotic location is often much more affordable than living in the USA.

For example, at $10 a night, one week of accommodation in Ubud, Bali costs less than the average price of a new college text book. Don’t believe me? Have a look yourself.

Think flying is expensive? You can purchase a one-way ticket from Los Angeles to Bangkok for the price of one hour in Accounting 101. Check Google Flights for more itineraries and let your dreams get bigger.

If you choose the self-guided route of travel, know that you’re not alone, although you might be the only American.

That is, you might be one of few Americans experiencing the life that our friends in other countries treat as a necessary activity.

The Overseas Experience & GAP Year

“An Overseas Experience (OE) is a New Zealand term for an extended overseas working holiday. It is sometimes referred to as “The Big OE” in reference to the extended duration of the travel — typically at least one year and often extending far longer.” — WorkNewZealand.org

In New Zealand, the Overseas Experience (OE) is a right of passage. The Kiwis understand that the work and life experience from travel abroad broadens the mind.

In many other parts of the world, it is completely normal for people to take a GAP year — a year or more traveling sabbatical between high school and college, or college and the professional life.

We need more broad-minded americans, and less indentured servants posing as college graduates.

You’ll be saving yourself. You’ll be saving money. If you’re open to it, you mind will be broadened by the perspectives gained from immersion in new cultures, languages and diverse ways of life.

Your broaden mind might even lead you to create a new idea to save the world.

Go Forth

You’re in the best time of your life to take a chance on yourself, and you’re rich with something you will more than likely lose later: Time.

Give yourself the permission to use the ample amount of time, without the worry of debt, to shape a beautiful life with a beautiful mind.

Make your classroom a room in an alpine village in Switzerland, a cafe in Buenos Aires, or a coral reef in Australia.

Use this time to explore. To take risks. To create.

Go forth, learn and travel.

Also published on Medium ↗ · ← back to the archive