I’m a day shy of turning 30 and a lot of people I know are going back to school after having graduated college some 7 years ago.
In many cases it’s great. I went back to “school” by doing this 6-month programming bootcamp.
The thing is, what we should know by now is what we didn’t know when we went to college.
Mainly, that going to school is a dangerous thing because it gives you false security.
Graduating with a 4.0 will not do anything for your career.
Learning will.
And more specifically, marketing as Seth Godin defines it.
We need to learn to connect the things we’re learning to what will be valuable to another person we care about and understand.
Ultimately, we get paid by being a piece of the value chain for an end consumer.
We get to decide how close to the consumer we are in that chain, but regardless, that’s our goal.
We can be lulled into competing against our classmates or counting on the prestige of our program, but ultimately our goal should be to learn, teach and contribute.