3 Things I’ve Learned Dropping out of College (Twice!)

It’s hard when you feel like you don’t fit it in the social paradigm that you have to finish school, chose a degree from a shortlist of options (the ones that make more money, of course), regardless of your passions or dreams.

Then you must devote your life to that area, to that job, because you need money to survive. One day, you retire and spend the rest of your days wondering why you didn’t do more with your best years.

Whoever says that this isn’t what is expected from us, is lying. Because everyone feels that pressure at school, to get good grades, to get in college, to have a future. These are mostly clichés people acquire and don’t even question.

I felt the pressure, mostly when I was finishing high school. I was having good grades and my teachers and parents saw in me that future everyone talks about.

However, because I didn’t really know what to do with my life, and I also loved so many different things and areas, I decided to get a job, instead of going to college.

You have mostly these two options: either you go to college or you get a dead-end job where you work only because you need money. Or so they make you believe that there aren’t any more options.

Doing a gap year was an amazing experience, although I didn’t do half as I wanted in the first place. Even so, I wrote a book and I started to slowly realize that that was what I wanted to do with my life.

After my gap year, I got into college. And I studied Cinema for 3 years, despite dropping out almost in the end, so I could pursue a different path… in law school. Law school was shorter — I only attended for a year — and then I decided that writing was my life.

Those were rough times. Many indecisions, too much pressure from everyone, too much time alone. But, looking back, those 4 years in college were imperative for me to realize my dreams and my goals.

So here are the 3 things I’ve learned dropping out of college, hoping they can shed a light on your life if you’re feeling the same way.

1. Everything takes time

It sounds simple and even cliché, but the idea that things take time is one of those we repeat endlessly for ourselves, even though we don’t follow it through. When we talk to other people, we almost force them to understand that things take time. In our own life, not so much.

Besides, we live in times of great pressure, of great immediacy and it’s hard to fight against that. It’s expected of us to know what we want too soon. We have to choose what career we want to pursue at 18 when weeks before we had to ask a teacher to go to the bathroom.

I needed a year to decide I wanted to go to college. My gap year was essential to figure some things out and, who knows, maybe I wouldn’t have published my first book if it wasn’t for that year.

But I also needed time to get to know the cinema and law worlds. I needed to live those experiences, taste them, suffer with them, to understand the place they occupied in my life. I wouldn’t go back in anything.

Along the way, I had pressure from many sides because of the changes I made. But now I know that they were necessary and that they didn’t take too much time: just the time I needed.

2. It’s ok to try something and don’t like it.

Most kids in school right now don’t have to chance to talk about changes. Changing areas, changing classes, changing degree at college. We as human beings don’t like change, mainly about so important things.

Talking about changing degrees, people look at them like a waste of time and… you guessed, of money. Money is the universal language that, sadly, rules our life and our world. And it’s constantly above our emotions and our inner needs.

It was harsh dealing with all the situations I’ve referred to. When I decided to take a gap year, I was called a quitter (because in Portugal the gap year doesn’t have the tradition it has in other countries). They told me that if I stopped studying, I’d never go back. But I did. Twice!

And then I went to cinema school and, again, listened to useless things. Arts are frowned upon, again with money being the issue. “How will you live? What will you eat? Movies?”.

And when I dropped out, everyone was full of themselves. But then… I lost the battle. After so many years of listening to the same old tales, I decided to give them a chance and I went to law school. Despite everything, I always seemed to take an interest in it. But the experience was so different from my interest…

Law school is tough, demanding. Peculiar environment, too many protocols. And we started by saying it’s difficult to deal with not fitting in with social paradigms. Law school is a herculean task for people who have a free spirit.

And so, I also dropped out. But those last weeks were awful times. I knew I’d have to deal with so many people commenting and giving opinions no one asked for, I couldn’t sleep, I had panic and anxiety attacks for too long because I had an inner conflict between my needs and what society expected from me.

Happily, deciding on my heart and my gut was a lifesaver. And that was when I realized, after so many ups and downs, that trying something and don’t like it’s ok, even though everyone says different.

3. You don’t have many friends as you thought you did (and that’s ok)

Academic life is awesome, and everyone should give it a try at least once. Everything happens so fast, you meet different people daily, and you get to know yourself better when suddenly you have a new group of friends. And those people say so much about you…

It is said that the friends you make in college are for life. Well, not every one of them.

When you drop out of college, more than half of the people you used to call friends will, slowly, begin to fade from your life. This is because those friendships were based on two things: daily coexistence and the area of studies. When you take out those two variables, there is not much left.

When I first realized this, I suffered a lot but, after much ponderation, the truth is, that’s part of life. And maybe it happens with every group of friends, in every situation.

When you change something, you grow, you walk ahead and not everything you have has to go to you. Some things — and some people — are just memory references from a specific time of your life and a person you once were but you’re not anymore.

Besides, the best part is to understand those you want to be with you, regardless. When or if you go through this, you’ll have a few nice surprises.

I’ve learned so many different things, but I think every one of them fits in these three I’ve mentioned. Understanding these three points and accepting them was one of the most important parts of the whole dropping out experience.

Not a simple decision, but one that messed up the very foundations of my life and that got me to question many things. Happily, with time, with a positive mindset, and with a will to learn about life, the world, and myself, things got right.

And I’d do it again if I have to. Going back to college, going back to learn something, because learning, absorbing knowledge is one of the best things we can do. Especially with time, with freedom, and with the right friends!