DO YOU REALLY NEED A COLLEGE DEGREE?

A long time has passed since my last post and I know I made some promises about daily blogging and other stuff and clearly, I've not been able to keep up with those and I apologize for that sincerely, I truly do. I got so much busy with my professional life that I couldn't really invest time in things other than the ones which are really vital for me to survive like eat food, sleep etc.

To be clear, nothing has changed I'm still living that terrible lifestyle, late night meetings, all-day work and missing my meals every now and then. But, you know I'm tired of it now and have decided to atleast give myself some time to do what I really love doing which over the years I've realized is sharing my knowledge (well, not necessarily knowledge but my opinions :P) on topics that I feel need to addressed or just topic that I want to talk about. So here I am back with another post after what like a 5 month break, I think?

So, the topic for today is something which probably is not related to the ongoing COVID pandemic but, certainly has picked up pace because of it. Actually, it is one of those few things that have benefitted from this otherwise horrendous situation. Today, I'll be sharing my thoughts on "Do you really need a college degree?"

First, lets list down some universally agreed upon benefits of getting a proper college degree -

• Society will have some respect for you - If you get graduated from a college or any academic institution you have pretty much clear on most grounds the society is going to judge you, unless you're absolute jerk who just enjoys pissing everyone off every now and then.

• You will get to learn new things - You can't deny this getting a college degree will in most cases help you learn a few things which are a part of your curricular because if you managed to get a degree then chances are you did spend time studying atleast some of it.

• You'll get to meet and interact with new people, basically make friends - Kind of no brainer, unless you're enrolled in some distance learning program of sorts, even in that you get to interact with others albeit virtually but hey, you still do right?

• A campus placement maybe? -  This one I'm not entirely sure about but, I think in majority of the cases if you get admitted to a decent college you'll almost certainly find yourself placed in a decent organisation by the time you get your college degree

That's about it I think, let me know if there are any others that I might've missed. But, I really think that these cover most of the perks of getting a college degree and maybe this is just enough for most of us. But, I think all these things that I mentioned above can still be there without me getting admitted into a college, right? Lets go over them one by one -

• Learn new stuff - In this era of MOOCs and youtube, I don't think there's anything stopping you from learning whatever you want to. Even, better you don't need to study 5 other useless subjects that don't excite you and can just focus on learning what you really like

• Make friends - I think interacting with people is something that you learn over time. Most people are complete introverts when they begin and most remain like that until the very end and I can say this because I'm one those people. It's not like putting you in a room with a random group of people will make you feel like talking to them and start the process of making friends if you will, which is basically what a college does, you're surrounded by a bunch of people in the same age group for 3-4 years of your life and naturally you vibe with some of them and they become your friends, but you don't need college for that, all you need to do is step out of your home and there's 7 billion waiting out there.

• Job - I agree every job has a set of minimum educational qualifications and most companies will not hire someone who does not have a college degree, but the fact is knowledge is what actually matters. Once, you're sitting in an interview, your college degree is as useless as your expensive new shiny black leather shoes you bought for the same interview (sorry, no extra points for those). And yes, maybe a degree listed on your resume helps in the screening process but, anyone can write anything on their resume (you didn't actually believe all of that was true, or did you?) more and more companies nowadays are switching over to online contests for the initial screening round so they only shortlist people who have real skills and I don't see a high correlation between skills and college

• Society -  This one's tough because you know what people don't care what you do if you're successful. They will make fun of even the most educated person they've ever known if he has no money and will show the utmost respect to a fool who just has money for whatever reason. All this society wants to do is tell others how miserable they are. So, I say don't care about them, just do your thing and let success do the talk

You see, it's not that bad actually. But, don't get me wrong I'm not encouraging you to just get rid of your education I won't ever do that. I would rather encourage you all to complete your studies and get that degree but what I mean is don't treat is as if it's the most important thing, because it's not. Even if you don't get into a college of your choice or fail in your exams, just stay calm because that doesn't decide your future, you yourself will make your future and a degree is not necessary for building it.

Well, enough of my thoughts. I would love to hear what you guys think in the comment section below. Do like and share with your friends and I'll continue to post such articles over here (This time for real :P) Thank you and Peace!