1 Oct
2011
1 Oct
'11
4:58 p.m.
Would today's Microsoft hire a Bill Gates (college dropout)?
Would they hire a 30 year old Bill Gates with an PhD in computer
science? Would he be nearly as productive?
I was chatting with a young friend this past week. The subject
(nothing more fun than talking about other people) of the
conversation was a young musician, who, at 19 was offered a permanent
position with a major (and well-funded) US symphony orhestra. He'd
been subbing with them as a summer job, as he was on vacation from
school (he had a full scholarship to a major conservatory).
He turned the job down, saying that he needed to finish school first
(he had two more years to go). Big mistake--he flubbed every
audition after school, went back to school to get a couple of
advanced degrees, is in his late 20s and without any prospects. On
auditions, he's doing well if he makes it into the second tier of
candidates.
He'll probably end up joining the Army. You see, it's still the case
in the music world that performace is everything. The people sitting
on the other side of the audition screen don't care if you just came
from Juilliard or your uncle's chicken farm.
My point is is this--that there is a period of maximum porductivity
for most humans and it falls sometime near the end of adolescence,
say, between 17 and 20 years of age. After that, one is never the
same person. Maybe it's the uninformed arrogance of youth. I'd like
to think that the mind is most pliable in those years.
It's a crying shame to waste that on formal education, sitting in
some undergrad lecture hall. Some teachers understand that and give
the more promising students special projects where they can give free
rein to their ideas. Most don't. An awful lot of universities turn
out to be glorified trade schools.
It's important not to let formal education get in the way of real
learning. If I ruled the world, I'd opt for perhaps 2 years of
formal education, then 5 years of internship where one can exercise
one's creativity, then some more formal education to improve the
depth of one's knowledge.
While I was a terrible student, the things that I learned during the
same time outside of formal study have proved to be the source of
great joy later in life. And I regret not a moment of it.
Stay curious,
Chuck