I think travel is hugely under rated as a people builder.

This is an unlikely story of how a college dropout learned that college is really important. Kind of.

I stopped going to college after 4 years and 7 different "majors". I couldn't find anything I was interested in enough to study for another four years.

I had no skills.

I waited tables. I worked in a deli. I talked my way into an entry level job at an online retailer. I worked my way up into the office from the warehouse in a few weeks. I made a lot of contacts and got a lot of job offers from that little job.

I turned them down. A friend bought Dropzone and I got a job working for him. It was shit work, I was a van driver, but it was after a four month trip to Brazil and the people were fun.

I learned to skydive and in 3 or 4 months he had me running the place as his operations manager. We started little, a tiny 4 seater plane and a minivan. I negotiated contracts, won us a sweet lease on a huge, brand new turbojet aircraft. I hired instructors, brought us from film to digital video (no small feat! we had to figure out how to edit 70 videos a day - while customers waited). I was even lucky enough to run a Groupon when it was just another stupid online marketing gimmick (so we thought. imagine our surprise when we sold 1000 jumps in 3 days, at the time 50% of our annual traffic.)

My girlfriend's brother died and she had to fly home to the Philippines on a one way ticket with no money for a return. I slept thru her calls and woke up to a text just before she boarded her flight at SFO. A few days later I helped my friend find a replacement for me, sold my car and bought a plane ticket. We spent 2 months in the Phils, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

I came back with -$238 in my bank account.

I did odd jobs on Craigslist; I set up people's email accounts, packed boxes, synced computers to other computers for people. I sold a lot of my stuff I had in boxes.

I saved up and got myself an instructional rating.

In five months this past summer I made $30k - enough for my girlfriend and I to travel around southeast Asia for the past 5 months. Thanks to the flexibility of the skydiving industry it took me 4 exploratory emails to get 3 job offers. I'll be heading to NYC in May to work for a few months before I pack up and take off for another 6 months.

Do I want to be a skydiving instructor for the rest of my life?

No.

If anyone here says they want to work their current job the rest of their life they are lying or autistic.

That said, I'm really, really happy with where I am and even more happy that I stopped going to college.

This is all because of one specific friend, the one who bought the Dropzone. He was around 30 when we met. I met him through a roommate. The roommate was my age, 21 or 22. He and I lived with about 12 other people (it fluctuated from 9 to 14. I rented a walk in closet for $250, another friend Bart rented out the hot water heater space under the stairs for $300).

It was a college house. They all went to UCSC. I did not. I had gone to Highschool with one of them and moved in when they rented the house after moving off campus their Junior year.

College is a great, great thing for some people. To me, the value I see in it is not necessarily what you learn (except obviously for science related majors and others who learn specific, specialized skills), but who you meet.

Who you know, you real social network, has been a huge indicator of success for me and others.

My unusual path would have been impossible had I finished college or gone the traditional 'straight to a 4 year uni' route rather than dropping out of city college.