Why I don't regret NOT going to college.

do i regret not going to college [Music] no i i don't think so six months ago at the age of 18 i made a really big move literally i moved from my comfortable bubble in northern california to a city i had never been to before in northern thailand because i graduated a year early i actually haven't been in school for two years now which is crazy and i think it's time i share an update about why i don't regret pursuing entrepreneurship without a degree i'm going to split this video into three parts first i'm going to recap why i decided not to go to college then i'm going to share the challenges that i faced because of this choice and third i'm going to share the benefits and the reason why i don't regret it before we dive in i want to clarify that i am neither for or against college going is a decision that depends on a variety of personal factors but for me i believe it was the right move first let's talk about why i decided not to go to college this is going to be a recap of a video i made about two years ago so if you want to know a little bit more in depth about my thought process i recommend you check out that video after this one i'll have a link in the description i made this decision during my junior year of high school my counselor called me in to tell me that i had almost enough credits to graduate that year which was fun news but it also skewed all of my plans for example it was too late into the year to apply for a four-year college so my only options after graduating early would be to start community college a year early or to take a gap year so while i was struggling with this sudden new decision i published my first novel leaving wishville and i started to see growth in my youtube channel and i think it was those small online wins that first made me start to question whether college would be necessary for my success as an entrepreneur choosing not to go to college was honestly one of the hardest decisions i've made in my entire life and it's not that it's actually that crucial of a decision because it's not a permanent one obviously i could go to college in the future i could change my mind i still can but i believe we have the societal standard or this time frame that everyone is supposed to follow to do certain things and as a teenager it was really easy to think that if i changed my mind later on and if i messed up this choice i would be behind everyone else and so it was a really stressful time for me but long story short i eventually decided to not go to college it was not too long after i made that choice when i also decided that i would leave the country and move to an entirely new place i realized if i'm pursuing entrepreneurship without a backup plan if i'm going into this i may as well go into it 100 and it had always been a goal of mine to travel i've always loved the idea of moving to a new country and living abroad and so i thought if i'm not going to college i may as well just travel as well and that's how i ended up here in thailand where i've been living for the past six months during what would have been my fourth year of high school i was still living with my family working on youtube videos writing a new book and also simultaneously preparing for this trip it took a while for this big move to really register in fact i would say it didn't really hit me until six months ago when i was on the plane heading to thailand and i was like oh what am i doing with my life i was 18 years old with hardly any money in the bank very unstable online income no degree no back-up plan and no clue what my life would look like even one week out so that's kind of everything that led up to where i am right now but let's talk about the challenges that i faced as a result of my decision not to go to college [Music] the first issue that i faced was time management and this became a very clear problem at the very beginning of this journey before i even came to thailand while i was still living with my family i thought that i would have so much free time because i wasn't going to school it would be amazing but i quickly realized that it's really hard to manage time when you are working for yourself i had so many projects to work on i had the book youtube the publishing house and i had no clue how much time i should be putting into each of those things time management is something that i'm still struggling with now i am definitely a workaholic i pretty much wake up and work until i go to sleep i love everything that i do but i'm starting to reevaluate how i spend my time and i'm trying to focus more on being productive at work rather than working for longer and harder the second challenge that i faced occurred when i moved from california to thailand and that's being thrown into the adult world like immediately just out of the blue generally college is seen as a transitional point from high school to full-on adulthood and i didn't have that i kind of just jumped into the real world and all of a sudden i was signing leases and paperwork and paying bills and being financially responsible and in control of all of my life decisions i had so much freedom so quickly and although it was great it was also very overwhelming and the final challenge that i would like to discuss is social life i have been an introvert from a very young age when people were warning me like hey if you don't go to college you're going to miss out on the really fun social experience i was thinking nah i don't need that that's that's not really me anyway i didn't really think it would be a problem but it definitely was although i love the friends that i keep in touch with it's also very isolating to only have online friendships and i realized that if i wanted to make friends here in thailand i would have to be more outgoing and push myself more i've also had to break out of the mindset that you're typically friends with people who are your age when i got to thailand i realized that it would be nearly impossible to find someone who is my age here doing the exact same thing as me so i had to get over this hesitation or maybe even fear of befriending people who are not in my age group so with all of these challenges out of the way i would like to share why i do not regret my choice to not go to college the past two years have been filled with so much chaos and so much uncertainty i document all of the fun on this channel but trust me when i say that there have been a lot of stressful problems that i've faced along the way to get here but honestly it's because of these discomforts that i'm grateful i took this path i have grown so much as a person in the past two years but especially the past six months and that would not be possible if i were in a more comfortable environment like college so i would not trade this experience for anything jumping straight into adulthood came with a lot of shock but it greatly improved my stress management skills and i can say for certain that when i came to thailand i was a very indecisive person i would stare at a menu for hours and not know what to order i'm much better at making decisions for myself which is helpful not only in my personal life but also with online business decisions as well i've also pushed myself to be more outgoing and to talk to people more i am still a recluse i would say but for certain i have improved in this aspect a lot faster than i would have if i were in college just because it is so much more of a challenge here college is also a huge time commitment and i believe that if i were in college i would not have been able to further my online projects as much as i have been able to in the past two years i don't think i would be this far along in the book trilogy that i'm writing or my youtube channel would have grown this much or my publishing house would have been able to grow to the point that it's at right now and i would be losing money rather than earning money the most important reason why i'm grateful i didn't go to college is because i have learned how to learn on my own my entire perspective of education has changed drastically and i've started to view education as hands-on real-life experience i would still consider myself a student in a way i read books i take online courses i push myself out of my comfort zone and sometimes i do crazy things for the sake of improving my books i get to choose everything that i learn and how i learn it before i end off i would like to share that i have a patreon now if you don't know what that is patreon is a platform where you can support your favorite creators so if you enjoy the videos that i've been putting out consider joining my patreon for special benefits like early access to new videos for five dollars you can sign up and you will also be sent a free ebook of choice of any of the books i've written as of 2022 that would be memory minefield capsule or leaving wishville all of which are more than five dollars if you purchase them on other platforms so check it out i will have more information in the description thank you so much for watching this video don't forget to like and subscribe and i will see you in the next one [Music] you