How Higher Education Helped
The ongoing mental debate of “is school worth it?”
There is always this discussion with people mainly in online circles, around jumping into a career, going for it, hustling, or the opposite, going to school. I’ve always listened to both sides of the story to try and see the viewpoints objectively. A common trend of the “anti-school” argument is, how school holds people back and that there is not a second chance when it comes to pursuing your dreams. These discussions are great to have in order to see the benefits and downfalls in each choice. I wanted to share my experience as someone who maybe did both.
The backstory
I, like many other people, contemplated this decision at many junctions of my life. Growing up in the entertainment world, dancing since the age of 6, and growing up wanting to pursue that in every capacity, mixed with a looming pressure to go to school from society norms and other life factors. So, what did I do? In some ways, both. Now I’d say the split for me was 70% school and 30% professional entertainment at the time of going off to pursue my undergraduate degree, but none the less, the dream and goal was still there. Taking trips out to places like LA and New York to audition, getting small and large productions a like, all while focusing on getting a degree in the field. This continued even after school, still pushing to succeed on that dream and not close any door. My mental struggle was often there though. Performing was opening doors but not as many as I would’ve liked, and school was just the right amount of limiting that it seemed to stop things in motion. But there was something even in those early days of school that I learned that couldn’t truly be realized till later.
School is more than learning
Maybe unique to the program you decide to pursue, but higher education is more about how to learn then it is the principles of the teaching. This factor alone made me understand the value you can get from school that a career might not be able to provide you.
School is about seeking the how and why, where a job is often the learn and do.
I remember one of my first ever theatre production classes. The goal set out by the professor wasn’t to learn how to be a lighting designer or production manager immediately it was how does the production as a whole operate. Learning the skeleton of things is often something that gets left out in on-the-job training. But being a production manager who understands the scope of the work they are involved in often can operate better in their job and often can have the opportunity to move around much easier. This fundamental mindset switch wasn’t initially apparent to me but was even more reinstated when I went back for my post graduate degree.
Going back to school and understanding the value full circle
So, after all this, why did I back to school? This was a thought of mine the first time I even thought about it and continued even while I was sitting in my apartment in downtown LA at the time. As I navigated through different jobs beyond my 13-year-old kid dream, I began to understand something that stemmed from a lot of listening and observing. Experience and experiences may seem incredibly similar but, as I’ve come to realize, are incredibly different.
As mentioned in my school is for learning section, experience is the thing you gain from doing. Going to a job, sitting in lectures, doing tasks. But experiences are things that come on the sidelines of these things. Experience is something easy to obtain but experiences are not. The difference is in that “s” in the word. Both are important but obtaining both isn’t always easy or abundantly clear.
Going back to school for a graduate degree gave me the opportunity to get both of these, which in my opinion is something people in the early-mid 20’s need. Taking that leap of faith and going back to gather more experiences showed me that even in my beginning days of education I was gathering something that a job couldn’t give me. That mental swift from learning why as opposed to learning how to do. Education gave me the tools to go out and learn beyond my job, how to ask questions that lead to thoughts, and how to push forward the status quo. To the initial debate of is school worth it, I will 99.9% of the time say yes to anyone. Even if it’s brief, the mindset shift education provides is worth it. Being able to really stretch your thoughts past what a job description might ask for and see the bigger picture. That is the true benefit to higher education.
