To College or Not to College? A 8 Year Reflection

I’m not in college right now, nor do I have any degrees, because it doesn’t feel like the right container for my learning, my growth, my natural wiring, or my life. College used to be about “higher education” in the real sense: the pursuit of wisdom, the humanities, becoming a better human being for its own sake. That’s something I resonate with deeply.

But in the U.S. today, predatory loans and capitalist structures have twisted college into something that often feels extractive, debt-producing, and detached from meaning. The container that once nurtured thinkers, artists, healers, and builders has been gutted in many places. What’s left is high costs, a scattered community, and a shallow vision of what learning can be.

That doesn’t make college evil. It just means it isn’t the one golden road people pretend it is.

I know survival matters here. That’s real. So I’m focused on building pathways, especially in healthcare, that give me "stability" without chaining me to decades of debt. The question for me isn’t college or not. The question is, how do I build survival and meaning at the same time without betraying myself?

I’ve never cared about work as performance. I care about coherence, about my work, my values, and my life, not pulling me in opposite directions. I don’t dream of labor, but I believe in contribution. I want my work to root me, not eat me alive. My goal has never been to climb some ladder. My goal is to build a life system where my work feels alive.

Ori, Ifa, and the End of Fear

My relationship to work isn’t just practical. It’s spiritual.

When I found Ifa (West African spiritual system) and started understanding Ori, something clicked. Ori, the inner head, the seat of personal destiny and alignment, taught me on a deeper level than I previously knew, that my life isn’t meant to be outsourced to institutions, debt, familial pressure, or inherited scripts.

Ori isn’t a credential. It’s a covenant between me and the spark of the divine inside me.

Honoring Ori means refusing to live out of step with myself. It means choosing alignment over fear.

During that time, I had an experience that shifted everything. I didn’t plan it. It was not glamorous. It just happened. It felt like the line between “me” and “everything else” disappeared for a moment. Death stopped being this shadow waiting at the end. It was just… part of the current. I didn't even realize I was afraid of death until that moment.

I stopped feeling chased. I stopped building my life around avoiding endings.

And once that fear fell away, I felt free in a way I hadn’t before. If I’m going to die anyway, why spend my one life hiding in even the slightest capacity? Why not follow my Ori fully, without apology?

Ifa gave me language for destiny. That moment stripped away the terror of death that keeps so many people small and easily manipulated. What came after was a quiet kind of courage. A clear sense that my time is limited (in a way at least), so I’m going to spend it aligned with my Ori, not fear.

That’s the root of my courage to walk my own path.

The Shield of Legitimacy

In 2019 (I graduated high school in 2017), I joined Praxis, an entrepreneurial college alternative program. Its whole thing was anti-credentialism, helping people build skills, pitch themselves, and create their own signals of trust and competence.

One of the biggest takeaways came from something Isaac Morehouse, the CEO, said. He said a college degree isn’t really about proving skill or curiosity. It’s about shielding yourself from the stigma of being seen as a “loser” or someone going nowhere.

That hit deep. It explained the weird social pressure I’d felt when I decided to drop out of my local community college after one miserable semester. College isn’t just school. It’s a prepackaged story that buys you protection from judgment. But it also demands your debt, your compliance, and your silence.

That price is too high. I’d rather live with the discomfort of being misunderstood than sell my future just to be seen as “on track.”

The Cost of Playing the Game

Praxis helped me land my first startup job during the early, uncertain months of COVID-19. I moved out, worked in chatbot marketing, bounced around other startups, and eventually landed a software sales job making close to six figures.

But inside, I was unraveling. I needed to survive, but what I loved wasn’t profitable. No one was going to pay me to philosophize all day. And for a long time, I carried passive suicidal thoughts, from refusing to live a life that required me to betray myself.

The way adulthood was modeled to me felt like a slow death by numbing. So many people shrink into “adulting” as if that’s the only option. That terrified me. Adulthood was never something I ever looked forward to entering.

After death lost its teeth, I stopped playing by fear’s rules. A life built around minimizing risk isn’t living. That’s where my philosophy of work solidified. I won’t build a life that amputates parts of me just so I can survive. If work requires betraying my Ori, it isn’t mine to keep.

Building a Different Future

After trying entrepreneurial paths and different jobs, I realized remote work made my hermit tendencies worse. It left me isolated. I wanted something embodied, something in person.

Eventually, I got a healthcare job through an old friend. It’s not glamorous, but I can do it without a degree. I’m now training for a better-paying healthcare role, aiming to make at least $50,000 a year.

Healthcare isn’t the dream. It’s the anchor. It’s how I meet material needs without mortgaging my soul. It gives me breathing room to invest in what I actually care about... relationships, and my philosophical, spiritual, and creative work.

When my work aligns with my Ori, it stops being a cage. It becomes a tool of liberation.

When death isn’t driving my decisions, I can choose life.

My work isn’t just how I make money. It’s how I honor the agreement between my Ori and this world. It’s how I refuse Empire logic, the idea that survival has to mean self-devouring. It’s how I choose contribution over conformity.

Choosing the Living Path

For me, this was never just about college. It’s about the story my life tells.

I could choose the shield of legitimacy, a degree, a “respectable” story, debt, and self-erasure. Or I could choose the harder path. The path of being misunderstood, but free.

I chose the second one. Not because it’s easy. Because it’s alive.

I haven't looked back since.

Work isn’t sacred because it’s a job. It’s sacred because it shapes how I spend my time, how I inhabit my body, how I meet the world. It’s where Ori lives through me, not as a concept but as daily choices.

I won’t hand that sacredness to systems built to extract. I want my work to make me more human, not less.

That’s the real question underneath “college or not.”
Who gets to write the story of my labor...me, or the machine?

I choose me.