Unfinished questions of education #!?.

Hi!

Like I promised, I will write one little essay on the topic of me and universities and here it comes!

Since the beginning of the time when I started to think and remember my thoughts, I have also been trying to figure out what to do with my life.

When I was four, I was convince that I will become a famous inventor - at least that's what I was calling myself, although what I really wanted to become was ingenious engineer. For many years I drew different cars, machines; built different things from Lego's - f.e robots, cars etc. I was dreaming like there was no tomorrow and I knew it all would come to me. Today I still like everything connected to the topic - I enjoy physics, chemistry and mathematics; I love to get my hands on different devices or make my hands dirty with some machines and I know I would love to own a company that has something to do with this field, but at the same time I also see that I am not suitable for that kind of work - I have a little patience and I like to be in a constant motion. Although, I am still thinking that maybe I should choose this field and become somewhat like one of my mentors - Tony Stark.

When I was eleven, I started to think that I should become a chef. It was cause due to the fact that me and my neighbour Heleen were cooking a lot, especially making cakes and I enjoyed it a lot - of course I still enjoy it, although I see that this is not taking me anywhere, at least not as a career... I love cooking, I love eating gourmet' food and I will most definitely hire a chef for my future family and I will maybe even like to open some restaurants under my future chain, but that is all that I would like to do in this field.

When I was thirteen, I was more and more sure I will follow my fathers footsteps and will become an entrepreneur - in which field, I did not know, but entrepreneurship it was. Most accurately, it started to come to me even stronger when I started to read, as I learned that entrepreneurs are the people to develop this society and the people, and also because I found out that I have not so much other skills to use, other than the ability to communicate with people. As the years passed, I continued reading and observing everything my father was doing.

When I was fifteen/sixteen, two career paths opened in my way. First my father started to build Amway business and I saw how it had every aspect I was looking for. It had communication, travelling, education and most importantly wealthy future. At the same time I was exposed to the life of politicians and voluntary workers - I never wanted to become any of them, although I thought that maybe it would be fun to do something with foreign politics or as I later discovered, the real thing that I meant was diplomacy and international relations.

As the time passed, I was also exposed to debating and now I really knew that the things that I was good at are following: communication, manipulation, info searching, philosophy, body language reading and I enjoy travelling. Other than that my career paths were widened a bit as I discovered that from early on I enjoyed collecting different things and trade them with other people. And by know I have the following paths left: "collector", diplomat and/or entrepreneur (field is still not made up in my mind - probably I would like to do internet business, real estate business and chain building business or something like that + I am more than sure I would like to invest in science).

Now as I know the fields in which I would like to practice in, I need to know what to study. If to make a list of different fields I might need to be good at, it would look like the following: philosophy, psychology, politics, law, economy, management, art (all kinds of art), history, sociology. And I would say that this is practically all that I need - if someone has anything to add, I am open for suggestions.

After making the list of fields I would need to know, I was thinking in which university to go and for the last five months or so I have been more than certain I would need to end up in some Ivy League or top UK universities. That meant I started to make preparations as in searching in which of those universities I would find the best living conditions and most suitable course + what would I need to do to get into those schools.

After months long of work, I had a conversation with my father, which messed up my mind quite a lot. He reminded me that as I am similar to him and I am not really meant for academic studies as I do not like to go to boring lectures, I do not like to do homework unless it is an essay, a talk or some bigger project and in over all, I am not a person to go to university to study as most of the people. That made me think whether I should go to UK or US after all and maybe I should be fine with some university in Netherlands, but at the same time I had the thought in my mind, that only real reason why I would like to go to university, would be the chance to get contacts for future, which has more chances of happening in top universities. Due to that dilemma, I just postponed that topic, until this Tuesday.

This Tuesday I went to Amway business plan, which was this time presented by my father. My father did not say anything against universities or anything, but all the things he was saying, made me think of one thing again - a thing I have been thinking for ages. Should I go to university at all? 1) If I will not go to the top university to study all the things, but to just get the contacts from there; 2) If I will not go to any lower university for studying either + the contacts will be less worthy; 3) If I can get all the knowledge myself from internet education sites (f.e TED or Funi.me) or books I read and even take exams in internet; 4) If I could do much more with the money that would go to university, that I would not be appreciating; 5) If I could get much more contacts elsewhere - then why should I go to university at all? To get a diploma? But if I will never want to work for anyone that would want to see it, if I will never do anything but looking at it, why would I need it and if I will need any certificate, why can't I go through any on-line quick courses after learning all the things myself? I see that I can do the last thing and all the other things seem to me as waste of time and/or money, so why should I do any of these things at all - I should not! Okay, but what would I then do besides going to university - in my mind the answer is easy. I would still study, read, watch videos of lectures and go to lectures in live, if I see that I need to know such things and at the same time I would have more time to build myself up and earn money - I see no problem in this idea + if everything else fails, I can always find something or then go to university.

Although now I am still not 100% sure and I would appreciate people to comment on this topic, so I could argue and either win or lose to make my mind utterly up...

Best wishes!

Sander Gasnen

UPDATE: I am still thinking I would like to go to university after all...