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The Education I Should Have Spent Money On

Luckily, I made up for it later in life.

Jack Road
5 min readNov 8, 2024
Image by Michiel Ton from Pixabay

The biggest mistake I made in my life was following the herd to university. I was young, inherently lacking convictions and confidence — as most seventeen and eighteen-year-olds likely suffer from — and driven by societal forces that seemed too hard to ignore.

I was told, by ample sources of influence, that university was a necessary path following high school. I chose, or rather, I was led into the arms of the system not because I had ambitions to further listen to teachers instruct me after the monotony of endless years in primary and secondary schooling. Instead, I followed my friends and the advice of every adult in my life and continued my days of formal, institutionalized learning immediately after completing high school.

It was 2002, and at that time, the narrative — at least where I came from — was firmly grounded in expectation: students continue their education after finishing secondary school; you turn eighteen, you go to college or university. It was the be-all, end-all, and I followed suit — another sheep in the system.

I struggled through six and a half years of unmanageable unwillingness to conform and participate in more instruction and more supposed learning. I signed up for classes — within the general arts…

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Jack Road
Jack Road

Written by Jack Road

Writer on the move. Vagabond, visiting the world and exploring everything. Journeys are happiness in motion. Let’s break the 9-5 hustle.

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