Two Plus Two Older Archives

Go to college. Ignore poker if you have to in order to not just go, but do exceptionally well.

First, you are looked at very negatively in today's world without a college degree. Like it or believe it or not, people DO judge others harshly, all their lives, and will take any possible angle to do so. Lack of a college degree is an angle to take that actually has some sense behind it.

That's because completing college requires discipline. That may be its primary benefit, actually. It teaches you to take on major goals that you do not care for and succeed in them. This is what a lot of life is about -- being able to do not just the easy and fun and quickly done stuff, but the hard and dull or aggravating or totally unfun stuff that takes forever to get done. If you can't do that -- basically NO job is good for you. And who would want to hire you? If you've graduated college, you've proven you can do more than what some jerky, impulsive kid can do. There's no guarantee, but you've shown that at least you have the potential to have an adult approach to work and life.

But aside from what college shows to others, particularly employers(and don't forget the opposite sex), college is also an incredible life experience. For the working poor it's a much different one than for the idle rich, but both backgrounds are very sheltered and narrow in their own way.

College takes you outside of the opinions and experiences of your social group, your peers, your parents, your family, your religious structure, and plops you into a place where you are not only free to think, but it's required. The idea of a liberal education is an old one that is often underappreciated today, but the chance to study the literature, philosophy, and cultures of other people, times, and places, even to the small degree one can in a single major, can be enormously broadening and enriching. And sometimes, fun and fascinating. A college education is your chance to "see the world" intellectually, or at least a far broader slice of it than you'll get as a child.

It also exposes you to peers who are also "growing up," or at least growing wider, intellectually and experientially, and makes for an exciting social time. They'll challenge you, annoy you, and form new friendships and new social communities with you.

Even if you have to slog through college working full-time, it's still a great experience to have gone through.

As dull and aggravating as some professors are, college is an experience far too rich to pass up. How much of your ignorance you keep, and how much of an actively curious, more open spirit you take with you, is up to you, but the experience of college will make you a more interesting person to be, and to talk to.

Poker will always be there. And it beats many of the jobs you would have while in college. But don't let it take over college, or take its place. College only lasts a few years, and is a valuable life experience that will mean a lopt not only to you, but to countless others you meet, for the rest of your life. You truly do not want to miss out, or make any less of it than you can.