Thoughts on dropping out of school...

[WarBus]

Finishing college is definitely a good idea if you make the most of it and have a worthy major.

I did not make the most of it. I worked 40 - 50 hrs/wk during school and 60+ hrs/wk during breaks and summer. My friends were always partying and going on trips but I always had to work. It was an unfortunate necessity at the time but missing out on all the experiences is definitely a regret.

My degree was in business management. Not a difficult or extremely lucrative degree. Finding a job since I had a degree wasn't dificult. Finding one that paid decent was. My last job was as a manager for a convenience store paying a whopping 30k/ year. Since I made more from poker than my job for the last year and a half it wasn't a hard decision to quit my old job when many new responsibilities requiring many more hours of my time were demanded by the company where I worked.

I graduated in '93 so its not like I worked at one job for a couple years and then decided to play poker for a living. I have had other jobs and ran my own business for many years. Playing poker currently suits me best.

Overall, get a degree but at the same time make the most of the experiences available. You never know where life will take you. So don't pass up current opportunities.

[crunchy1]

Here's some random thoughts....

- Stay in school.

- There's nothing that says you can't play poker AND attend college.

- When you're 18-21 yrs old - you have ZERO understanding of the relative value of money in the real world. What seems like at lot of money at 18 yrs old will seem like pennies in 10 years.

- Those not motivated enough to stay in school and complete a degree and not likely going to be motivated to adapt to a changing world of poker. When the games change and you aren't motivated to learn new strategies to beat them - then what are you gonna do? McD's?

- I don't think the previous item can be stressed enough. You got burned out on school - what makes you think you're not going to get burned out on poker.

- It's overstated, but true... You're going to regret not finishing your degree in the future.

- Don't think that if you leave now you'll ever return. Do you really want to be a lonely 35 yr old going back to college with a bunch of 18-20 somethings. All the older people I attended college with seemed miserable in life.

[gobboboy]

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- When you're 18-21 yrs old - you have ZERO understanding of the relative value of money in the real world. What seems like at lot of money at 18 yrs old will seem like pennies in 10 years.

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You say this to a bunch of people who usually post at least a $2-$15 blind and don't bat an eye when they lose it? Poker players, if ANYTHING, undervalue money instead of overvaluing money.

I'm a freshman at UIUC right now, and I'm having trouble staying in too. I may take a break my first semester of sophomore year simply because it's hard to force myself to study. If I do complete school it will likely be in philosophy.

[crunchy1]

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- When you're 18-21 yrs old - you have ZERO understanding of the relative value of money in the real world. What seems like at lot of money at 18 yrs old will seem like pennies in 10 years.

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You say this to a bunch of people who usually post at least a $2-$15 blind and don't bat an eye when they lose it? Poker players, if ANYTHING, undervalue money instead of overvaluing money.

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You misinterpreted my point. Right now you're income to cost-of-living ratio is very low. You make 1, or 5K, or 10K, or 30K per month and it costs a mere fraction of that to live off. What needs to be understood is how this ratio is going to increase over time. There are many factors at work here that I'm guessing most kids in this age group are simply incapable of predicting. That's not a rip on you or anyone else - it's just the way life works.

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I'm a freshman at UIUC right now, and I'm having trouble staying in too. I may take a break my first semester of sophomore year simply because it's hard to force myself to study. If I do complete school it will likely be in philosophy.

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My advice to someone in your situation is that (A) If you leave - there's a very high chance you won't return and (B) if you have to "force" yourself to study - you must not be getting educated in something that your passionate about.

Personally - I have trouble understanding why anyone would be going to school for something they didn't want to do in the first place.

Good Luck to you - I hope you figure it all out! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
Crunch

[MaxPower]

Anybody who is considering dropping out of school or leaving a job to play poker should make their decision after they experience an extremely bad run. I am not talking about the usual downsings. I am talking about incredibly long stretches lasting several months.

[jba]

I don't feel like posting the entire story right now, but I might someday as I think I actually have something to add to these zillion threads.

I dropped out of college about 2-3 semesters away from my degree. It had nothing to do with poker, but it was a somewhat similar situation in some respects. I was studying CS and got a pretty incredible job offer that required me moving from the podunk state I grew up in.

some of my reasons:
- This was back in 1999 when there were some unbelievable oppurtunities to pull in the kind of money that 99.99% of pro poker players never dream of.
- I was working full time while going to school (primarily for financial reasons), and going to a commuter school, so the "good times" were considerably less than typical college experience.
- I was banking on getting enough experience/contacts during the boom years to float me afterwords. In 1999 if you could breath and knew how to spell HTML you could get any job you wanted and make a ridiculous amount of money, and I knew I was far better than most.

So here I am six years later. I have worked for four companies since quitting school, lasted through the big bust, and I currently have a great job with very good job security and am quite pleased with the money that I make. Anyone applying for my job off monster.com without a college degree would not make it past the receptionist, but in software referrals and networking are huge, and something catastrophic would have to happen for me to worry about job security - I can literally call a dozen people this afternoon and line up a job somewhere else. If my boss (or any of my former bosses) had to choose between an unknown MIT C.S. grad with five years experience and me, he would pick me. As far as social stigma there is some but to be honest when you tell someone you are a software engineer they just make assumptions and it basically never comes up. If I had to do it all over again I am positive I would make the same choices.

Despite all this, I'd say about 75% of the reason I'm studying this game is so I can quit working and go back to school. It makes every post I read from some kid dropping out of school pretty ironic; instead of "quitting school to play poker", my perspective is "playing poker to unquit school".

Dropping out of school to play poker, IMHO, is insane. I mean school isn't really all that time consuming and considering the fact that I was putting in 40-50 hrs/week while in school, I just can't figure out why you guys don't just suck it up, stay in school, and play poker for 20 hrs/week. makes no sense at all to me.


cheers, be cool stay in school

[Card08]

Great post and perspective, jba.

[SmileyEH]

Why don't people take time off from school? I'm not making huge sums of money from poker, but I didn't want to be in school. So I took time off and travelled. I'll probably go back next year, but maybe not. Who cares? It will always be there.

-SmileyEH

[Mercman572]

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btw, why is it during mid-terms/finals this topic always comes into my head, and I edge towards dropping out...hmmm

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Haha, at my school we consider jumping into the gorges [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

[Victor]

college is fun. i graduated but i wanna go back.