I Failed The Education System, So I Created My Own

"A" students work for the "C" students        - Robert Kiyosaki

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Many people think that when an entrepreneur is first starting the journey of success, they have so many other avenues to be successful that they must love entrepreneurship so much to go down that route.

Wrong!

Personally, for me, entrepreneurship was the only path I could go on because I was almost forced to because my grades sucked, didn't play any sports, and just saw doing my own thing as the way out.

I remember all throughout my student career from middle school to college I always felt so bad for failing tests, trying to study all night but not remembering anything, trying to focus in class but my mind never let me, back then always perpetuating a cycle of anxiety.

When I was a freshman in high school I began using the internet. Long story short I started a series of online businesses, one or two of which were financially successful. Despite that, I still felt like a failure because I was creating real-world value, which I did not know at the time and instead just focused on how stupid and inferior I was to others because of my grades.

When I Realized this Path Isn't for Me

I go off to college majoring in computer science in 2015. I really tried my best to get serious and do well in school. Another long story short, after pulling all-nighters to study for exams, I was in this one math class and I literally got a 25 on my test....after studying for hours of my life. I failed that class, and then I failed another class that same semester.

I sat down with myself and basically realized that:

1.) I should not be majoring in computer science

2.) my brain just doesn't work the same way that other people can sit down, study, memorize and regurgitate information back without any real-world value. I can't motivate myself to sit down in a room with a piece of paper and pretend that the outside world doesn't exist and I can't use any tools.

3.) My personal history has been pointing me to become an entrepreneur. Other than the age of 12 I've never had a standard 9-5 minimum wage job and always worked on my own ventures. I need to do this 100%.

Why The Education System Is Not Broken

I truly believe that the standard schooling system in America is NOT broken.

When I interviewed, Seth Godin on my Humans 2.0 Podcast, he told me that the education system was created in the 1850s to create more factory workers for the industrial revolution.

Back then, you needed people to take Object A and twist into Object B to produce Object C.

Robots do that now...

Yet, most of the education system is still teaching people how to do that 20th-century work.

The education system is not broken, it's obsolete.

This is the equivalent of taking your Dad's Nokia phone from 2000 and trying to use Instagram to follow me @markmetry (;

In my lifetime I have had two or three teachers & professors who genuinely brought me significant value and taught me some real education. Why? Because they were real people and not filled with BS, trying to just do their job quickly to meet quotas and curriculums.

Luckily, there are many innovative organizations and schools that are actively changing history and starting new kinds of schools and institutions that teach children to adults how to in a modern way deal and learn within the confinements and advancements of the world.

Including an organization, I am affiliated with called Parachute Bridge that helps kids enter college with a clearer path by immersing students in a semester journey for life-long learning taught to be mentors & experiences.

How I Made My Own School

"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier; failing that, it does nothing." -Isaac Asimov

I read my first book when I was 19 years old from front to back. I began reading articles on the internet from smart people, listening to podcasts from the world's top experts, began taking courses both free and paid to financially incentivize myself to take them seriously.

Despite this, my self-education was still too passive. What happens if I wake up and I don't feel like taking that course or reading that book? Nothing because a key principle to creating your own school is to set parameters, rules, accountability for proper understanding.

I started my own little interactive "school" in the middle of 2017 and launched it a couple of months later at the end of Summer in August. Many of you now know this school today as my Global Top 100 Humans 2.0 Podcast. Starting my show was probably the best decision I have ever made in my entire life and the decisions after that to keep it going when I wasn't seeing results.

How My Podcast Created My Self-Education

1. Any topic/field of interest to me, I can reach out to a world's top expert in that field and have a conversation with them for up to an hour and at times other discussions and conversations past the podcast episode.
2. I read my guest's book or whatever material they have created. This is basically my deadline for reading or studying the content. Once digested, I can now come up with questions and other aspects I may not understand and bring them to the expert at hand during the interview.
3. Once I have a decent grasp on the knowledge, I then take it and apply it into my own life and report back to the guest I just interviewed. Take, for example, I recently interviewed David Sinclair, Harvard Professor, and Author of Lifespan. He told me a few simple things I can start doing to increase my longevity. I applied it and saw some good results and some not so clear confusing results and reported back to him and received feedback.

What To Do If You're In School And You Hate It

Obviously, this depends on how old you are and how you find yourself in school. If you really hate education and you are still in the K-12th grade system, you might just need to punt it...

Do the bare necessities, don't fail a class, take advantage of resources including clubs and sports teams, focus on surrounding yourself in a good friend group and use this time to find a side-hustle that you love doing and focus entirely on that and put your schoolwork in the background.

This is not the most politically correct advice you would give to someone but as someone who's just gone through and out of the system, some people simply do not have the DNA to go through a traditional public school.

Luckily, today we have access to more opportunities through YouTube, books that cost less than $20, courses, podcasts that can enable someone to become more educated than a potential college graduate who is $100,000 in student loan debt.

My Upcoming Book - Screw Being Shy 

Release March 14, 2020 to be notified of its release enter your email in on my website: markmetry.com

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Listen to the Humans 2.0 Podcast

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