Why I Dropped Out of College & How I Chose my Destiny Instead of a Degree

Let's take it back to senior year of high school, to 17-year-old Scout. My grades were good, I had a 3.7 GPA. I was applying to colleges; my family wanted me to go to a UC or state school in California. My attitude in high school was that I applied myself in the areas that lit me up and excited me, and then I did the bare minimum just to skate by in the areas that didn't. I dedicated myself to getting good grades, not for the grade but because I genuinely wanted to learn, adopt, and integrate the information.?

When it was time to start applying to colleges, I remember telling my mom that I wished schools would put more emphasis on the essay. I felt that my essay was the place that communicated my potential, my passions, my interests. I knew, even as a 17-year-old, where my value was and the type of person that I knew I was going to grow into, as well as the type of work that I wanted to produce in this world. I knew that whatever I ended up doing, it would be meaningful and inspirational and that I would dedicate myself to it. When applying for colleges, I was a little concerned because I knew that the state schools and the UCs of California looked at their applicants on a chart as a number. I didn't like that approach, and I remember thinking that I didn't fit in that box. The academic system, in general, was not good at summing me up, was not good at communicating the essence of who I am and the potential that I had.?

I didn't get into any state school or UC. I didn't even get into my safety. My parents were upset because they had paid for me to go to private school my whole life, and now I didn’t get into a state school. But I remember not being embarrassed, or feeling shame, or feeling less because of those rejections. When I got those rejections, I just knew in my heart that they didn't see me. But I saw myself, and that was the most important thing for me. Going into my college and career, I've always had this sense of? “this process isn't for me,” “this procedure of judgment doesn't match with my inner authenticity and inner values,” but I went to college because that's what one does.?

I went to City College for my first year and then I transferred to Sarah Lawrence College. That kind of methodology of academia was so up my alley: there were no grades, no majors, no requirements, you just wrote essays on everything and you had a lot of one on one time with your teacher. It was a really passion forward, individually focused type of academia. During the first semester of my junior year, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. At that time, things with my mental illness had escalated and reached levels of psychosis and paranoia. It was getting harder and harder for me to function. It was starting to show up in ways that were becoming detrimental to my success, as well as just to the baseline of functioning.?

When I received the bipolar diagnosis at Sarah Lawrence College in New York in my therapist’s office, I was on the next flight home and I dropped out of college. I spent the next two years trying to heal in a way that wasn't super purposeful and didn't have much direction. I never was able to return to Sarah Lawrence College. I never felt that I had the strength or ability to return for a second semester. At that moment, it wasn't because college wasn't in alignment for me, actually, quite the opposite: Sarah Lawrence College was very in alignment for me. My mental health was so distressing, and in an emergency state. After a few years of getting my bearings, itching with strength a little bit, trying to find all the tools in my toolbox, I re-enrolled at a City College so that I could get all of my prerequisites ready so that I could apply to a UC.?

I didn't really care what college I went to, because all of my friends had already graduated from Sarah Lawrence. My mindset was simply: “I have to graduate because that's next in line, that's what people do. I'm 22, I haven't graduated and I need to graduate.” I went to a City College, figured out all my prerequisites, and applied to transfer. It was the first time in my academic life that I ended up getting into all the top schools. I chose University of California San Diego (UCSD) because my husband was also going to school in San Diego. But, to be honest, I was just doing it as a kind of “I have to cross this off my list real quick and then I can get to work.” Before I went to UCSD to finish up my college career, I had launched my magazine, Entity Magazine. We had Halsey on the cover. It was sold in Barnes and Noble. When I went to that second community college, I found entrepreneurship. In finding entrepreneurship, something totally shifted in me. Everything changed.?

I had felt what it was like to be passionate about something, to want something so badly, to work at it really hard, no matter how my mental illness was showing up. It was the first thing I didn't quit. It was the first thing I could handle, and so I have this taste of exhilarating passion that entrepreneurship brings and school was, quite frankly, in my way. As I went to UCSD, I put a pause on the magazine as successful on the outside as it was. Barnes and Noble contacted me and printed it in their stores. It wasn't a super financially viable business, I had zero experience, had never really even had a job, let alone business experience.?

While I was in my second semester of UCSD, with two semesters left, I remember texting my dad and saying, “Hey, I just want you to know that if I get a job, I'm going to drop out of college. My goal here is to work, my goal here is not to continue school and I don't care how close I am to my bachelor's degree, I want to work now.” I got an internship in an amazing PR agency in San Diego and I asked them, “is there any chance you would hire me today?” and they said “no, you have to have a bachelor's degree, so intern for us first and that we can talk about getting you a job.” Then, I connected with this woman who brought me on to be the Director of Operations at a digital women's media site. In the beginning, I was part-time because I was in college. As we ramped up, it became very clear that my passion was working on the site. So I made the decision, with a full-time job offer, to drop out of college a second time. This is not the popular move to make. It was one that I made very quickly, very easily. I felt no anxiety about it because I knew it was the right move for me. When we come from a place of knowing what is best for us, you just are energetically pulled towards that.?

I dropped out of college, the second time, not because of my mental illness, but because I was ready to start my career. There was one point where I did have to start applying to traditional jobs, but I never put my education on my resume and nobody asked. Even in that interviewing process, without a bachelor's degree, nobody asked if I graduated college. They just assumed I did. It taught me that maybe the bachelor's degree isn't as necessary as I thought it was.?

But for me, my goal at the end of the day was to always be an entrepreneur. I knew that if I had to work a day job, it was always going to be a means to an end and never a permanent career move. I got to work, and I did become a successful entrepreneur with running Scout's Agency. Sometimes my family asks me “Are you gonna go back?” and for me today, I don't see any reason whatsoever. I have completely taken my destiny, my narrative, my skill set, my expertise and my reputation into my own hands and have walked down the entrepreneurial path.?

In all of these stops from dropping out of college, to pursuing a career, from dropping out of college to work on my mental health, to launching Okay Sis podcast, to launching my agency, all of the decisions I've made in my career have followed my inner self-worth and my inner value metric. I determine what energy I want to follow. I determine the energy that I want to compound, that I want to turn into action in my life. College just wasn't matching my purpose, it wasn't filling me up. I was willing to take the repercussions of not having a college degree, knowing that it might be a little bit more difficult for me to forge my career. In the same token, I always saw myself as an entrepreneur. And so, as an entrepreneur, that is the route that I took.?

This is not an episode to convince you that college degrees are worthless, quite the opposite. They are incredible. Education is the path towards a more equitable, equal society, a more loving society, having educated civilians. For me, it wasn't the path I needed to walk to get to where I'm standing. The fact that I didn't have a traditional college career has helped me become who I am, it has shaped me into the entrepreneur that I am today.?

The point of this is to get you to start thinking about areas that you might be taking steps towards. I encourage you to think in what ways you are following a path because you didn't think there was an alternative. Oftentimes we get stuck, thinking that there is one way forward when there are so many ways. You might get so lit up by college and keep going to get your Masters and your Ph.D. and that's what serves you and will ultimately serve your career because anything that serves you on an energetic soul level, will raise you up in your career. I am opening up the conversation for areas in your life that you're following because you haven't thought about the alternative that maybe makes your heart flutter a little bit more.?

So yes, I am a college dropout. And yes, I run a multiple six-figure agency. And yes, I'm also the co-host of Okay Sis podcast and have been able to support myself with the businesses that I've built myself. Where I'm standing now is because I always understood where I fit. I’ve always understood what didn't work for me. I never wanted to be defined by a GPA, or an SAT score, or which college accepted me. I wanted to be defined by the things that I create and my tenacity and perseverance to show up, to create a business and so that's what I did.