Why I Dropped Out of UCLA 3 Months from Graduation

The first few years of college were like you’d expect - lots of studying and drinking with very little sleep. I played for the UCLA Men’s Volleyball team, and worked tirelessly to make something of myself on the court, and also as an individual outside of sport. I didn’t want to be the stereotypical jock, and actively searched for opportunity in other arenas. Thanks to the guidance of a close friend, I enrolled in a life-changing class called “Entrepreneurial Communication” taught by Steven Peterson, PhD. Professor Peterson was a great teacher and mentor, and the lessons he bestowed upon our class will stick with me forever. I was lucky. At 20 years old, I found my passion.

Let’s jump ahead to one year ago, the summer of 2015. Right after my 21st birthday, I sat down at Starbucks with two cousins and laid the framework for what would become our first company: The Odd Job Bros. We worked almost any job for a flat rate of $15 an hour. For three kids with no business experience, we did well, netting almost $20,000 in 7 weeks.

Following the success of the Odd Job Bros, in October of 2015 I co-founded another startup at UCLA called KOTU, Inc, which is an on-demand cloud printing service available to students and professionals within 5 miles of UCLA. We raised capital (< 100k), and built a strong community of users in Westwood. But, like all startups, we had hiccups. Our CTO was drastically under performing which significantly stifled our growth and tarnished the sense of community we built at UCLA. I was fed up with technical issues and took it upon myself to learn web development. For practice, I started building my own personal website. It was challenging at first, but I worked hard and kept going. After a few hours, I had a live website that blew everyone away...

I’m joking, I don’t think anyone was blown away, and thankfully, despite my atrocious design skills, I received encouragement from close friends to keep practicing.

Great. I had a crappy website, co-founded two startups, and was set to graduate with a degree in History from UCLA in a few months. Life is going well, right? Not quite. My personal life was extremely tense, student debt was piling up, and I wasn’t getting any top marks in any of my classes. Something needed to change and it couldn’t wait another quarter at UCLA (which cost $11,877).

I called long-time friend Robbie Page and explained my rudimentary plan to build the next Berkshire Hathaway. Within 24 hours we founded Ad Valorum, which is a young company that develops apps (web and iOS), offers seed round investments, and will be launching our next subsidiary in early July. A few days after I spoke with Robbie my world changed forever, I decided to leave school to pursue my passion and Ad Valorum full-time.

My mom cried, my dad cussed, my family was disappointed, and everyone outside of my closest friends either thinks I am crazy (I might be), struck it rich (not yet), or am the next Mark Zuckerburg (unfortunately, no). The question nobody seems to understand is “Why? ”. Instead of trying to understand my perspective, they usually exclaim: “You were so close!” or  “What a waste of money!” or “How will you get a job without a degree?”.

The first, and most practical reason for leaving: tuition. The loans I took out would be paid back from my pocket, and it didn’t make sense to spend over $11,000 I didn’t have in order to write papers nobody outside a random teaching assistant would ever read.

Secondly, even if I forced myself to write them, they wouldn’t get me anywhere. Like I said, I didn’t want to be a History professor, and outside that field the major isn’t very helpful. For reference, history majors have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. As reported by Pucker Mob, over 15% of undergraduates with History Majors are without a job. While I was confident I wouldn’t fall into this group, the stats were unnerving.

More importantly though, I left UCLA to prove to the world that you do not need a college degree (or anything of the sort) to be successful, smart, or ultimately happy. Sure, degrees can validate what is already there. But having one doesn’t necessarily make you a great Historian, Biologist or a Human. It’s what you do with your life that defines you.

I dropped out to live my life with intent and purpose. When you’re dead, nobody will mention your degree, or the school you went too, they’ll mention the lives you’ve touched and the mark you made on the world.

I want the world to remember Steve O’Dell as a man who lived with purpose, who stood for his beliefs, who understood that happiness is a choice, and wore it on his sleeve everyday. On that note, I am proud to announce Ad Valorum’s partnership with The Q-Youth Foundation, a Non-Profit that provides safe, brave, community oriented spaces for youth and members throughout Los Angeles. Ad Valorum will be building their website and technology free of charge in order to help foundation grow and prosper.

Oh, and I want to be remembered as the guy with a nice website - you’d be surprised what a little practice can do:

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If you’d like to find out more about me, potentially work together, or donate to The Q-Youth Foundation, please contact: [email protected].

This post was edited by Campus Editor Jenny Wang.