I went to Oregon State University and spent my first year and a half deciding what I wanted to do. If the education system was up to par with all of the latest and greatest, I would have pursued a web design degree or computer science degree. The problem is, they weren’t up to par.

It was more appealing to get something generic, like a business degree, and pick up all of this web stuff on the side. I just read an article at Creating Passionate Users called, “Why does engineering/math/science education in the US suck?” It got me thinking a little bit about my experiences in school.

This entry is a bit off topic.

When deciding what I wanted to do, I took a few computer courses. One was in traditional C programming. I couldn’t have been more bored. What excited me about computer was the net and communication (didn’t know that at the time). At Oregon State there wasn’t much of an internet presence, probably similar to every other school in the nation at that time. What OSU did have was a bunch of older professors teaching about multimedia and hyperspace. It felt like a course straight out of Tron. There was no reality in all of it. Just a bunch of speculation.

When it got to a point where the teachers were teaching misinformation, I decided to go the logical business route. Ironically this is where I confirmed my previous suspicions and found the light through some cross-pollination with OSU’s brilliant engineering program.

If the internet exposure classes were bad, the business computer classes were worse. There is something about certain professors that makes me cringe. It’s the, “I know more about computers than you because I am a professor.” The truth is, there is a 9 year old (I used to say 12 year old) out there that knows more than all of us. He/She is brilliant and they probably laugh at our struggles. For some reason these professors had forgotten that. I was bitter after a few incidents where I offered a solution for a problem, only to get shot down immediately, ONLY to have it taught to the class as the Professor’s brainchild the next day. Ughh. That was as ugly as it got. Otherwise I learned a ton about business, not in the nickel and dime sense (for some reason I tune out when I hear the words finance or accounting, and that’s coming from two generations of accountants ahead of me), but in the strategy sense.

My biggest breakthrough occurred in a class called, “Systems Thinking.” It was one of those classes that some people hated and some people loved. Me, being the latter, ate it up and asked for more. It was taught by Jonathan King. Professor King had one of the most open-ended conversational styles of lecture I have ever seen. Although he controlled the lecture and spoke, for the most part, uninterrupted for two hours, it never felt like it. He introduced me to flow and thought diagrams, mind maps and thinking holistically. I still use the tools that were taught to me in that class. I went on to the next level of the class that pulled in the best mentors/professors OSU had and put us all in a small classroom. That is where I rubbed elbows with an engineering professor that really made an impression on me, just like King.

From the creating passionate users post, the two quotes stood out:

From Jason Fried:
“Hire curious people. Even if they don’t have the exact skill set you want, curious, passionate people can learn anything.”

And from Jacques Hadamard:
” Logic merely sanctions the conquests of the intuition.”

The problem with so many students is they are in college because they were told to go, or it is what everyone else did. I was one of them. They don’t ever teach you how to follow your heart or be passionate, they teach you how to follow a curriculum. OSU had a baccalaureate core for me to sample tons of different fields, and it pricked my interest a bit. However, there was a lack of focus because all you really know about a prospective course is what you imagine the people in the field doing, you don’t learn about what you like yourself. That was my hangup. Business sounded like fun because I read Wired magazine and all the business deals sounded fun. If they would have been encouraged me to follow my heart, I probably would have dropped out. Traditional education cannot keep up with our field. I know it’s blasphemy to discourage someone from going to college, but what I say is true. Until colleges get agile and adaptable to keep up with the rapid pace of the net, they will be sitting there obsolete.

I was all logic up until luck stepped in. Upon finishing school, I had a BS in Management and International Business with a Minor in Multimedia. I also had 12 years fishing experience in Alaska. I applied at all kinds of places. They all turned me down, “Sorry you don’t have experience.” Through my network I heard about a small company in Portland doing email marketing and building websites. The second I walked in, I knew it was where I wanted to work. I was placed as a Production Artist and was being paid to do my outside of school hobby every day. In other words, I was lucky enough to get placed into an industry I am passionate about, curious about, and more importantly it’s a system. All of that rubbing up with systems is more applicable now than ever. I thrive off of thinking about angles. I have helped the company in my own little way to double in size and offer full scale website solutions. We now do some really cool things.

While I tried to be logical and apply at places like enterprise rent-a-car and nike, fate stepped in, and now I have seen how things can be. I rely on my intuition.

It’s a great read over at Creating Passionate Users, check it out.

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