Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Martin Hanley asks What would you tell a high school junior or senior about choosing a college (4 year/ 2 year/ trade), military, straight to work, “gap” year, or crash in parents’ basement and play video games?

The advice you give totally depends on the person you are giving the advice to. Given the cost of college and the potential debt burden, I wouldn’t go into it lightly. People often say that you will make more money if you have a college degree. However, it overlooks all the people who went to college and didn’t graduate yet were still stuck with all the debt. So, I honestly wouldn’t recommend college unless you are sure you are a good enough student to graduate in four years or less.I also don’t think that college is wise if you don’t know what you want to do. It is a very expensive attempt to figure things out. I’d recommend traveling for a year as it is much cheaper than college.

The one bit of advice I always give people who are starting out is if you want to ensure long-term success in life to be great at something. It almost doesn’t matter what it is. Many skills don’t even require a formal education. The editors behind Everything Everywhere All At Once won the Academy Award for editing, and they learned how to do it on YouTube. Playing video games in your parent’s basement isn’t just a waste. It shows a lack of ambition. There is nothing wrong with playing video games per se, but time spent in the basement doing that could just as easily be spent in self-study learning something.I’ve made massive career shifts several times in my life. Each time, I threw myself into whatever new thing I was doing. Sometimes, it took a few years of study before I could claim any sort of mastery.