Not everyone with a degree is successful, not every dropout is a failure. We all know this very well, we subscribe to this opinion, and yet we go and run after degrees at the slightest pretext. Is it a mere degree that will fetch us the crown called success? Is such a success real… or just a figment of the imagination? This is one question that has been asked for centuries and the real answer still eludes us all.

Let us first define ‘success’. Just imagine for a few minutes that you’re in a classroom and the teacher walks in, smiles at you, and utters a compliment for that essay that was well written. You are elated. You are euphoric. You feel as if you are the most successful of the lot sitting there inside with you. ‘However,’ continues your teacher, ‘you haven’t got the highest marks because your essay lacked a factual punch. But it certainly is the most expressive of all.’ Now you’re confused and ask you ask yourself later, ‘Do I find marks or a teacher’s compliment a bigger success?’ But if you need to improve your essay writing skill, you can check out this essay writing service reddit reviews here for some tips and ideas!

Thus the debate goes on. Can success be quantified? Is success an objective thing or a subjective emotion? Does success need to be always perched on an infrastructure of higher education? Are degrees the only success mantra in life?

Read a few biographies of some of the most successful people and you will know that a degree isn’t everything. The real success mantra needs persistence… aware persistence, knowledgeable persistence, indefatigable persistence, and friendly persistence. You need to cajole successful moments by luring it with wondrous ideas, sensual expressions, dogged implementation, and a non-stop interaction. You need to always stay hungry, stay foolish, stay involved, stay ready-to-grasp, and stay imaginative!

Degrees, most of the time, do not really prepare you for understanding success. You need to understand that education is quite different from literacy. Once you understand this you’ll know that even a school drop-out can be aware, knowledgeable, friendly, and inexhaustible in his persistence of success. So the degrees take you only so far and no more.  They give you an edge, a sharper edge… but it is up to you to make use of it. For instance, I know people who have doctorates in Literature and cannot write a single creative sentence. There are architects who quote with authority but live an unquoted life… so do a lot of other specialists who never use knowledge to creatively enhance their field.

So, do degrees really matters? Yes, they do… but only when you are able to convert knowledge into practically usable wisdom. So you need to understand the real fiction behind degrees.

Arvind Passey
25 July 2012

The Education Post_ Monday_23 July 2012

The Education Post_ Monday_23 July 2012

Article published in ‘The Education Post’ Monday, July 23, 2012