It’s About Taking Risks, But Not Dumb Risks

I got an email from a university student who got so excited about following his passion that he wanted to quit school. The problem was that he was not sure what he was passionate about, and should he quit school. Here is his blurb:

It seems to me the most difficult step is the first one (perhaps as you get further and further other choices you are faced with become very hard, but once you are already knee deep some mixture of adrenaline, passion and excitement serve to keep pushing you forward). What have you found as being the biggest help for you in getting started? You mentioned changing around your work a bit — how do you know you’ve found the right project/product to work on? Once you get started what do you think the most difficult part of the work is?

For me, taking that first step is very difficult. This is in part also because I don’t want to disappoint my parents who have worked hard to allow me to be here. How did you overcome this worry, what did you tell your parents?

I have found in the last couple months especially, that I don’t enjoy school so much. Part of what draws me to working somewhere, especially a startup, is that the work you do matters, it is significant — you are building something people use and care about. This isn’t so true in school — projects for classes don’t matter so much, once the semester is over, all your hard work is lost and the class becomes irrelevant. This is something I’ve been struggling with a bit over the past couple months, I’m finding it more and more difficult to justify spending my time doing things that I don’t really care about. I just wanted to hear your impressions on school and especially to contrast them with my opinions.

I would love to hear your thoughts if you get a second to answer!