Break The Mold

Don’t be afraid to be different

What does it feel like to be different? What does it feel like to defy social norms and take a different path in life? What does it feel like to take a risk that thousands of others are simply unwilling to take?

These are all questions I never thought I would have to answer. When I was little I had a pretty standard plan for my life. For the longest time I thought I would finish high school, go to college for a law degree, get my diploma, and live out the rest of my days as a lawyer raking in money. This plan always seemed foolproof to me, and I thought that it was going to take me where I wanted to go in life. Little did I know that my entire plan, my entire list of goals, end even my entire mindset would change.

Once I started high school I began to develop my own views on the world, I had already been homeschooled for many years and was finally starting to see the real value in that. Beyond that though, I started to see flaws in our modern education system. All around me I heard complaints about student debt, I heard about the thousands of college grads that never used their degrees, 

I heard about the massive dropout rates in most universities. Seeing all of this made me start to wonder if college was really the route I wanted to take. However, it wasn’t until sophomore year that I truly changed my mind, and decided that I wanted to do something different. Honestly it was a hard decision to make. I was watching all my friends apply to colleges and figure out their major, and then there was me, trying to test out of college courses and figure out an alternative. The worst part was when adults would ask me where I was going to college or what I would be studying and the only response I had was, “actually I’m not going to college.”  You wouldn’t believe the type of judgement I received simply because I decided to do something different. 

The rest of the story is pretty simple. I found Praxis, fell in love with the idea, and decided it was what I was going to do. Unfortunately, there still isn’t a ton of understanding or support of choices like this in modern society. The common belief seems to remain that if you want to be successful, you have to spend 2-6 years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper. This is an outdated and broken system which continues to decay more and more each year, and it's time for a change. Later this week I plan to write an article diving more in depth on why I believe the system is broken, so stay tuned for that.

The important thing is that you shouldn’t be afraid to be different, don’t fear what others will think if you choose a different path, be the person who sets the new trend, not the one that follows the old ones. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to break the mold, because in the end, those are the people that change the world.

-Braden Schmidt 11-15-14