The best school in the world

I had a friend in Engineering school back in India who to speak frankly appeared to be out of place in the university. He was not much into academics nor into taking exams.

He used to cheat his way through the exams while I studied hard and never cheated on the exams.

Many ..many...years later...I heard he was doing very well for himself running two businesses.

Now I do not begrudge him his success. In fact I respect and admire what he did for himself.

As for me. I am comfortably settled in an IT job in the USA. But not very successfully.

I have been in the same post for more than 7.5 years. I have not received a single promotion!!!

You need to know one thing about me. I have an impeccable academic pedigree.

I scored 99 percentile on the GMAT, reached the final (interview) round at the prestigious IIMs, aced very competitive engineering and management entrance exams.

I have an MBA from a top business school in India, I have a Master's in Computer science from Rensselaer ranked the 18th best computer school in the USA.

And I have been working in IT for 7.5 years without a single promotion.

Is something wrong with me.

It sure is. I am responsible for my own mess.

However the point I wish to make especially for us Indians to whom education seems to be the be all and end all is this.

Go easy.

Do not waste your precious time on earth collecting academic degrees.

They do not matter. Not even for much in your first job.

For all the benefit I got from my Computer Science degree I might have as well been watching movies.

I admit that on occasion academic degrees do help in your day to day to jobs especially in technical professions such as IT and research. But they will not take you forward!.

I wish in addition to learning about relationships between datasets in Maths I learnt about relationships between and among people.

Having the right relationships is the single biggest success factor in life.

I wish instead of just stopping at learning how to calculate Compound Interest in mathematics I learnt how it could truly impact your financial life.

The magic of compounding is the single biggest success factor in your financial life.

It takes more to succeed in life than getting good grades and having good academic credentials.

In fact you do not even get started in life when you complete your formal education.