Dropping Out Of College Excelled My Education (The College Scam)

The lie we've been sold about "Higher Education"

I stopped by a local coffee shop today to grab an iced Americano and draft some emails on the laptop. I sat on the only couch-chair available next to a couple of gentleman who were deep in conversation. They had a boomer-hipster look to them and one of the guys was sitting a little too cross legged in the Gavin Newson sort of way, so I figured I was about to overhear some pretty cringe political talk. As I listened in (because I’m a spy like that) I identified them as being middle school teachers, they were talking about the difference between boys and girls responding in their classrooms, and their conversation soon shifted to discussing the need for kids to go to college. To my surprise, they were actually pretty awake and free thinking despite their appearance and occupation. The good kind of teachers. They discussed how, for the most part, college is something that young adults do not need to be going into.

And this, I fully agree with - my own college experience is a testament to this.

Synchronistically, a few hours after my coffee stop I was messaged by an old college frat-acquaintance of mine. I haven’t talked to him in 15 or so years and barely remember him, but he came across my profile on Instagram and shot me a DM, saying he remembers me pledging to the AKL fraternity and that he’s happy to see a guy from Washington speaking the truth. Yes, once upon a time I was almost in a frat - that was before I dropped out of the state university.

This was Washington State University in 2009/2010. In high school I didn’t know really what I wanted to do - well, I did, I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy and be a pilot, but at that point they didn’t allow corrective vision for pilots and I’m blind as a bat, so my back up option was an in state college, WSU. My brother went to the University of Washington for an engineering degree, so I guess I’ll do something similar. I went to WSU in Pullman for a construction management degree - because all of our parents said a college degree is the only way to get a good job and be “successful “ in life! (What a lie our generations were sold…)

The issue ended up being I had zero interest in my particular studies, I was far more focused on chasing skirts and finding what parties were happening. I did sort of pledge to a frat, went through the “initiation week” and all that, but I ended up not joining or paying any dues because I failed out of Washington State after the first year.

---

---

So I went back home to Community College, Olympic College in Kitsap County, and ended up deciding on a business management degree. It was a generic degree, and I could maybe figure out more of what I wanted to do when I got my Gen Ed classes under my belt.

About a year into my time at Olympic College, 2011, I got a job at a local supplement/smoothie shop called Maxx Nutrition. They hired me just to be extra part-time help making smoothies, I had experience in that from high school jobs, but over time I starting falling in love with the sales floor. Working the floor meant knowing the products and helping customers figure out their issues and finding the right supplements to help their ailments. My mind was also shocked by what I was learning about our healthcare system and Big Pharma, too. “I never learned this in school!”. I felt like I was actually making a difference and learning the truth, because I was, and I proceeded to have zero interest in my studies once again. It came to a head when I was in computer lab one day, and instead of doing my chemistry work I was binge watching “The World According to Monsanto” documentary, minimizing the tab whenever the teacher walked by. I knew I had to embark on this new path, college wasn’t for me anymore.

So I proceeded to drop completely out of college and go full time at Maxx. My parents were thrilled (/sarcasm/), but this was where my fulfillment was. I worked my way up to the floor, and to Operations Manager a few years later moving between multiple locations and being a store lead. I became obsessed with learning everything I could about every herb, amino acid, and supplement compound we had, there were hundreds and hundreds of different ingredients to study. I would go home and research for hours every night after work, websites like GreenMedInfo, NaturalNews and iHealthTube, and I absorbed all the trainings we received from Naturopaths and brand representatives (who were often healthcare professionals themselves). I felt like I was learning so much more relevant information about health than the medical doctors were getting in their standard schooling, and I probably was. This is where I also figured out how little many people knew about actual health, and how little most medical doctors knew as well. I would hear “My doctor told me to get this”, and it was usually a terrible recommendation. I would do my best to fight the Pharma-industrial brainwashing.

Plus, this sales job didn’t feel like a sales job. I wasn’t trying to necessarily sell people on things, I was educating them, and getting to know them at a personal level. I would spend 20, 30+ minutes which each customer figuring them out, because the more I knew about them, the better suggestions I could make. If I were to recommend something that actually helped, then not only are they more likely to come back, but they’re healthier and feel better, a win for the both of us. So I studied as much as I could so I could be of better service.

I worked there for about 5 years, and ultimately got to a point where I had to move on. I had aspirations of being my own boss, so I figured I’ll get into personal training and holistic health coaching. A friend of mine hooked me up with a job working for a Chiropractor, I was to be his clinic assistant and a corrective exercise specialist - perfect while I was studying for my NASM personal training certification.

This was a 9 month job for me, and I fell in love with biomechanics and movement science as much as I did supplements, getting a truly holistic view of the human body. He was an old school Chiro, still using a classic X-ray machine and I was the guy developing the film in a dark room. After the X-rays were developed, Dr. Poole would show me how to analyze spine and hip distortions, showing me how to identify subluxated vertebrae on the images. As I studied more about posture and biomechanics, diving into YouTube videos from “evidence based” gym bros and referencing my professional materials, I would show my clients movements and assessments to help them get rid of issues like back pain and frozen shoulder, to often good success.

Once I acquired my personal training certification and figured this Clinic was just too far of a drive, I was hired as a strength coach at a local powerlifting gym closer to home, Gig Harbor Strength & Fitness, mid 2016 by this point. Training posture and corrective exercise was cool, but I was excited to be getting into the big boy weights. I spent about 6 months there, training and training with all kinds of people from athletes to firefighters to disabled people and soccer moms. Great experience, I still work out there from time to time whenever I’m in town.

But, as paths end and begin, I had dreams of doing something on YouTube. Many of the channels I would study from were building their own gym and content businesses with YouTube, and I aspired to be like them. The first YouTube channel I started was a health channel called Conscious Strength, and this was years before I would launch the supplement brand under the same name. I liked the name, the merging of mind and body, although the few videos I toyed around doing were awkward and going no where, and I also had interest in many other conspiracy theories of our world. This is when I began networking more in the alternative media space, changed the name of my channel to Destroying the Illusion in January 2017 to focus on politics and secret space programs along with health, and the rest was YouTube history.

I then had to self-educate on video editing, film production, internet marketing, graphic design, and other skills associated with being a content creator. Each path, or each stage along my path has required a new set of skills to figure out, and instead of spending thousands and thousands of dollars on college I was able to find books and videos online to find the knowledge myself. One of the amazing things about the internet is how much information is available at your fingerprints, for free. Over the years I have spent money on video courses and consults from people online, but this has amounted to maybe a few hundred dollars - compare that to tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on college to learn from “teachers” who don’t have as much hands on experience as entrepreneurial coaches you can find online.

While I would agree that a few industries require degrees and licensing - engineering, emergency medicine, surgery, etc. - there are a variety of jobs, careers, and industries where self-education and hands on experience will do far more than 4-8 years spent with lectures and our heads in some “authorized” books from universities. There is also the issue of centralized information sources, can we trust much of what we are taught in universities? Is it actually the truth? Where does it come from? How are kids being programmed there? A conversation for another time.

Over the last few generations it’s been brainwashed into society that we need college degrees to “succeed” in life and you’re only a respectable “expert” if you have somel letters before or after your name. This has caused many teenagers to decide go to universities before they ever know what they really want to do in life, and they pay ungodly amounts of money to obtain this fancy piece of paper - even going into huge amounts of debt to do it. I am thankful that I never took out any student loans, partying myself out of college was a great thing for my wallet and credit. “Thankfully I killed those brain cells with alcohol before college could program them”, I think to myself sometimes. In the U.S., the total amount of student loan debt is roughly $1.8 TRILLION. Insanity. The scam we’ve been sold about college is bankrupting us. And at the end of the day, how many students obtain these degrees yet end up having to take minimum wage jobs after college because they have no true useful skills to apply? Or their degree is in a worthless field, “gender studies”. Sad state of affairs that this “scam” of college has gotten us into.

At the end of the day, the desire to learn is the most important thing, to learn useful knowledge/skills and share that knowledge with other humans. The teach/learn dynamic. You become a better learner through teaching, as it forces you to boil down information into a simple form to relay that to another and have them to understand it, and you become a better teacher through learning, as you need to know the topics you are relaying. And throughout our lives, the learn/teaching never stops - or hopefully it doesn’t!

For the most post we don’t need college, and in fact self-education from trusted, knowledgeable mentors with hands-on experience who are putting information out for free or cheap can be a much better option than going through expensive, authoritarian institutions.

---

If you’d like to have me as your online mentor sharing all the health and personal development information I’ve gained over the last 15 years, check this out →

Introducing my Applied Awareness Private Coaching Group

My Applied Awareness group combines coaching, courses, and community all into one.

I focus on sharing knowledge in 5 core areas of our lives:

1) Diet and Supplementation Efficiency
→ Knowing where our sustenance comes from, what’s in it, whether it’s worth buying, and creating customized regimens.
2) Corrective Exercise
→ Dealing with muscular imbalances, building better posture and a stronger foundation for movement.
3) Honing Discernment
→ Strengthening our mind against psy-ops and mental manipulation.
4) Psychoanalysis with Archetypes
→ Understanding ourselves and other people better through knowledge of universal patterns of behavior.
5) Scaling Your Non-Job
→ Bringing our passions to the world and exchanging value with them.

This group includes:
- Weekly Zoom calls for Q&A and check-ins
- Worksheets for self-assessment
- Daily video updates throughout the recurring programs
- A community answering each other’s question, focusing on accountability and supporting each other’s wins
- 70+ Videos in 8 different video courses you can watch on your own time

👇Click below to learn more about my 6 Week Program launching Sunday Sept 28th👇