The University Of California Irvine s College Drop Out...

A little over a year ago I contributed to the University of California Irvine s college drop-out statistic for freshmen engineering majors. After walking out of yet another challenging lecture on something about angular momentum; I dropped off my withdrawal form at the Student Center and embarked on my glorious adventure to pursue a career in visual development. By the grace of my parents I was allowed to return home and spent my days honing my craft and becoming the modern Picasso I was destined to be. And then they asked me to pay rent. Principle 1: People Face Trade-offs My introduction is actually not reality. In truth, this was a rather trying time of my life. I spent my first quarter of college scrambling-and failing-to understand the basic principles of engineering and spent the remaining two on academic probation. I was in college because it s what everyone did. Because my parents wanted me to. But it wasn’t what I wanted for myself. That summer I had an honest talk with my sister and she mentioned how it might be best for me to consider alternative paths. The arts have always been a major part of my life and I was always talking about how neat it would be to play a role in the creation of worlds found in Disney and Pixar movies. So I dropped out. For four months I gave it my all. Every day I dove into my art with a specific goal aimed at improvement and diversifying my portfolio. I got in contact with professionals in the industry and