In response to a column, one PhD student gives his personal branding advice
Tweet on — Link(ed)in — drop out.
Maria Fischer should be commended for her great column on April 16. Students are bogged down by “exams,” “homework” and “assignments.” She is right to point out that some classes taught at Ohio University require you to “study material that is unrelated to your future career.” How indeed are students supposed to find the time to tweet at CEOs in order to get noticed and get a job? But Fischer doesn’t go far enough. I offer, and bear with me here, a novel strategy; let’s call it “half-assing it.” It works like this: you attend about 55 percent of your classes, write papers the night before they’re due and generally don’t read anything that is assigned by your “professor.” Think of how much time you’d save to build your brand and tweet at CEOs — I also suggest camping out in front yards of generally successful businesspeople, and don’t forget good old begging — who knows, some CEO might notice you, and bam, you’ve Horatio-Algered your way to the top. Naturally, if you feel this still takes up too much time — and as we already discussed, your “education” severely limits just how much time you can spend on yourself — you could “suspend” your college work temporarily or definitely. This strategy I call “dropping out.” When done successfully, you have literally all the time in the world to build your brand, get yourself noticed and start your career.
Jasper Verschoor is a PhD student in modern American intellectual history at Ohio University.
{{tncms-asset app="editorial" id="15c91c5c-e48d-11e4-a2ff-7bdb9598fc8f"}}
