I assembled a computer out of paper clips in kindergarten. Not a working computer. I was five. But I was already obsessed with how things connected, how systems worked, how you could build something functional from components that did nothing on their own.
That obsession drove every educational decision I made for the next four decades.
It took me from a kid wiring things together on the floor to Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services at Trader Joe’s, managing technology for a $16 billion retail chain. After that, it took me into ghostwriting, where I’ve published 113+ books and completed 54+ ghostwriting projects. None of it would have happened without the foundation that education built, and not just the formal kind.
Where Should You Start Your Education?
What matters is what you do with the education, not where the building is located.Share on X
I started at a junior college. I had the ambition, but I was paying my own way and working multiple jobs at the same time. Junior college gave me the fundamentals without the financial burden of university tuition, and those fundamentals turned out to be exactly what I needed.
Before junior college there was high school, and the skill it handed me was welding, as if I’d be a welder my whole life. Shop class was all about acetylene torches and how not to burn my own face off. I also got my tie caught in the lathe once. It yanked me in, but it was a clip-on, so it came off before it could mangle my throat. The shop teacher was not happy with me.
The basics count more than most people realize: programming logic, mathematics, writing, communication. I hate hearing students treat them as boxes to check on the way to a degree, because I’ve used every one of them in every job I’ve held since, and the people who skip them end up paying for it for years.
I used programming logic to manage enterprise systems at Trader Joe’s. I used writing skills to build a ghostwriting business. I used communication skills in every meeting, every client relationship, every negotiation for twenty years of corporate leadership.
If you’re a student trying to decide whether junior college is “good enough,” it is. What matters is what you do with the education.
Should you study outside your major?
Schools require a broad curriculum for a reason. You don’t know what knowledge will matter ten years from now. My technology career required far more than technical knowledge. Managing a department at Trader Joe’s meant understanding budgets, personnel management, vendor negotiations, corporate communications, and organizational politics. None of that was covered in my computer science coursework. I learned it through the wider education I almost dismissed as irrelevant at the time.
Writing requires even broader knowledge. When I ghostwrite a book for a brain surgeon, I need to understand enough about neuroscience to ask intelligent questions and structure his expertise into a narrative readers can follow. When I write for a financial strategist, I need to grasp investment concepts well enough to translate them clearly. When I coach fiction writers, I draw on psychology, history, science, philosophy, and decades of reading across every genre.
You don’t know what knowledge will matter ten years from now.
Every class I ever took, every subject I ever studied, has shown up in my work eventually. The education that seems irrelevant now is building capacity you’ll need later. Trust the process.
Steve Jobs told a version of this in his June 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. He’d dropped out of Reed College after six months and started dropping in on classes, including calligraphy, because Reed offered what he called “perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.”
He learned about serif and sans serif typefaces and the spacing between letter combinations. He said none of it had even a hope of practical use in his life.
Ten years later, when his team was designing the first Macintosh, it all came back to him. “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts,” he said. Jobs was a dropout, so he’s an odd witness for a post about education, and I still think his story makes my point better than mine does. A class he took with no plan behind it ended up in the design of a computer millions of people used.
Should you work while you study?
I worked multiple jobs through college. It was exhausting, and also among the most valuable things I ever did.
Working while studying teaches you time management under real pressure. Not the theoretical kind where a productivity book tells you to block your calendar. The kind where you have a shift ending at 11 PM and a paper due at 8 AM and you figure out how to make both happen because the alternative is failing at one of them. That skill transferred directly to every demanding role I held afterward.
At Trader Joe’s, managing technology for hundreds of stores meant constant competing priorities with real consequences. In ghostwriting, I write 10,000 to 12,000 words a day while managing multiple client projects, business operations, and coaching sessions. The ability to handle heavy workloads without cracking wasn’t something I learned in a classroom.
I learned it by working through college and having no choice but to perform. If you’re a student working a job and feeling like you’re at a disadvantage compared to classmates who can focus entirely on school, you’re not. You’re building endurance and discipline that will outlast any GPA advantage they have.
Get Certifications and Practical Experience
A degree gets you in the door. Certifications and practical experience determine how far you go once you’re inside. I earned CERT emergency response certifications. I write more about this in my lifelong rock and mineral collecting. I built hands-on technical expertise through lab work, internships, and every practical opportunity I could find in college.
When I entered the workforce, I had more than theory. I’d shown capability. That mattered to the people doing the hiring. At every stage of my career, certifications opened doors for me. They told employers I’d invested in skills they could verify. That carried more weight than anything general I could point to.
For more on a career pivot into ghostwriting, hear Richard on The Thirsty Professional.
In technology, where the ground shifts constantly, certifications proved I was current and committed to staying that way. For students: if your college offers lab assistant positions, research opportunities, or industry certification programs, take them. References from professors and supervisors who watched you perform carry more weight than a transcript. I left college early myself, because a teacher offered me a job as a programmer and I took it over working as a lab assistant. I started there as a coder and worked my way up to manager, then VP.
The Education That Continues After School
From the podcast
Rutherford Pascal spent thirty-two years in pharma and biotech and was promoted eight times, and puts the requirement plainly on Leaders and Their Stories:
You just have to continue to evolve and get better and work on yourself. Continue to work on yourself, and that’s going to get you those outsized results.The degree is the start of the education, not the end of it. Everything after is self-assigned.
Formal education ends. Learning doesn’t. The technology I managed at Trader Joe’s in my final year looked nothing like the technology I managed in my first year. The industry evolved continuously, and staying effective meant continuous self-education: reading, training, attending conferences, experimenting with new systems, learning from every failure and success.
Ghostwriting demands the same continuous learning. Every client brings a different field, a different audience, a different set of challenges. I’ve written about artificial intelligence, blockchain, neurosurgery, personal finance, digital transformation, property management, cybersecurity, and franchise operations. Each project required me to learn enough about a new domain to write about it with authority.
Decades of education, both formal and self-directed, built that capacity for rapid learning. My fiction writing draws on everything I’ve ever learned or experienced. My handbooks at The Writing King cover fiction craft from character development to world-building to point of view, and every one of them reflects knowledge accumulated across a lifetime of deliberate learning.
Education doesn’t end when school does. You keep it up for as long as you want to stay relevant, and the people who stopped learning the day they got the diploma shouldn’t wonder why the work passed them by.
The Foundation Under Everything
A kid assembling a computer from paper clips in kindergarten. A college student working multiple jobs and eating cheap. An introverted coder at a dinner table with DEC pioneers. A Director managing technology for a $16 billion company. A ghostwriter with 54+ ghostwritten books and 113+ of his own. Every stage built on the one before it. Every piece of education, formal and informal, contributed something to what came next. The junior college fundamentals made the career possible. The broad curriculum made the career versatile. The work ethic made the career sustainable. The continuous learning made the career long. What education gives you is capacity, in your head and in your habits, and it grows over decades. I think schools do a poor job of saying so, and students who treat college as four years to get through end up cheating themselves out of the most useful thing it offers.
If you’re a student right now, the toga parties and the drinking will still be there later.
Use this time to build the foundation for the rest of your life. There will be plenty of time for fun once you have something solid underneath you. If you have a book in you and want help getting it out, whether through ghostwriting or book coaching, start with a conversation.
My education built the career. The career built the expertise. The expertise is what I bring to your project.
My take
Use college to build capacity, and save the parties for later. A broad curriculum made my career versatile, the work ethic made it sustainable, and the habit of learning made it long. Schools do a poor job of saying that out loud. Students who treat those years as something to get through cheat themselves out of the best part. Keep learning after school ends, because the growth runs for decades.
