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Back to school

Nothing can ruin a summer vacation faster than these three little words - "Back to School!" Even now, 14 years since I walked out of my last exam, laughing maniacally, never to darken the doors of academia again, I still get a chill up my spine when

Nothing can ruin a summer vacation faster than these three little words - "Back to School!" Even now, 14 years since I walked out of my last exam, laughing maniacally, never to darken the doors of academia again, I still get a chill up my spine when commercials pop up on television or the August flyer arrives from Office Depot.

The only thing slightly worse than hearing those words is to imagine that they're being screamed at you by an evil clown, chasing after you with a blood-soaked Trapper Keeper.

Now that I'm older - at that advanced age where you say stupid things like "youth is wasted on the young" (though still shy of the "get off my lawn!" years) - I really do feel like I squandered a golden opportunity a long time ago. Squandered the crap out of it. Yes, I had fun, and a lot of it, but it doesn't last and living for the moment can play havoc with your future.

Why oh why was I in such a hurry to get out of high school? So I could move out of the house and pretend to be a real adult while I racked up a massive student loan? Then rush to graduate university so I could get an entry-level job somewhere to pay off a loan for four years of school over the next 10 years of my life?

If I had the opportunity to address a graduating class for a high school, here is what I would tell them: "Stay where you are. For as long as you can."

At my high school there was a huge emphasis on going to college or university, with something like 95 per cent of students moving on. To make that possible you quickly dropped the subjects you weren't very good at - never mind whether the information might be useful someday - so you could bring up your average and increase your chances of being accepted at a university (where you'd end up skipping about half your classes anyway).

And so I rushed it. In Ontario there used to be a Grade 13, but if you took a few extra courses here and there you could graduate in four-and-a-half years instead of five. I thought getting out early made me pretty smart, but now I realize that the smart thing would have been to hang out for another few years. My brother took what was known as a "victory lap" at my old school (he graduated in 5.5 years) and one guy we were sure was a Narc was on year eight when I graduated.

If I had a chance to go back, knowing what I know now, I would have dug my heels in for a few more years and soaked up all that free education - the last free education I was ever going to get.

I would have ignored grades completely and learned a new language or two. I would have enrolled in every arts and music class available for my own enjoyment. I would have signed up for industrial arts courses that I couldn't fit in after Grade 10 and figured out how to do a lot of useful things. I would have taken and retaken every math and science course until I actually learned those subjects well enough to pursue all kinds of different career paths that were closed to me the moment I graduated.

I would have taken a commerce course, accounting, kinesiology, computer programming, homemaking... lots of great subjects that didn't fit into my accelerated schedule or that might have dragged down my precious average.

While you will need to graduate from university or college someday to get certain jobs, you don't actually need to go to university or college to be successful in life. Just ask college dropouts Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg or Steven Spielberg.

And if you want or need to go to a post-secondary school, what's the hurry? You owe it to your whole future to take a year or three to figure out what you really want to do with the rest of your life, putting some money aside all the while so you won't have to assume as much debt when you finally do figure it out. The average university student in Canada graduates around $27,000 in the hole. At three per cent interest - and rates are going up - you would have to pay $328 a month for 10 years, including over $12,000 in interest payments.

If the Great Recession has taught us anything it's that graduating with a degree doesn't guarantee you a good job or even a decent wage. Chances are you'll have to go back for a year to two and get a post-grad degree, digging your debt hole deeper to make yourself a little more employable.

I'm not saying university or college is a bad thing, but you really have to enroll in courses that are useful to your chosen career path. Farting around campus for three or four years while you figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life is an expensive waste.

You may have to go back to school in September, but imagine how different it would be if this time you actually wanted to go back?

That's my advice for the young people of today. Now get off my lawn!