Abe Alba

“I never let my schooling interfere with my education”

Attributed to Mark Twain

Do I regret dropping out of school when I was 19? Absolutely not! But I do wish I had had the clarity I have today about what I want to do with my life, the meaning of existence, and what’s truly worth pursuing.

Education doesn’t appear on our personal financial statements, but it does have a profound impact on them. A government could freeze all the assets you’ve built over so many years in just one minute, but they can never take away your knowledge.

Now, much of our education can come from schooling, but the two are completely different things.

Throughout my life, many people have frowned when I tell them I’m self-taught. I soon learned that many, many people assume that if you are not backed by an institution, your knowledge is worthless or at least unreliable. And although people’s opinion has changed a bit since the pandemic, I’ve noticed that many still believe that if you learned online, your knowledge is inherently flawed.

Being self-taught generally entails meticulous analysis that is not typically found in academia. The lack of professional guidance forces us not to take anything for granted, which also trains us to better navigate the “valleys” of confusion and frustration. We tend to focus on knowledge and skills rather than grades. I’d dare say that good self-taught learners are far less likely to delude themselves. Plus, we don’t need to be supervised to keep going; we develop commitment and discipline out of pure internal drive. Call me what you want, but to me, that’s twice as valuable.

It is really tough, and at times frustrating, not to have someone to ask the difficult questions. But in my case, this became a sort of training I could never have expected: I learned that all the answers I need eventually come to me, and that learning is a matter of patience, attention, timing and perseverance.

Unlike schooling where you are expected to pass the course on the first try while stumbling as little as possible, learning is a continuous process where failing is necessary and healthy as long as you turn failure into your teacher. Plus, you can always, and should often, go back to the basics for greater understanding. Of course, I also believe in the saying: “Smart people learn from their mistakes; wise people learn from the mistakes of others”.

An experienced autodidact also becomes agile at evaluating and even auditing information and its sources. AI has given me hundreds of answers and explanations that have boosted my learning across many areas. Spending long hours interacting with it has shown me that AI is far from perfect or a hundred percent reliable; something that dozens of business managers urgently need to realize.

The other day, I bought a book to get a better grasp of a subject I had passed without solid knowledge or technique. It is a book suggested by the school itself. It was disappointing to realize it is riddled with errors, forcing me to act almost like an auditor instead of a beginner. The sad thing is: while many self-taught people like me are doubted because we learn on our own, many books like that are backed by publishing houses and not properly reviewed by schools.

According to my grades back in school, there was no earthy way I could ever learn math. Using my self-teaching skills, I have become fluent in arithmetic and I’m finally starting to get algebra and analytic geometry.

Would I recommend young people or anyone else to pursue a bachelor’s degree in 2026? Sure! The Bible says: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another”. Being self-taught can become a path of solitude that I don’t recommend, at all! I know tuition can be very expensive in some countries. By comparison, I don’t think we suffer as much in Mexico. So from my point of view, I’d say that the time and money you invest in school brings many benefits beyond knowledge and skills.

I believe that both society and higher education institutions have a lot to rethink and restructure when it comes to their methods and curriculum, especially with AI all around us. But as a man in my mid-thirties, I would never dare underestimate the advantages of traditional schooling. Nor could I, since I enrolled business school last year and I combine AI with pencil, paper and rulers on a daily basis.

I would never underestimate formal education, just as I tell everyone: Never underestimate the self-taught.

What are your thoughts on this? Keep the conversation going at hola@abrahamalba.com . I’d really love to hear and learn from you.

Abe Alba