What I Learned From Not Going to College

I did the IB program. Took AP classes. Loaded my schedule with every advanced course I could. Not because I had to — but because I loved learning. I was curious about how things worked, how systems connected, how ideas became execution.

Everything in my academic path pointed toward college. I had the grades. I had the test scores. I got into over 40 schools — including several Ivy Leagues. If you looked at the surface, I had followed the playbook perfectly.

But underneath, something else had already started.

At the same time I was studying for exams and writing college essays, I was building something real — a platform that could understand code, debug it, explain it, and eventually evolve it. I didn’t know it would become Kodezi yet. But I knew it mattered.

And this was before ChatGPT existed. Before college CS students were casually throwing around words like “LLMs” and “prompt engineering.” While most people were still learning what machine learning was, I was building with it — trying to give codebases memory, autonomy, and long-term structure.

The Hardest Decision Was Walking Away

Saying no to college — after doing everything to earn it — wasn’t easy.
But when I compared the opportunity to learn about startups in a classroom versus continuing to run one in real life, the choice became obvious.

I didn’t want to slow down the thing that was already alive.
I didn’t want to simulate risk when I was already living it.

I had users. A product. A roadmap. And a problem worth solving.
So I turned down the acceptances — not out of rebellion, but alignment. I wasn’t leaving school behind. I was building my own.

What I Learned Instead

Not going to college didn’t mean I stopped learning.
It meant I had to own the structure of how I learned.

Here’s what that looked like:

• Execution became my curriculum. I learned by doing — shipping product, debugging issues, scaling infrastructure, making hires.

• Accountability became real. There were no safety nets. If something broke, it affected real users. If I messed up, the company paid for it.

• Pressure taught me more than deadlines ever could. IB taught me how to operate under stress. Running a startup taught me how to make decisions through it.

• I still read. I still write. I still study. But my feedback loop wasn’t a grade — it was growth, usage, investor belief, team trust, and whether the system I was building actually worked.

I Wasn’t Early. The System Was Late.

I started building Kodezi before AI infrastructure had a name — before anyone in my age group, let alone my school, really understood where machine learning was headed. I wasn’t ahead because I planned it that way. I was ahead because I built from need — and the tools eventually caught up.

By the time ChatGPT became mainstream, I was already years into solving problems most people were just starting to articulate.

That’s the thing college couldn't offer me: time spent ahead of the curve.

No Degree. No Pause. Just Progress.

This isn’t an anti-college story. I have deep respect for academia.
But I knew I had one shot to ride the wave I was already on — and it didn’t make sense to trade that for lectures and dorm rooms.

Some people go to school to find their path.
I found mine by building.

And that education hasn’t ended.
It just doesn’t take place on a campus.