I left university. I didn't stop learning.

I am a university dropout.

I studied Genetic Engineering and Business Administration. My GPA was 4.85 out of 5, with distinction. I did not finish because my parents could not afford to continue paying for my studies.

That is the story.

I do not want to turn it into a more impressive version in which I looked at the education system, decided I was above it and walked out to build an empire.

I did not leave because I had nothing left to learn.

Learning had already become part of my life

In the summer of 1999, when I was thirteen and a half, I worked at my uncle Sohail's printing press, Prenad.

I moved paper between machines. I watched people work with colour, materials and details that would eventually become something a customer held in their hands.

Upstairs, designers worked on Macintosh computers. I was interested in what they were doing and how it connected to what happened on the production floor.

Being the boss's nephew did not put me above carrying paper.

That early exposure mattered. Design was connected to a process. Somebody had to make the thing, check it and deliver it. The screen was one part of that.

Later, computers became a way to keep exploring. I learned by trying to make things work and finding out what I did not yet understand.

Then there was a website to deliver

At sixteen, I took on my first serious website for Tropicana Hotels and Resorts.

There were six properties. I had agreed to the work before fully understanding what building it would involve.

My uncle bought me a computer, and I had a great deal to learn.

Design. Animation. How the pages fitted together. How to get the work onto a server. The site included a way for visitors to send booking requests by email.

It took about two months.

I would not use that story to recommend promising anything you cannot yet do. Other people carry the consequences when a promise fails.

What stayed with me was the experience of having a real problem that required learning. Curiosity had somewhere to go. The work gave me a way to find out whether I understood what I was studying.

LEARNING HAD A JOB TO DO.

A missing degree is still a missing degree

I am proud of what I have built. I also have no need to pretend I graduated.

Those facts can sit together.

I respect formal education. I know what it means to want to continue and be unable to. I would never tell someone that leaving university is the ingredient they need for a successful life.

My route was my route. It included opportunities, help from other people, decisions that worked and chapters that required another direction.

The useful thing I can offer from it is much smaller than a formula: keep learning, and give the learning somewhere real to be tested.

Ask questions without pretending you already know. Make something. Let someone more experienced explain why part of it does not work. Try again with that understanding.

A qualification can record a period of study. The responsibility to keep learning continues afterwards, whether you received the qualification or not.

What are you curious about now.. and what could you make that would require you to understand it properly?