Why I dropped out (and went back)

In 2024 I dropped out of my engineering degree. Then I went back and finished it. Graduated June 2026.

People want one of those halves to be the story — the bold dropout, or the responsible return. Neither is. The point is the decision underneath both.

I was building Engaze. The company was pulling harder than any lecture, and the split attention was taxing both. So I stopped splitting.

It wasn't a rejection of school. It was a bet that the most useful thing I could learn that year wasn't on the syllabus — it was running a real company with real clients and real money on the line.

I didn't take the year off. I self-studied business the way I'd studied code — obsessively, applied immediately. Fundraising, operations, pricing, how to actually run and scale a company.

And I had a live lab: Engaze. Every concept went straight into a company with paying clients on the other end. No classroom hands you that feedback loop — the cost of being wrong is real, so the learning sticks.

Here's the part people don't expect. I returned, cleared the final stretch, and graduated while still scaling CampusOS.

Not because a degree is magic. Because leaving something unfinished for no real reason is its own kind of weakness. I'd already gotten what I left for. Walking away permanently at that point would've been ego, not strategy.

Dropping out is easy — anyone frustrated enough can quit on a Tuesday. Grinding through a degree you resent just to say you did isn't strength either.

The flex is knowing which one the moment calls for. I left when staying would've cost me the company. I came back when finishing cost me nothing and closed a loop cleanly. Both were the right call — at different times, for different reasons.