‘I am living proof’: Teen millionaire reveals truth about HSC

Year 12 students around the country are sweating on the start of their end-of-year exams — but teen millionaire Jack Bloomfield has a message for them.

And so it begins. Exam season. Those frantic few weeks that mark the culmination of 12 long years of schooling — of the homework and the study groups, the lost weekends and late nights spent cramming — producing that all important number that will decide your life’s trajectory.

Trust me, being in Grade 12 myself, I see and experience the worry and uncertainty first-hand.

Do well, and you can take your pick of university courses and the flood of job offers that will surely follow. But should you do poorly? Well, it’s better not to think about it.

Bloody hell. If they put high school students under any more pressure we’ll be at risk of turning into diamonds.

So then, let me release that pressure valve ever so slightly. Because the honest truth is that a less-than-stellar result in your final exams isn’t the end of your life. In fact, it might just be the best thing that ever happened to you.

I honestly am living proof of that. I started my first eCommerce business at 15 years old, with $500, learnt for free on YouTube and turned that into the wild success it is today.

Now of course this isn’t typical but we’ve all been taught that university is the only path to walk when you finish school, which is why more of us are heading to uni than ever before.

But the numbers simply don’t add up.

A 2018 Productivity Commission report found that 60 per cent of high-school leavers now attend university (up from around 50 per cent in 2010), but 12 per cent will drop out before graduation, with that number climbing to 22 per cent for students with lower ATAR scores.

And for those who do make it to graduation, around 27 per cent will still be searching for full-time work four months after leaving uni.

But while they might not have a job, they will have debt, and lots of it, at an average of $21,557 per graduate.

The working world is changing so fast that our traditional education system simply can’t keep up. As a result, employers now care less about what degree you’ve earned, or what score you got in your end-of-school exams, and more about what you can bring to the table.

How can you add value to the business? Improve profits? Bring fresh ideas? Everything else is just background noise.

Take Apple, for example, where only 50 per cent of the company’s American employees have a university degree. Google, Netflix and Siemens no longer require a four-year qualification either, with executives deciding traditional college degrees weren’t teaching the real skills needed to actually do the job.

That’s not an attack on university, of course. If I’m being completely honest, I’m still deciding what I’ll do when I finish school, and I might very well end up at uni myself.

It’s more that we need to abandon this idea that a university degree is the only way to find success, and that these end-of-year exams are this defining moment in our lives.

They’re not. I’ve proved this wrong over and over again along with so many other normal Australian kids.

In fact, whatever number is written on that piece of paper becomes largely irrelevant the moment you enter the workforce, no matter the industry. And even less important if you decide to build something for yourself.

So if you don’t get the mark you were hoping for, don’t panic. Your opportunities are every bit as limitless as someone who gets the highest possible ATAR.

And in a world in which real-world skills, life experience, personality and creativity are more valuable than ever, don’t listen to all the narrow minded individuals, a kid stuffing up “the most important year of their life” maybe isn’t so bad after all.

Jack Bloomfield is a 17-year-old entrepreneur who will begin sitting his end of school exams this week.