Your Degree Is Outdated. Your Curiosity Isn’t.
What you know matters less than what you learn next.
I never earned a traditional college degree. Not because I lacked ability, but because life pushed me straight into work. So I did what a lot of Gen X kids did. I learned on the job. I figured things out the hard way. I paid attention, asked questions, and kept upgrading myself because no one else was going to.
Degrees used to be enough. Not anymore. The world moves too fast. Industries flip. Skills age out. A degree from the eighties or nineties has the staying power of dial up internet. Great history. Terrible bandwidth.
Here is the real separator now. Not the degree you got, but the curiosity you keep.
Curiosity is the engine. Tenacity is the fuel. You learn something new because you want to, you stack it on the last thing you learned, and suddenly you are outpacing people who assumed graduation meant they were done.
This is where Gen X has an advantage. We grew up without the internet, so we learned how to solve problems with grit. Then the internet arrived and we adapted. That gives us a rare mix of resourcefulness and speed. Reinvention is not a theory for us. It is muscle memory.
Your value does not come from a framed piece of paper.
It comes from the skills you keep building long after everyone else stops.
Your curiosity opens more doors than any diploma ever could.
Spend thirty minutes this week learning one thing you have been avoiding. That is tenacity in motion.
Stay curious. Stay tenacious. Reinvent on purpose.
CTRL:T
CTRL by JP Bristol
Clarity. Tenacity. Reinvention. Legacy.
Like CTRL by JP Bristol? The CTRL-ALT-REINVENT community is the unfiltered room. Real stories, real people, real progress.




Curiosity keeps coming up recently, and this post is spot on. Connection, meaning, let’s add curiosity to that mix. And if you write, you best be curious. Also, love how you just stated the truth and got out. The message reverberates from there. Great economy.