Praxis Capstone: A Retrospective of the Past Nine Months

About three and a half years ago, my dad stumbled across a program called Praxis while listening to a podcast. Being as in favor of hands-on education as he is, he mentioned it to me in a conversation as an option to consider after high school.

Near the end of my sophomore year in high school, I began to consider Praxis as a real option instead of going to college, as I had no clue what I would want to study in college.

By the time my junior year was in full swing, I mentally fully committed to Praxis. I had begun communications with Mitchell Earl, and he helped guide me through the application process. As my junior year ended, I got accepted to start Praxis in August of 2023.

Throughout my senior year of high school, I watched all my friends navigate the whirlwind of college applications, essays, scholarships, housing, and finally moving, all the while I sat by and simply waited for August. Despite heavy warning from both my counselor and my parents, I had essentially given up since day one of that senior year, fully banking on an opportunity that I wasn’t even sure would pan out for me, but I had peace knowing that things would eventually work out for me.

Now here I am, on the other side of those nine months in May of 2024. I’m writing this to answer the million-dollar question: was it worth it?

In short, yes. But I’m here to do more than give a one word answer, so let’s get started.

The Day-to-Day

Every Tuesday, Praxis holds a morning Zoom meeting for about an hour. Going into the first one, I didn’t really know what to expect at all. I had been given a vague outline of the course, but I wasn’t sure of what I was walking into. After the meeting ended, I still felt a little unsure. I could feel that I was doing the right thing, but it was still nerve racking to know that I was officially taking a different path from everyone else. I had some doubts about whether or not this would work out for me, but I decided it best to go where the program took me. My goals were very, very simple: I wanted a job, and I wanted to work remote. I made sure to establish those two things very early on with my mentor, Ryan, and everything I did during this program was measured against those goals.

During the meeting, we were given our first weekly assignments, and getting my nose buried in some work helped my doubts with the course. If nothing else, I could complete the tasks in front of me. As the course evolved, however, my confidence in the program increased, as did my weekly workload.

Modules, Part I: Shots in the Dark

Praxis kicked off with a mandatory two-month section of the program that all students went through. It was focused primarily on setting goals for what we wanted out of the program and out of life, as well as prioritizing what would be important to us in a professional setting (work/life balance, salary, status, etc.). After those two months, we were presented with many different options of month-long ‘modules’, that we could choose to take in the next four months. Leading up to Praxis, my dad and a couple of his friends (who are themselves accomplished salesmen), said they thought I would be good in the sales field, so that’s what I trended towards. With that in mind, I chose to focus on fields that were somehow related to sales, and the first module I chose was Content Marketing. 

The main reason I chose Content Marketing was because I have been interested in things like graphic design and photoshop for a while. Most of the assignments were pretty straight-forward and open ended. Descriptions for an assignment were often as vague as “create a week-long ad campaign for a company you find interesting”, along with guidelines to help us. While this wasn’t my first experience using design software, I was (and am) essentially brand new at it. I only used Canva, as it was easy to understand and helped me get results quickly. While I more or less enjoyed the unit, I don’t think I see myself doing this in the future. Graphic design and subsequently marketing are incredibly saturated fields as it is, and I don’t have enough interest in those things to put in the time and effort to build the skills to stand out.

Overall, I would say this unit was worth it. While I don’t plan on going into it for the foreseeable future, I think it was good to preview what a job in that field is like.

My next module was the one with the most pressure attached to it: Sales. Honestly, this module didn’t really help me narrow down how much I wanted to go into the field. That isn’t the fault of Praxis, though. It mainly had to do with my opinions of the work; I was half-expecting one of the assignments to make or break my interest in the topic, but I came out the other side not having minded much of the work. With that, my first two module months were complete, and I more or less knew what I wanted to do.

Modules, Part II: Honing In

The last two months of free choice modules were almost filler modules for me. By this point, I knew I would either want to focus on marketing or sales going forward, so I just had to fill out the modules with anything that might be relevant going forward.

The first one I chose was Copywriting. It was very straightforward: it was about becoming a more effective writer. I figured that this could be useful to me no matter what field I went into, and Praxis’ module on it helped me notice different tendencies in writing and some pitfalls to avoid in writing.

The fourth and last module I chose was the No Code/AI Tools module. I chose this one on a whim, not really sure what else to choose, and to be honest it was not very helpful. If I was into programming or other tech-related fields, I definitely would have found valuable information in this module, but given my interests and projected career path, it just wasn’t for me.

All in all, the second half of modules was alright. It wasn’t detrimental in any way, but there was not too much for me to see after the Sales and especially Copywriting units.

The Social Aspects

One of the core concepts of Praxis is the relationship between the mentor and the student. My mentor for the course was Ryan Ferguson, and he did a great job. As you go through your weekly modules, you meet with your mentor once a week to talk about goal setting, pacing, and anything you might need help with. He also helped me on my job search, finding any opportunities that fit my personal criteria.

Another huge concept is the community itself. The weekly meetings are structured to help everyone get to know each other, and it works. As I’m writing this, our cohort is planning a meetup trip to Colorado for five days. I will admit, I didn’t utilize the cohort as much as I could. I’m pretty introverted, so it often takes a while for me to warm up to people, and it’s often difficult for me to be outgoing with people I don’t really know. Thankfully, the people in my cohort are awesome, which is the reason that I’m going to Colorado in the first place. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I think I should’ve been more proactive and intentional in reaching out to cohort members privately to talk.

The Wrap-Up: How did I measure up to my goals?

As I mentioned, I came into Praxis with exactly two goals: land a job, and work remotely, and as of earlier this year, I’ve done exactly that. I recently landed a remote sales agent position with Symmetry Financial Group. After I finish the state licensing exam and get selling, it promises to be a truly incredible opportunity for me in terms of both income and work/life balance.

Overall, Praxis was a smash-hit success. Not only was I guided into my first real job and subsequently the beginning of my career, but I met a lot of great people through the program, without which none of this would’ve been possible. If you’re reading this and you know someone who might be interested in Praxis or doesn’t want to go to college, tell them to at least look into the program, it’s well worth it.