The Fortune Cookie That Made Me Drop Out of College | by Jagjit Singh | AI Edge for Leaders — By TEAMCAL AI | Nov, 2025

About a week ago, I dropped out of college.

Now, I’m not a superstitious person, but the things that happened leading up to my decision were, let’s say, of a supernatural quality.

I ignored my hunch to leave college for weeks and chugged along uninspiringly until a strange series of events kind of “forced my hand.”

For some context, I was doing my master’s in computer engineering at San Jose State University.

But I wasn’t really into it. I was only doing my master’s because I couldn’t find a job, because the tech market is in shambles right now. If you’re a tech bro, you know what it’s like.

For months, I had been debating whether to continue with my master’s. It was a question that was repeatedly on my mind.

I went to classes with no real interest. Half of the time, I would just daydream about being elsewhere, about doing more exciting things.

I hated every minute of sitting in class. It got to a point, especially like a week before I dropped out, where I realized that I had to make a definitive decision.

Either I was going to pursue my master’s with diligence or drop out and do something else with my life.

Despite that realization, as is typical of someone in a state of apathy, I was still unconsciously waiting for some event “out there” to happen, some magical transformation to occur that would save me and relieve me of my dilemma.

And to my surprise, something did happen, but not in a way that could have been anticipated.

1. The Fortune Cookie

I guess you could say it all “started” on Friday, October 31st, 2025.

It was Halloween. A spooky day for a spooky event.

That evening, I got some Panda Express. Later in the night, I opened a fortune cookie and the slip inside read something like:

An important question will be answered tomorrow

You know, I was amused. Because there was an important question on my mind that needed answering, and it had to do with my decision about dropping out of San Jose State.

Was this God talking to me, promising me a solution? For someone who does not think about God all that often, it’s funny that this thought would cross my mind

But a few minutes passed and I forgot about it.

An hour or so later, I absentmindedly threw the slip in the trash can as I was cleaning up, and not long after that, I went to sleep.

2. The “San Jose” Coincidence

Next morning, Saturday, November 1st, I wake up.

And as soon as I’ve remembered who I am, I also remember the dilemma I am still facing. Like usual, the question about going to San Jose hangs heavy on my mind.

The fortune cookie from the previous night promised a day with answers, but I don’t even remember that anymore, and even if I do, then I most certainly don’t believe it.

I spend most of the day doing uninspiring college work in this dull, mechanical state of mind, which I have become accustomed to.

Every few minutes, my concentration is disrupted by the intrusion of the same question: “Should I keep going to San Jose or drop out?”

Evening comes, and to get away from all the screens and city noise, and to think things out, I drive up to a nearby walking trail. It’s a nice place up on a hill. You get a beautiful view of the city, and you can also see a shadowy San Francisco in the distance, poking the sky with its many skyscrapers.

I walk for like an hour, wrestling with the same question, unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

As I am driving back home, lost deeply in my thoughts, that’s when something happens. Something to completely shock me out of my contemplation.

I am in a residential area, driving right toward the setting sun. I can barely see anything.

The cars in front of me stop, and so do I. Some pedestrians are crossing the street up ahead.

For the last time, I consider the same nagging question: “Should I keep going to San Jose?” And then I look through the rear-view mirror just in time to see a red SUV slam into the back of my car.

It’s no doubt the loudest metallic sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Luckily, no one is hurt. But my car’s pretty much destroyed from the back.

Now, of course, there’s nothing strange or “supernatural” about any of this. Accidents happen.

But the strange part comes later on when I am back home and have mentally recovered a bit. I open the maps app on my phone to really nail down the place of the accident because I need to file an insurance claim, and that’s when I notice something that gives me chills.

You know where the accident happened? A few feet away from a street, which for some unknown reason is called “San Jose” street.

Right next to San Jose street, my car, which is my primary mode of getting to San Jose, is destroyed as I am completely entangled in thoughts about going to San Jose. Add in the fortune cookie I had opened the prior day, promising me an answer to an important question, foolishly or not, I suddenly became completely confident as to what my next move in life was: to drop out of San Jose State, and that’s what I did.

And it’s only been a little more than a week, but I can say that it’s one of the best decisions I have made all year.

3. Reflection

Now, everything that I’ve presented here is just facts. It’s what transpired. It’s what I experienced.

Although I haven’t done the math, my guess is that the probability of things lining up the way they did is astronomically low.

Nevertheless, depending on who you are, you will take what’s been presented here differently. You will interpret and understand it based on who you are.

Some will dismiss it as nothing but an amusing coincidence, while others will call it a direct message from God.

While I have my own beliefs about the world, I think that discussion deviates from the point I am trying to make with this article.

Here is what I know: I already wanted to drop out of college.

The fortune cookie and the accident, is to some extent, just an excuse. My mind was already made up.

Despite intuition telling me to leave, it was logic and reason that kept me in school. And yet I wasn’t happy. I was basically reasoning myself into an unhappy and unfulfilling situation.

I lacked the courage to honor my intuition, which was to leave college and actually get out in the real world and do something meaningful.

Practically speaking, it doesn’t matter if the fortune cookie and the accident near San Jose Street was divine intervention or dumb luck.

All I know is that it moved me to do the thing which I already wanted to do but couldn’t quite get myself to do.

So, for you reading this article, maybe you have something in your life that you’ve been postponing, some pursuit that you intuitively feel pulled toward, but something that you have denied or suppressed for whatever reason.

Maybe this is your wake-up call.

You don’t necessarily need a fortune cookie, a car crash, and a couple of spooky coincidences to make the right decision.

I think most of us intuitively know what to do. And when we don’t know what we want to do, we most certainly know what we don’t want to do. And we can use that knowledge to guide us in the right direction.

Often, it’s nothing more than a matter of conjuring up the courage to change, of embracing the uncertainty that is an intrinsic part of following an unfamiliar path.

For me, it was a question of: “Well, if I drop out of college, what am I going to do? The tech job market is terrible, so I am most likely gonna be without a job for a few months in the best case, and much longer in the worst case.”

Suddenly, no professors are outlining my plan for the week. I have an empty calendar in front of me, which is a little scary in the beginning, because there’s no direction, no plan.

It feels like an invitation to complete chaos and entropy. But, from another perspective, a reset like this is a great opportunity to develop agency and take control of the direction of your life.

They say every experience in life brings with it a lesson. So one of the lessons that I learned from my experience is: never argue with a hunch.

When you suppress desires of the heart, which is what I believe strong hunches are an expression of, they don’t just go away. They continue to exist just below the surface of the conscious mind and eventually break out and express themselves in undesirable ways.

This is taught in religious and spiritual traditions as well as modern psychology. Suppression of deep desires is a silent killer.

A common refute at this point is always something like, “So I should go ahead and murder someone if I deeply desire it?” Of course not.

Malicious desires like these are always a result of a life-long suppression of other more natural desires that go unmet.

For example, suppressed ambition becomes a quiet resentment that looks to sabotage the success of others.

Suppressed affection becomes obsession.

Suppressed independence turns into dangerous rebellion.

Suppressed connection results in nihilism.

Suppressed creativity leads to cynicism.

Suppressed playfulness expresses itself in the form of sadism.

And on and on.

If you want to live well, you have one of two options: either fulfill your desires or let them go.

Anything else is just unnecessary self-torture.