Take your pick
A letter of advice from the real-life Don Draper
The following letter was written on this day in 1984 and comes from the highly-recommended book, The Unpublished David Ogilvy.
In 1984, David Ogilvy—legendary ad man, founder of the global agency Ogilvy & Mather, and widely considered the real-life inspiration for Don Draper—received a letter from his 18-year-old great-nephew, Harry. Fresh out of school in England and unsure of his next move, Harry was wrestling with a familiar question: should he go to university or dive straight into work? Ogilvy, famous for his intellect, wit, and uncompromising standards, responded with a letter that offered not one answer, but three.
June 6, 1984
Dear Harry,
You ask me whether you should spend the next three years at university, or get a job. I will give you three different answers. Take your pick.
Answer A. You are ambitious. Your sights are set on going to the top, in business or government. Today’s big corporations cannot be managed by uneducated amateurs. In these high-tech times, they need top bananas who have doctorates in chemistry, physics, engineering, geology, etc.
Even the middle managers are at a disadvantage unless they boast a university degree and an MBA. In the United States, 18 percent of the population has a degree, in Britain, only 7 percent. Eight percent of Americans have graduate degrees, compared with 1 percent of Brits. That more than anything else is why American management outperforms British management.
Same thing in government. When I was your age, we had the best civil service in the world. Today, the French civil servants are better than ours because they are educated for the job in the postgraduate Ecole Nationale d’Administration, while ours go straight from Balliol to Whitehall. The French pros outperform the British amateurs.
Anyway, you are too young to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life. If you spend the next few years at university, you will get to know the world – and yourself – before the time comes to choose your career.
Answer B. Stop frittering away your time in academia. Stop subjecting yourself to the tedium of textbooks and classrooms. Stop cramming for exams before you acquire an incurable hatred for reading.
Escape from the sterile influences of dons, who are nothing more than pickled undergraduates.
The lack of a college degree will only be a slight handicap in your career. In Britain, you can still get to the top without a degree. What industry and government need at the top is not technocrats but leaders. The character traits which make people scholars in their youth are not the traits which make them leaders in later life.
You put up with education for 12 boring years. Enough is enough.
Answer C. Don’t judge the value of higher education in terms of careermanship. Judge it for what it is – a priceless opportunity to furnish your mind and enrich the quality of your life. My father was a failure in business, but he read Horace in the loo until he died, poor but happy.
If you enjoy being a scholar, and like the company of scholars, go to a university. Who knows, you may end your days as a Regius Professor. And bear in mind that British universities are still the best in the world – at the undergraduate level. Lucky you. Winning a Nobel Prize is more satisfying than being elected Chairman of some large corporation or becoming a Permanent Undersecretary in Whitehall.
You have a first-class mind. Stretch it. If you have the opportunity to go to a university, don’t pass it up. You would never forgive yourself.
Tons of love,
David
An Apology
The past six weeks have been utterly overwhelming, hence the lack of updates to this newsletter. It’s very rare that I’m forced to take a break and it’s not something I enjoy doing, but in this case it was impossible to avoid due to my upcoming book1 and a run of Letters Live shows that took place in New York City last week. Please forgive the silence. If you’re a paid subscriber and would like me to extend your subscription at no cost, simply reply to this with a “Yes please!” or something similar (or email me at shaun@lettersofnote.com), and I’ll sort it. I’d do it in bulk but that doesn’t seem possible with Substack.
It’s good to be back.
Diaries of Note: 366 Lives, One Day a Time will be published in the UK on 9th October 2025. I’ll be sharing more with you soon, but in short: the book features 366 fascinating diary entries, one for each day of the (leap) year, each authored by a different person—people like Nelson Mandela, Frida Kahlo, Seamus Heaney, David Sedaris, Shirley Jackson, Emperor Uda, Brian Eno, Emma Thompson and Elton John, to name just a small fraction. A beautiful book, published by Faber & Faber, and illustrated with woodcut-style drawings. It’s taken years to get to this stage and I’m ready to burst.
Glad you are back! I missed your column.
Please don't keep us in suspense! Which option did Harry pick?! And what did Harry do with his life? Any ideas?