I am split over the criticism that he dropped college for this. It depends on what college can teach you, and what not. Being passionate about something that is valuable to you, it cannot, nor can we become passionate by switching a button over something that does not catch our interest. A proclaimed need not necessarily makes us focused on it. College can not teach you this amount of being focussed on something. The discipline to create this masterwork, may stay him for the time to come, and maybe pays off in the job he finds finally.

Concerning life quality, it certainly was time better spend than many other uses of your lifetime that are possible. And if the school is bad, every hour spend is waisted.

Maybe he becomes a professional model builder, for film studios, architectures, engineers, or a stage builder for theatres, something like that.

Life is not and should not always be about being efficient. Millions of people every day are highly efficient in their paperwork jobs, in offices, turning formulas around and around, and transferring bits from one data base to another. No matter what that is about, for the individual person it is a wasted day - precious lifetime wasted that nobody gives them back, never. Even worse, outside that job, many people still behave like that and collect thousands of snippets of paper for tax refundings and obey demands by bureaucracy and laws that steal more precious lifetime for them - for nothing. This young man maybe has the right balance between a rebellious nature and discipline and the ability to stay focussed on his goals that he may make his way outside the mainstream nevertheless.

Peter Jackson would have loved to have him in his miniature team.