Source: Noam Galai / Getty
Yandy Smith’s adopted daughter took to her YouTube channel recently to announce that she was dropping out of college to focus on her channel full-time.
Infinity Gilyard, who was featured in Season 9 of Love and Hip Hop New York after Smith was said to have taken her in, is a freshman at the City College of New York. She has a pretty thriving YouTube channel with more than 41,000 followers and realized she “couldn’t balance it” with her studies. So she’s opted to drop out of school to focus on growing it.
“I have made the decision to drop out of college. I have decided that college is not for me,” she said in a video on her channel. “It is distracting me from my bigger purpose in life and my goals that I have personally for myself and not what those around me want.”
“College is just not for everybody. I want to pursue YouTube. I think this is where I should be. This is where I need to be. I’m willing to take that risk and that’s just what it’s about to be,” she added.
Infinity didn’t make mention of Yandy in her video, but she did make it clear that she didn’t care what anyone in her life might think about her choice to strike while the iron’s hot as opposed to focusing on education.
“I don’t know what my moms going to say. That’s her business. I don’t know what my grandmother’s going to say. That’s her business. I don’t care about what my brothers going to say because that’s their business. I don’t care about what y’all going to say cause that’s y’all business,” she said. “I have made the decision to drop out of college. I will be withdrawing myself from college this week before second semester starts.”
Standing by the move, she said that it was important as she was getting older to start making decisions for herself based on what she wants for her future. She knows that she wants to commit herself to her YouTube page and her followers.
“I want to take this very seriously and I’m going to take the risk of dropping out of college and putting my focus here,” she said. “This is the year. I made the decision already. It is what it is, it’s going to be what it’s going to be. Now it’s time to put that work in.”
For the record, Infinity was doing well in school. She finished her first semester off with a 3.5 GPA. However, she said having to focus on studying, prepping for finals, being on Zoom calls and trying to catch up on her sleep was just too much in just the first semester.
She offered words of encouragement to others who might have a dream they’re second-guessing following.
“Take risks. Walk out. Take that leap of faith. Make that decision and run with it,” she said. “I already got my YouTube plan. I already got my real estate plan. I got mad stuff up my sleeve, do you hear me? Nobody knows this so y’all the first ones to see it. I’m probably going to get tons of phone calls, tons of text messages, but it’s fine because we getting older. You gotta learn to make decisions on your own. You gotta trust yourself, so I’m trusting myself.”
