After a year, he dropped out of the program with a B+ average. He was a good student and would have made a great engineer. Columbia University just seemed too large and too impersonal to him. He wanted something less social and not as demanding. .
After Columbia University, Hughes decided to see the world and find something that made him happy and that he enjoyed. He spent one year in Mexico and held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, a busboy, and traveled to Africa and Europe as a seaman. In 1923, he traveled on a freighter to the Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium, Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa. He later went to Italy and France as well as Russia and Spain. He eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Later in November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. and began writing poetry. He soon started sitting in clubs as a pastime so that he could listen to blues, jazz, and write poetry. Through these experiences a new rhythm emerged in his writing. A series of poems were written also. Hughes's works were beginning to be published and to flourish. His first published poem was "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". It appeared in "Brownie's Book". This fine essay also appeared in the "Nation". The essay discussed a black writer who preferred to be considered a white poet instead of a black poet. It was meant to educate others on how many black poets, just the one in the essay, wished they were white poets. He took a job in 1925 with Dr. Carter G. Woodson, editor of the Journal of Negro Life and History and founder of Black History Week. In 1926, he moved back to Harlem. In that same year, Alfred A. Knopf published Hughes's first book of poetry titled "The Weary Blues". He then received a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1929, he received his B.A. degree. In 1930 his first novel, "Not Without Laughter", won the Harmon gold medal for literature.
Hughes's poems, short plays, essays and short stories appeared in the NAACP publication Crisis Magazine and in Opportunity Magazine.