Again there is no time frame. Its something that is society induces but yes its very hard to see from where you are right now. Sridhar Vembu who runs Zoho.com

Again there is no time frame. Its something that is society induces but yes its very hard to see from where you are right now. Sridhar Vembu who runs Zoho.com (chennai I think) doesnt hire graduate students. He hires people who havent got a degree. Try contacting him if you dont get into an engineering school. College IS important but its not sooo important that if you dont get into a good one that your life will be ruined. I'm now working with people who went much worse colleges than me. Even one guy who spent 3 years finishing 9 credits :). Ie he never finished college. Even if you go to a bad college, still go. It will give you a lot of free time and the oppurtunity to study. It does help. But if you dont get into a college at all, then there are many other avenues open to you from Zoho to starting something on your own to logging onto oDesk.com and start working on small projects. Yes I'm from India :) but now live in New York city. How to control negative thoughts: 1. Do something about your situation instead of thinking about your situation. This will take time to learn. In India we learn to analyze, read and think about stuff. But in reality that takes a back seat to actually "doing". Doing is much more important than reading. When you find yourself thinking about your problems instead of doing something to make it better then you need to mentally force yourself out of it and start doing something. Anything that takes you even an inch towards your goal. Learn C, C++. Contribute to open source software (really good way to get a great job later on). Get your body into shape (www.stronglifts.com - checkout the forums for other indians). Sign up to teach someone english in your city. 2. You need to help someone else at least once a day. Something unselfish. It can be leading a blind person across a street or calling up a relative you havent talked to in a while and saying hi. Something that will take 10 minutes but will really help someone else's condition. This will also force you to focus on others which will get rid of a lot of negativity. If you do both of the above then you'll start changing. Change takes 2 years so dont think it will happen overnight. However if you dont start changing today, you'll never change. Best of luck man. Drop me an email at railsnoob at yahoo dot com, if you have more questions. Keep fighting.