There are multiple pieces to work through here: 1) What is your actual goal? When you envision your life in the better place that you are depressed not to be i

There are multiple pieces to work through here: 1) What is your actual goal? When you envision your life in the better place that you are depressed not to be in right now, what does that life look like? What are you doing day-to-day? What do you know/have/do that you can't know/have/do right now? You can't undo the past so you need to shake the baggage from your previous university performance and focus on determining a next step on the path you want to travel. 2) You say: > I really want to go back to school and learn things the traditional way because it feels too overwhelming. but then you also say: > I really don't have the patience to start a second degree at a third tier college/university because it's pointless to do so. What is the disconnect that makes this pointless? If the goal is to learn CS the traditional way then why is it pointless to do this at a less prestigious college/university? Is the goal to learn the concepts or to have the top degree that says "CS"? Also, you probably can land an online masters spot with your experience and GPA. Worst case, take a couple of CS classes at a local university, get great grades, demonstrate that you are a reformed CS student and ready to succeed. 3) All of that said, you might be putting the CS degree on a pedestal because it's the thing you don't have. Is it really the lack of CS degree that is making you unhappy? Many people graduate with CS degrees and still feel lost. There is a lot of learning to do on the job after finishing school. Quick anecdote from Julia Evans[0] on this topic: > [...] I have 2 CS degrees but didn’t know what a system call was when I graduated. Some people think this is surprising and a failure of CS education. > [...] But more importantly – it’s ok to not know things. I knew practically nothing about a lot of really important programming concepts when I got out of grad school. Even though I’d started learning to program 8 years before! Now I know those things! I learned them. > [...] I have friends who are amazing programmers who sometimes feel bad because they don’t have a CS degree and sometimes don’t know algorithms/CS theory stuff that other people know. They’ve learned the things they needed to know! They are great. [0] https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/09/12/how-i-got-a-cs-degree-without-learning-what-a-system-call-is/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/09/12/how-i-got-a-cs-degree-withou...