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I wish I had taken it seriously and gone… actually I’m not sure. I had a different attitude coming out of high school, I was more naive and arrogant, and proba

I wish I had taken it seriously and gone… actually I’m not sure. I had a different attitude coming out of high school, I was more naive and arrogant, and probably wouldn’t have made much of it. If I could go back now, though, I have a much clearer idea of what I would want out of it, and what I could get out of it, and how to take advantage of it, unfortunately that’s not possible anymore.

jwells89 3y ago
Similar experience here. Coming out of high school, my head just wasn't in the right place to take advantage of college on any level and it'd be another 10-15 years with all of the accompanying life experience before that'd change. Part of this I'm sure has to do with how high school is structured (its almost total absence of practical examples for using what was being taught was a huge damper on my interest in it, for example), but there's also just so many other things on a young adult's mind competing for attention that it's no wonder many students struggle.
- notsurenymore 3y ago
  > its almost total absence of practical examples for using what was being taught was a huge damper on my interest in it, for example Ag yes, notably, I just could not care about calculus when I was in high school. I understood it had practical users, but at the time it just seemed far away from me I couldn’t bring myself to care. Flash forward years later and I find myself interested in problems where that knowledge might have actually been useful.
  - mips_r4300i 3y ago
    Also couldn't care less about math in school, until it came time to write game engine stuff. I learned trig so fast, and it made intuitive sense because I could directly model it in my game. Same with matrix math. Kids have a hard time handling abstract concepts, especially boys whose brains develop slower and for a longer period.
solardev 3y ago
Can you do an online degree?
- notsurenymore 3y ago
  Yes and no. I could do an online degree, but not for anything I’d be interested in going back to school for (at least nothing terribly useful). I’ve actually been surprised at some of the online offerings. There’s a decent state school near me, one I’ve considered going to if I could ever magically figure it out, but the online offerings are not great, mostly consisting of the typical degrees described as “useless” along with some seemingly made up programs. Another, at an even better school offers a variety of degrees, but most of them are BA’s described as being mostly for things like pre-law. Even the few interesting or useful degrees they offered online had a note indicating that it was probably better to complete a number of the courses in person. Also I don’t see an online program providing me any of the things I want to get out of university. Sure I could use them to get “a degree”, but that’s not particularly what I’m interested in. Most online and non traditional programs seem to exist solely for economic mobility, I.e. someone in a dead end job wants to get some degree that might lead to some sort of career, and that’s not the position I find myself in right now. I’ve been researching this for years, I actually hoped to be getting back to school this year, but after a layoff and a year of not being able to get high paid work, it’s just probably not going to happen. Tuition isn’t actually that bad in-state where I live now, but what is expensive is the cost of living, particularly when a bulk of full time work needs to be performed at the same time as classes run. Prior to my current predicament, the plan was to do the first two years online through a community college, transfer to the school I was targeting through the state guarantee programs, and then hopefully have saved up enough money to weather the rest of an undergrad degree.
  - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
    You maybe interested in OSSU: https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science
    - notsurenymore 3y ago
hooverd 3y ago
Who doesn't wish they could redo life with the benefit of perfect foresight/hindsight?

jwells89 3y ago

Similar experience here. Coming out of high school, my head just wasn't in the right place to take advantage of college on any level and it'd be another 10-15 years with all of the accompanying life experience before that'd change. Part of this I'm sure has to do with how high school is structured (its almost total absence of practical examples for using what was being taught was a huge damper on my interest in it, for example), but there's also just so many other things on a young adult's mind competing for attention that it's no wonder many students struggle.

notsurenymore 3y ago
> its almost total absence of practical examples for using what was being taught was a huge damper on my interest in it, for example Ag yes, notably, I just could not care about calculus when I was in high school. I understood it had practical users, but at the time it just seemed far away from me I couldn’t bring myself to care. Flash forward years later and I find myself interested in problems where that knowledge might have actually been useful.
- mips_r4300i 3y ago
  Also couldn't care less about math in school, until it came time to write game engine stuff. I learned trig so fast, and it made intuitive sense because I could directly model it in my game. Same with matrix math. Kids have a hard time handling abstract concepts, especially boys whose brains develop slower and for a longer period.

solardev 3y ago

Can you do an online degree?

notsurenymore 3y ago
Yes and no. I could do an online degree, but not for anything I’d be interested in going back to school for (at least nothing terribly useful). I’ve actually been surprised at some of the online offerings. There’s a decent state school near me, one I’ve considered going to if I could ever magically figure it out, but the online offerings are not great, mostly consisting of the typical degrees described as “useless” along with some seemingly made up programs. Another, at an even better school offers a variety of degrees, but most of them are BA’s described as being mostly for things like pre-law. Even the few interesting or useful degrees they offered online had a note indicating that it was probably better to complete a number of the courses in person. Also I don’t see an online program providing me any of the things I want to get out of university. Sure I could use them to get “a degree”, but that’s not particularly what I’m interested in. Most online and non traditional programs seem to exist solely for economic mobility, I.e. someone in a dead end job wants to get some degree that might lead to some sort of career, and that’s not the position I find myself in right now. I’ve been researching this for years, I actually hoped to be getting back to school this year, but after a layoff and a year of not being able to get high paid work, it’s just probably not going to happen. Tuition isn’t actually that bad in-state where I live now, but what is expensive is the cost of living, particularly when a bulk of full time work needs to be performed at the same time as classes run. Prior to my current predicament, the plan was to do the first two years online through a community college, transfer to the school I was targeting through the state guarantee programs, and then hopefully have saved up enough money to weather the rest of an undergrad degree.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  You maybe interested in OSSU: https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science
  - notsurenymore 3y ago

hooverd 3y ago

Who doesn't wish they could redo life with the benefit of perfect foresight/hindsight?