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Hey guys, author here- this is an older post that someone reposted. I get alot of hate for this post, so let me sum it up here: College was my biggest mistake.

Hey guys, author here- this is an older post that someone reposted. I get alot of hate for this post, so let me sum it up here: College was my biggest mistake. Not your biggest mistake. I'm not giving advice, just being honest about my experience. You have to "pay to play". Who knows if I would have been able to bootstrap myself without a year of college. All I know is I can't imagine the ridiculous amount of debt I'd be in if I finished. It boils down to this: I wish that when I was 18 someone told me college wasn't the only option.

j45 14y ago
nice summary -- it's not necessarily what your degree makes of you, but what you make of your education and degree, especially remaining a self-directed learner. Too many graduates stop learning, thinking they're done.
sliverstorm 14y ago
On the bright side, now you know definitively that it wasn't the right option for you. You won't spend the rest of your life wondering, "what if I had gone to college instead...?" I am of the opinion that some mistakes are worth making.
jasonzemos 14y ago
I think a lot of your distaste came from choosing SE as a major. RIT is one of those schools where you have to be especially proactive in extracting value from your education. The bureaucracy there has no compunction about useless majors, irrelevant classes, shallow professors -- things one may encounter if they just go with the flow. It's a sort of roulette wheel. I would've advised you to switch to CS, and start taking liberal arts classes with notable well-reviewed professors. A good professor can turn you on to the most inane subject; they exist but it's improbable you'll land in their class by just throwing the dice. The first floor of GCCIS is a vocational degree mill that feeds into the local donor corporations and those liberal arts requirements you took are literally filter classes. I sympathize with you not sticking it out, considering the costs involved.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
vph 14y ago
I don't think college was your biggest mistake. College is just an experience, and unfortunately sometimes it doesn't work out for some, you in particular. Your biggest mistake was not to quit when it was very clear that it didn't work out for you. Instead of quitting, you let that bad experience chew you up and spit you out. You hit bottom. The better story to tell here, IMO, is that when you hit bottom somehow you found inspirations to bounce back and became successful. This is really the story you are telling, and it's a good story.
- chipsy 14y ago
  I don't think hitting bottom is all bad. Within my own life story to date, at least, the bottom(s) were part of the learning - the part where daily reality collides with plans and expectations. It's okay, as long as you can find your way out of it, of course.
EliRivers 14y ago
Glad you're here; I'd like to ask you a question. It wasn't the right choice then, but (putting aside all issues of debt) do you think you'd get more out of it now? Or in a decade? I really enjoyed university, got a lot out of it, but I'm getting even more pleasure out of taking another degree part-time now around my job and the thought of taking three or four years off now purely to study and learn and mentally play is much more enticing than the first time round. Maybe it's just because I'm older, maybe it's because I've been working for a decade, maybe some other set of reasons, but I think I'd get a great deal more out of it now than I did then (which is not to say I didn't get a lot out of it; I did, but I'd get more now).
- stevencorona 14y ago
  I would take a class if it was interesting to me, but I doubt I would become a matriculated student or pursue a degree.
  - paperkettle 14y ago
    I left college at 20 and then went back at 26. Both are on my "top 5 best decisions in life" list. Having some time to get older and know myself (or, perhaps, reflect on the nature of selfness) led me to make great use of the incredible resources and space a university offers. Everyone's path is different, so yours might vary, but you never know! I don't know if you still carry any fear or shame about the college experience (I did), but you're clearly driven and capable of great success. Don't let any of that other stuff get in the way should you ever find yourself with a passion and the desire for university as a space to focus and invest in yourself. In any case, congrats on success!
jonnathanson 14y ago
"It boils down to this: I wish that when I was 18 someone told me college wasn't the only option." Yes, but even still, that's a decision that no one but you ever could have made for yourself. There's no shame in dropping out of college (or even being forced out) and going on to have a kick-ass career. The stories of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, et al., can attest to that. But even those guys went to college at first, before realizing that it was slowing them down or sidetracking them. It's hard to say if they would have had that self-knowledge without trying out college first. Even if someone had told your 18 year old self that college wasn't your only option, you probably wouldn't have believed him. The idea of college-as-necessity is so firmly ingrained in our national culture that only an unusually self-actualized 18 year old would know, right off the bat, no experience required, that it wasn't for him.
- wfunction 14y ago
  You might want to reconsider the Bill Gates example, given that he says: “I didn’t leave college because it wasn’t suited to me. I left college because I thought I had to move quickly on the Microsoft opportunity. I had already finished three years and if I had used my AP credits properly I would have graduated. [...] I am as fake a dropout as you can get.” From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2013/01/31/bill-gates-says-there-is-something-perverse-in-college-ratings/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2013/01/31/bill-gates...
  - sunnybythesea 14y ago
    +1 There really is fine line between dropping out to go "towards" something and dropping out to "get away"
evincarofautumn 14y ago
I went to RIT and have a similarly negative feeling about it, so maybe that speaks about RIT and Rochester more than about college in general. They wouldn’t give me my degree after I couldn’t complete one class due to illness, so I rage quit and got a job in California. :) And actually I’m not in nearly as much debt as I could be. Plus I met a bunch of good people while there, and even though the classes were useless, I took the opportunity to learn a lot on my own. College, like any investment, is what you make of it.
notlisted 14y ago
What worked in (y)our field, would not work elsewhere. I'm the product of a Western-European system. Yearly tuition was like $2k. Your 44k would have covered 4 years in college including housing, food and ample beer. IMHO, the real problem lies in the acceptance of the status quo in the American educational system and the unwillingness to let government play a role (through taxation, grants, etc). It's baffling to me that a first-world country like the USA doesn't want to invest in education. If you don't pay for the education, you'll pay for the unemployment benefits and/or lack of innovation. I make a good living, but still I worry greatly about my daughter's future. Avg college tuition supposedly will reach 90k/yr by the time she's ready to attend, unless something is done about this madness. Bill Gates has the right idea with his 10K BA challenge and I like what I see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/opinion/my-valuable-cheap-college-degree.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/opinion/my-valuable-cheap-... http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335522/10000-degree-katrina-trinko http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335522/10000-degree-k...
- liber8 14y ago
  >>the unwillingness to let government play a role (through taxation, grants, etc)<< This is not meant as a personal attack, but your claim that government doesn't play a role in American education is false. The U.S. government plays a massive role and is, arguably, the single biggest factor in the cost of American higher education. The federal government doles out many grants, but more importantly, it subsidizes student loans to cover tuition. This means just about anyone with a pulse can obtain a loan to cover tuition to whatever school they want to attend, regardless of what the student wants to study. Colleges large and small know this, and have dedicated staffs to help students obtain these loans.
  - Shivetya 14y ago
    which is why many colleges do not feel a need to hold back the costs of an education. With near unlimited borrowing ability available colleges have simply kept raising tuition to keep pace with available funding. That and an incredible marketing push akin to how diamonds were marketed, as in you have to have a degree/diamond
at-fates-hands 14y ago
I really feel like times have changed drastically over the past ten years. There are so many lower-cost alternatives to a four year colleges now. Technology is moving so fast, I'm not sure university curriculums can keep up so a student graduates, their knowledge isn't already obsolete. In that sense, I think you may have been seeing the future and simply opted out instead of weighing yourself down with debt and a bunch of stuff you even said yourself you could learn faster anyways. Looks like it was a calculated move and its paid off quite well.
taylodl 14y ago
You'd be amazed how much you'd learn going to college now, if you so desired. You know what you don't know and will be focused on learning it. BUT - college is a learning experience. As you've discovered you can get jobs without it.
guscost 14y ago
I only finished college because against all reasonable expectations, I was allowed to attend two different schools without paying tuition. I guess that was lucky.
cerebrum 14y ago
What happened to the debt you had already acquired when you dropped off?
shurcooL 14y ago
Nicely put.
donniezazen 14y ago
You obviously are a brilliant man. You could have done it if you wanted to. What made you choose to pursue your own interest than to suck it up and finish your degree?
washedup 14y ago
Agreed. I ended up going to college as my only option for higher education, played in a field that I only moderately enjoy, and have a bunch of debt that will follow me for many years.

j45 14y ago

nice summary -- it's not necessarily what your degree makes of you, but what you make of your education and degree, especially remaining a self-directed learner. Too many graduates stop learning, thinking they're done.

sliverstorm 14y ago

On the bright side, now you know definitively that it wasn't the right option for you. You won't spend the rest of your life wondering, "what if I had gone to college instead...?" I am of the opinion that some mistakes are worth making.

jasonzemos 14y ago

I think a lot of your distaste came from choosing SE as a major. RIT is one of those schools where you have to be especially proactive in extracting value from your education. The bureaucracy there has no compunction about useless majors, irrelevant classes, shallow professors -- things one may encounter if they just go with the flow. It's a sort of roulette wheel. I would've advised you to switch to CS, and start taking liberal arts classes with notable well-reviewed professors. A good professor can turn you on to the most inane subject; they exist but it's improbable you'll land in their class by just throwing the dice. The first floor of GCCIS is a vocational degree mill that feeds into the local donor corporations and those liberal arts requirements you took are literally filter classes. I sympathize with you not sticking it out, considering the costs involved.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

vph 14y ago

I don't think college was your biggest mistake. College is just an experience, and unfortunately sometimes it doesn't work out for some, you in particular. Your biggest mistake was not to quit when it was very clear that it didn't work out for you. Instead of quitting, you let that bad experience chew you up and spit you out. You hit bottom. The better story to tell here, IMO, is that when you hit bottom somehow you found inspirations to bounce back and became successful. This is really the story you are telling, and it's a good story.

chipsy 14y ago
I don't think hitting bottom is all bad. Within my own life story to date, at least, the bottom(s) were part of the learning - the part where daily reality collides with plans and expectations. It's okay, as long as you can find your way out of it, of course.

EliRivers 14y ago

Glad you're here; I'd like to ask you a question. It wasn't the right choice then, but (putting aside all issues of debt) do you think you'd get more out of it now? Or in a decade? I really enjoyed university, got a lot out of it, but I'm getting even more pleasure out of taking another degree part-time now around my job and the thought of taking three or four years off now purely to study and learn and mentally play is much more enticing than the first time round. Maybe it's just because I'm older, maybe it's because I've been working for a decade, maybe some other set of reasons, but I think I'd get a great deal more out of it now than I did then (which is not to say I didn't get a lot out of it; I did, but I'd get more now).

stevencorona 14y ago
I would take a class if it was interesting to me, but I doubt I would become a matriculated student or pursue a degree.
- paperkettle 14y ago
  I left college at 20 and then went back at 26. Both are on my "top 5 best decisions in life" list. Having some time to get older and know myself (or, perhaps, reflect on the nature of selfness) led me to make great use of the incredible resources and space a university offers. Everyone's path is different, so yours might vary, but you never know! I don't know if you still carry any fear or shame about the college experience (I did), but you're clearly driven and capable of great success. Don't let any of that other stuff get in the way should you ever find yourself with a passion and the desire for university as a space to focus and invest in yourself. In any case, congrats on success!

jonnathanson 14y ago

"It boils down to this: I wish that when I was 18 someone told me college wasn't the only option." Yes, but even still, that's a decision that no one but you ever could have made for yourself. There's no shame in dropping out of college (or even being forced out) and going on to have a kick-ass career. The stories of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, et al., can attest to that. But even those guys went to college at first, before realizing that it was slowing them down or sidetracking them. It's hard to say if they would have had that self-knowledge without trying out college first. Even if someone had told your 18 year old self that college wasn't your only option, you probably wouldn't have believed him. The idea of college-as-necessity is so firmly ingrained in our national culture that only an unusually self-actualized 18 year old would know, right off the bat, no experience required, that it wasn't for him.

wfunction 14y ago
You might want to reconsider the Bill Gates example, given that he says: “I didn’t leave college because it wasn’t suited to me. I left college because I thought I had to move quickly on the Microsoft opportunity. I had already finished three years and if I had used my AP credits properly I would have graduated. [...] I am as fake a dropout as you can get.” From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2013/01/31/bill-gates-says-there-is-something-perverse-in-college-ratings/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2013/01/31/bill-gates...
- sunnybythesea 14y ago
  +1 There really is fine line between dropping out to go "towards" something and dropping out to "get away"

evincarofautumn 14y ago

I went to RIT and have a similarly negative feeling about it, so maybe that speaks about RIT and Rochester more than about college in general. They wouldn’t give me my degree after I couldn’t complete one class due to illness, so I rage quit and got a job in California. :) And actually I’m not in nearly as much debt as I could be. Plus I met a bunch of good people while there, and even though the classes were useless, I took the opportunity to learn a lot on my own. College, like any investment, is what you make of it.

notlisted 14y ago

What worked in (y)our field, would not work elsewhere. I'm the product of a Western-European system. Yearly tuition was like $2k. Your 44k would have covered 4 years in college including housing, food and ample beer. IMHO, the real problem lies in the acceptance of the status quo in the American educational system and the unwillingness to let government play a role (through taxation, grants, etc). It's baffling to me that a first-world country like the USA doesn't want to invest in education. If you don't pay for the education, you'll pay for the unemployment benefits and/or lack of innovation. I make a good living, but still I worry greatly about my daughter's future. Avg college tuition supposedly will reach 90k/yr by the time she's ready to attend, unless something is done about this madness. Bill Gates has the right idea with his 10K BA challenge and I like what I see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/opinion/my-valuable-cheap-college-degree.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/opinion/my-valuable-cheap-... http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335522/10000-degree-katrina-trinko http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335522/10000-degree-k...

liber8 14y ago
>>the unwillingness to let government play a role (through taxation, grants, etc)<< This is not meant as a personal attack, but your claim that government doesn't play a role in American education is false. The U.S. government plays a massive role and is, arguably, the single biggest factor in the cost of American higher education. The federal government doles out many grants, but more importantly, it subsidizes student loans to cover tuition. This means just about anyone with a pulse can obtain a loan to cover tuition to whatever school they want to attend, regardless of what the student wants to study. Colleges large and small know this, and have dedicated staffs to help students obtain these loans.
- Shivetya 14y ago
  which is why many colleges do not feel a need to hold back the costs of an education. With near unlimited borrowing ability available colleges have simply kept raising tuition to keep pace with available funding. That and an incredible marketing push akin to how diamonds were marketed, as in you have to have a degree/diamond

at-fates-hands 14y ago

I really feel like times have changed drastically over the past ten years. There are so many lower-cost alternatives to a four year colleges now. Technology is moving so fast, I'm not sure university curriculums can keep up so a student graduates, their knowledge isn't already obsolete. In that sense, I think you may have been seeing the future and simply opted out instead of weighing yourself down with debt and a bunch of stuff you even said yourself you could learn faster anyways. Looks like it was a calculated move and its paid off quite well.

taylodl 14y ago

You'd be amazed how much you'd learn going to college now, if you so desired. You know what you don't know and will be focused on learning it. BUT - college is a learning experience. As you've discovered you can get jobs without it.

guscost 14y ago

I only finished college because against all reasonable expectations, I was allowed to attend two different schools without paying tuition. I guess that was lucky.

cerebrum 14y ago

What happened to the debt you had already acquired when you dropped off?

shurcooL 14y ago

Nicely put.

donniezazen 14y ago

You obviously are a brilliant man. You could have done it if you wanted to. What made you choose to pursue your own interest than to suck it up and finish your degree?

washedup 14y ago

Agreed. I ended up going to college as my only option for higher education, played in a field that I only moderately enjoy, and have a bunch of debt that will follow me for many years.