
Ask HN: I'm confused by my success given how horrible a student I was in college - d33lio
Hi everyone,<p>It goes without saying that I was never a hugely academic person.  To that point I took a year off to work in SV my junior year of college but later decided to finish my CS degree, barely.<p>I&#x27;ve been able to navigate my career in ways that I cannot regret though, comprising of multiple strong internships at tech startups in Boston, about a year at Amazon (turned out to be a horrible culture fit) and now at a blistering fintech startup in New York.<p>If I was to base my ability and &quot;potential&quot; for success on my academic record in college, repeating classes and graduating with a 2.9 GPA it seems like I&#x27;d only be slated for QA work?  I should add that I was diagnosed by three different psychs and one neuro-psych with ADD Inattentive Type at 22 (great timing).<p>Does anyone else struggle with the guilt of their poor academic past shadowing their current success and improvement?  If so, what do you think changed in your perspective &#x2F; approach to self study?<p>Thanks everyone, stay healthy :-)
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chrisbennet
My goal was to be _happy_ and I've also been wildly successful. I code a few
hours a day on fun projects.

The first semester of college I was on a National Merit scholarship. After
that, I like to say I was on the Dean's "other list". :-) I was kicked out of
college (electrical engineering) - twice.

I'm smart but not super smart. I do think my brain works differently that
most. It comes up with the non-obvious answers _first_. Example: I was in the
hospital and the nurse said: "I'm going to change your [wound] dressing." I
immediately answered with the first thing that popped into my head: "Lets go
with the raspberry vinaigrette this time."

 _Does anyone else struggle with the guilt of their poor academic past
shadowing their current success and improvement? If so, what do you think
changed in your perspective / approach to self study?_

I don't feel guilty at all. I got where I am a different way and I never
thought about college after I graduated.

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askafriend
Because college isn't the real world. That's the simplest explanation.

~~~
raztogt21
I was thinking this today. In college/school, you can score an A+. It is even
possible to do it for everything. Accomplishment is so easy to measure.

In the real world, there is no A+. Not even being Bezos, founding Stripe, or
playing center forward for Real Madrid. The A+ concept doesn't exist.

~~~
d33lio
This has always resonated with me and it's a big reason I think people who are
"good" at school stay in academia. It's a consistent and reliably good measure
of "I'm good at this thing" however damaging to society it is for those people
to never do more than climb ladders...

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oftenwrong
Why do you feel guilty? You need to explore that feeling if you want to rid
yourself of it, and you _should_ rid yourself of it. You can't change the
past.

I do identify with that feeling, however. I was never a great student.

Before university I had poor grades and only took standard level courses. I
frequently didn't even complete assignments. I spent most of my time being a
computer nerd. I was accepted into a great university solely due to my
"impressive" extracurricular experience: running computer nerd clubs at
school, programming for fun, tech internships.

In university I had little trouble doing well in CS courses. In the beginning,
they were easy to pass without even trying. In the later years, the CS courses
were hard, but I enjoyed them. They actually gave us a considerable amount of
freedom to direct our own study.

My non-CS courses were a different matter - I nearly failed two my first
semester. It was harder to coast at uni, so it forced me to become a decent
student. I graduated with a 3.5, which was much better than I ever could have
imagined.

But really, the important takeaway is that I hate school in general and I
always will. I have known this innately since I was a child, forced to sit in
a chair indoors when I wanted to be outside in the woods. I love learning, but
I don't like being told what I should learn, and what I should do, and
especially what hoops somebody else wants me to jump through. I don't care if
I am failing/succeeding to measure up to anything but my own criteria. That is
my true personality, and I think I am fine to be that way, so I don't feel
guilty, or harbor regrets about my past school performance. It took me some
years to accept myself in this way, and I hope you will be able to as well
eventually.

~~~
d33lio
Thanks for sharing your story and thoughts. For me, a lot of it is wishing I
didn't have to "catch up" with certain mathematical or statistical concepts I
now run into with side projects and find super interesting.

I'll definitely heed your advice and work on getting past my prior failures.

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rpiguy
Undergrad GPA lower than yours. Also wildly successful.

There is a strong correlation between academic rigor and success, but there
will always be outliers like us.

Natural talent, social skills, blind luck, network, etc. are all important
factors in determining success.

No reason to feel guilty, but also realize people could read this post as a
humble-brag.

“I worked a lot less hard than you, but I’m more successful” is not a
statement a lot of people will take well.

~~~
d33lio
Thanks for your comment, I feel like I should've edited the post to include
that I don't mean in anyway to brag. College in a lot of ways was a very
painful and turbulent time for me.

Granted, I'm still horrible at FAANG style coding interviews and had a period
of 4-months being out of work after leaving Amazon. Not looking for pity, just
adding context :)

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raztogt21
Sup, same boat. Terrible at college and "successful".

The worst feeling was hanging with peers that you felt they were way beyond
your skills and seeing how everything was "natural" to them.

Yesterday it was the fifth anniversary of my college graduation. One of my
frequent dreams is that I didn't graduate because I failed a course. Strange,
since college was not even that demanding for me; one of my best friends was
brilliant and he let me piggyback the hardest projects.

The main difference I see between people like us and other highly accomplished
academic developers is that we deliver (since we are highly pragmatic) and we
are enjoyable to work with (our guilt overcompensates with empathy).

Yet, I had studied 10x more in the last 5 years (post-graduation) than in
college. My mind matured significantly, and luckily it had developed a sense
of natural curiosity for computer science, programming, design, finance, etc.

~~~
d33lio
> The worst feeling was hanging with peers that you felt they were way beyond
> your skills and seeing how everything was "natural" to them.

This is what is most painful for me. In high school I was hailed by my friends
as "highly adept at science" and we got into all kinds of crazy - albeit
somewhat educational mischief. For context, this group of friends came
together after we all competed and placed in the first division of the Intel
ISEF engineering competition. I was one of the only people in the group who
didn't go to Stanford, MIT, get a full ride to U Chicago or go on to become a
neuro-surgeon (I'm completely serious, one of these friends completed pre-med
in two years and med school in 4).

Maybe my friends were astronomically more intelligent than me and I've picked
a bad point of comparison. But the most painful thing to watch in college was
others seemingly effortlessly pick up complex math and CS intuition while I
struggled and even with help, at times failed miserably.

Though, to your point. Surprisingly with a few years post-college under my
belt - my mind has sharpened and become more focused and driven than I ever
could have imagined being in college. If anything, something I understand now
is that it's futile to try to anticipate what I'll be doing or what kind of
person I'll be farther into the future than 2-3 years at most.

Thanks again for sharing.

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CM30
Well, I guess there are a variety of reasons for that. I mean, maybe you just
didn't... gel with those particular courses or professors responsible for
teaching your computer science at that particular university.

That wouldn't necessarily mean you were bad at the subject. Just that you
didn't learn well in that particular environment.

Alternatively, if you've got ADD and find it hard to maintain focus, maybe you
just didn't care to work as hard in college as you then did in the internships
and roles you took on afterwards. We've all had companies and organisations
where we've been good/bad culture fits (like Amazon as mentioned in your
post). Perhaps your college/classes were a poor fit as well.

Alternatively, it could simply be an age or maturity thing. I'm sure many
people here would do much better at school or university if they returned
today, simply because they'd take it a bit more seriously and have more years
of experience under their belt.

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badpun
Your career performance is not only depending on you, but also on the overall
job market demand. For example, absolutely brilliant physics PhD are
struggling to get jobs in their fields, while mediocre developers are making
six figures out of college. So, it's likely that you're just average, but
lucked into an very hot job market. Congratulate yourself on a smart career
choice :)

~~~
d33lio
Thanks for your thoughts on the matter. To be clear, on a good day I consider
myself average with a wildly varied set of interests. Oddly, knowing elixir
(as much hate as it gets here on HN) has landed me one or two positions alone.

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sethammons
Conversely, I know people who were wildly “successful” in college/university
and struggle to find financial success. Heck, I was one of them for nearly a
decade post-university.

~~~
d33lio
In hindsight, what do you think lead you astray? Curious if you took an
academic route, associating more education with greater skill or just focused
on the "wrong" thing?

~~~
sethammons
I had to get the first job I could, had no time for internships nor
networking, and had no role models or guidance on how to succeed financially.
Lack of a support system made any kind of time investment very hard
financially as bills and hungry mouths don’t like to wait. Had I less
financial responsibilities, I could have taken a lower paying but higher
potential job.

The longer version: had a kid at 15. Lived in the middle of nowhere (which I
love[d]) and finding ways to earn money was hard. Grew up poor. I graduated
high school towards the top academically and got a full tuition scholarship to
a university. My girlfriend and shortly thereafter wife (we got married
shortly after high school and moved into our own place in town) had to
graduate high school a year late. She did most of the supporting of our young
family waitressing while I did some student work at the university. One gig
was working PHP with a buddy making about minimum wage at night. Eventually
got a BS in business admin with a minor in CS. Worked in insurance first
because it hired immediately. I had looked into tech, but at the time, pay was
not very good and required moving to a population center. Turned out with
insurance, I could not earn enough fast enough (it takes time to build a book
of business) so I started at a potentially higher paying role in financial
services and washed out. Did odd construction work as I got a teaching
credential. The pay still sucked. We were not even scraping by: every month we
even further negative in our bank account. The only things that helped were
the occasional website or utility I built for someone and the hope that after
several years of teaching that our base salary would finally exceed our meager
living. Got cut from my district during the layoffs. Toss in a couple more
kids along the way. I put out two resumes: one for teaching and one for
programming based on the work I did as a student and the few websites and
utilities I made. A recruiter reached out and I got some tech interviews.
Landed a sweet start up gig at nearly 2x what I was making as a teacher. This
was the first time ever that we could start really saving, but the majority
was going to paying off debts. The commute was about 40 minutes, the same as
when I taught. Then the office moved further. Then again. Then again. The
commute was 2.5 hours one way at that point. Then I went fully remote. Nearly
a decade later and Im still with that same company. I out-earn what I ever
could have as a teacher, principal, or super intendant. I’ve grown with the
company from a couple dozen folks through hundreds of hires, an eventual IPO,
through acquisition of a couple smaller companies and through being acquired.
I am now a principal engineer and team lead for our part of a multi-thousand
person, global company. I’ve enjoyed nearly everyday of work since being hired
and wouldn’t have it any other way.

A rough start. But opportunity met preparation and we were lucky.

