
A Letter to College Students - baristaGeek
http://themacro.com/articles/2016/02/letter-to-college-students/
======
crabasa
tl;dr

    
    
      - Learn to code.
      - Meet people with real skills. 
      - Have fun.
      - Take responsibility. 
      - Be ready to hit the ground running. 
      - Be your own career counselor. 
      - It’s okay to ignore your parents.
      - Be careful with student debt.

~~~
hackaflocka
Thank you. Good points all.

------
whoa-duder
Or you can start a company when your older too.

------
machinelearning
What do you think about the value of grad school? It involves spending part of
your 20s in school but allows you to have a bigger impact on the world through
cutting edge technology. Any thoughts?

~~~
mwseibel
I don't think it has value - my former co-founder Kyle Vogt is building self
driving cars and he didn't graduate from college. I just think you learn a lot
faster in a startup environment.

------
mwseibel
Hey there - would love to hear what you guys think about the post :) - Michael

~~~
jarboot
I'm a 19 year old midwestern college student at an urban school who loved the
article, especially the part about being social. My dad always said "it's not
what you know, but who you know." Seeing the kinds of connections he made in
college, his work, and his church pay off in astounding ways taught me a lot
about that.

However I've always had trouble with meeting other people that like to code.
Striking up a conversation with people in my CS classes usually ends up in a
"don't bother me" sort of situation, and many people I do meet are less into
coding and more into video games.

Finding a job in my school's understaffed IT department (help desk) has been a
good start to the workforce, but is soul crushing. I'm never rewarded for
anything that goes well, and people only remember the times I made customers
angry. The job might give me some experience and a nice blip on my resume, but
I feel it's setting me up for a soul-crushing sysadmin job at some major
corporation around my city.

From the perspective of somebody not even two decades old hopefully you
understand that without much social or business experience a lot of these
actions are difficult, especially meeting people eager to collaborate on
technical projects. You can look back on your life and wish you prepared
yourself for your adult life better, but in the moment as a youth there's so
much stimuli on campus and paths that I could choose that it really weighs
down on me. Do I keep working hard at a boring IT job to make a comfortable,
stable living as a sysadmin, settle down with a nice midwestern wife and some
kids, and join a Protestant church? Do I work for the Peace Corps for a couple
years in China to improve my Chinese language proficiency and risk having
rusty tech skills? Do I try moving to some high-rent city with a lot of
startups and risk crashing and burning? These are the questions that keep me
up at night.

Thanks for reading my rambling slice of life, and thanks for writing this
article. It got me thinking more about my future than I typically do on a
Friday night in the dorms and helped me get some stuff out of my head. I'll be
keeping a lot of these points in mind as ways to improve my chances for
success.

~~~
mokomoko
Though it may not feel like it right now, you can do all of these things and
more, you can do none of these things.... the truth is it actually doesn't
matter what it is that you've done.

What is more important is the attitude you bring towards living! Though grunt
work is soul crushing to the average person, it does pay the bills when you
are just starting out.

Don't sweat the small stuff, don't let your mind think it is doomed to an
unworkable situation. Conduct thought experiments often at work and in your
spare time, and keep the friends you meet that are truly interesting people in
consistent contact.

~~~
jarboot
Thanks a lot for the great advice! I'm so glad I have the opportunity to learn
so much from such kind people on this community.

