
Ask HN: Totally depressed with my situation - returnofdjedi
Hii guys,i belong from india and i am totally depressed by my current situation.Brief way of how i think : I am totally fascinated by technology and how much it contributes to our daily life. The problem here is that everything here is about &quot;rote learning&quot; and marks and nothing much else . I feel totally depressed by this and i am not able to motivate myself to do anything because i hate this thing.Learning is about enjoying and having fun with it and building stuff.Due to this mentality i have just about wasted  my B.tech engineering in Computer Science and can&#x27;t seem to do anything at all.Future looks quite bleak with no jobs.<p>What can i do now?
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vvijay03
Hang in there. Things will get better.

I know a lot of people who feel the same way. In computer science, you can
make your own path to a job:

1\. Do interesting projects in open source 2\. Using (1), apply for
internships - offer to work unpaid 3\. Using (2), get relevant experience on
your resume 4\. Apply for jobs - there are interesting startups that look more
at skill than degrees.

These steps have nothing to do with your degree at all. You are quite lucky to
be in CS where the skills matter more than the degree - make use of it!

~~~
returnofdjedi
Okay a brief more about me: 1)Missed out on gsoc by a little bit .. My idea
discussion thread
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/archesproject/Ys4ejT...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/archesproject/Ys4ejTfEuTU)

2)After that kept on looking for open source projects ... found some to do as
well ... but could not sustain it.One of the major problems is that i like to
interact and discuss things and when that doesn't happen,i get disconnected!!I
belong to a local engineering college in delhi and it becomes hard to find
people who discuss stuff about opensource and other things.

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blueflow
Money or Grades cant buy you back what college could take from you - your
fascination by technology.

Set your priorities and decide if that degree is worth the cost.

And what akg_67 said: Focus on what you like. When something depresses you, do
something different.

~~~
returnofdjedi
okay i have thought of dropping out quite a lot but i don't see any people
replicating in india anything of the sort of silicon valley guys who dropped
out.I understand that india is still in its nascent stage and it will take
time for a tech company from india to have a global impact but even then i
don't see any dropouts who made a huge impact in tech sector in india.So how
can i take such a risk?

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returnofdjedi
One more thing i wanted to know, Can Indians get selected to various job links
of startups or others posted in HN?What's the deal with it?

~~~
lie07
You can get selected, but only problem is not all of them sponsors. If they
do, you are in luck.

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spencerwalden
Break out of the indian culture and look to get a sponsored visa by a company
overseas perhaps.

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jpn
If you don't think anyone will give you the opportunity to build stuff, just
...

Hire yourself.

~~~
returnofdjedi
Hmm .. Wow .. I have been looking for some project to build,can you suggest
something which can be really useful ? Web development would be cool!

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ibstudios
Why not end school with your best and go from there?

~~~
returnofdjedi
School seems like hell!!I just literally don't want to go there in the morning
and just want to get back as soon as possible.The problem here is i don't find
any excitement there.People just don't care about coding and tech and teachers
have hard problems solving problems and it's a vicious cycle as jobs will only
come by marks and marks will only come by "rote" learning.

~~~
akg_67
Get into hacker mentality. Do what you need to do to get what you want! If you
want job and job will come by marks, then focus on marks. If you want marks
and marks will only come by rote learning, then focus on rote learning.

If you believe there is another way to go about it, you should try doing that.
If getting depressed will get you there, then go at it otherwise you are
wasting your time and energy by getting depressed.

Focus on things that you can control, focus on influencing things that you can
influence. But if things you can't control or influence then either hack it or
don't worry about it.

