

College in two years: now what? - delwin
http://delw.in/college-in-two-years-now-what/

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hardwaresofton
Semi-full disclosure: I was a UT Austin student, just graduated with a CS
degree, Hook 'em

TLDR @ bottom

So you seem to have a really solid plan for your life, but in my humble
opinion, college isn't even about learning, for the most part. It's really
about social interaction. You will pretty much never get the same chance at
unbridled continuous social interaction as college provides. Putting a bunch
of post-pubescent "young-adults" in the same central location for 4 or so
years allows for a lot of crazy things, but more importantly, a lot of bonds,
experiences, etc.

That said, you will also never get the same opportunities in college as you're
going to get abroad. You'll meet really awesome, interesting people
(hopefully), and have a ton of great times. However, the context in which you
meet those people and explore those countries is completely different.

Let me illustrate (and hopefully make my point more believable) with an
example. I have studied abroad in Japan -- it is by far the easiest, most
carefree way to get there, and stay there (if only for a while). I speak
pretty good japanese, but what stuck with me most is that the country can be
VERY lonely if you don't have some way to make friends (this applies to any
country), and the social skills you learn in college go a LONG way in making
that easier, and if you had gone in college, that same young-people-in-an-
enclosed-area dynamic would have done wonders in gathering people around you
that were similar, and you could easily befriend. When I studied abroad, I met
people from ALL over
(london,ireland,germany,vietnam,china,korea,americans,spanish), and many of
them I actually still like and maintain contact with. My fear is that you
won't have such a good chance of that experience by getting out of college so
early /quickly.

At this point, there's not really much you can do about that, though I would
suggest that somehow you utilize the school to travel. It will be much
cheaper, and much more manageable, you'll have more resources, etc.

Also, on a less touchy-feely note, you should have stuck it out for that CS
degree. UT Austin is a pretty highly ranked CS school, and the curriculum
really isn't even impossible. It's super doable, and if you can stick out (and
learn) the theory, the degree is worth alot (trust me, I'm very very
comfortably employed now, and it wasn't very hard).

Also, to accomplish your goal, there are a lot of people who do the whole
work-x-months, travel-x-months. If you are up front with this, you might be
able to find some companies who really need help, and they will hire you. Of
course, this would be easier with a CS degree.

In general -- you know what you want, which is good (I've never not known what
I wanted either, all I ever wanted was to program computers) -- but be careful
not to miss out on the stuff that you didn't know you wanted. My parents are
the ones that pushed me to go abroad (literally, they wanted me to just "go
somewhere", while I was in school because they know the school would help
subsidize and stabilize everything), and they were so right in their decision,
as parents often are. On paper, the decision looks like a bad one: delay my
graduation, stop me from getting on with my life for a whole year, disable me
from doing any CS (there weren't any CS courses I could take while abroad).
But, the experience was one I would redo every single time.

tl;dr College isn't about learning as much as it was about social interaction.
The CS degree would have been a good idea. Using the university to travel
would have also been a good idea. Going forward, finding a company that
embraces your desire to travel (or finding a company in the country you want
to travel to, and getting hired there) might not be as hard as you think --
but you will really have to show them your skill, since you don't have a CS
degree.

~~~
delwin
Thanks for the response! Your points addressed in order:

First, if college is all about social interaction, then it's hardly worth the
money. I can go to conferences, take non-university classes, pay for coworking
spaces, and intern at places all for much cheaper than college. I found it
very difficult to interact socially at UT — the campus is enormous, making it
rare for me to randomly run into people, and also, I grew up in Austin, so I
already had a pretty solid base of friends and there was little pressure to
find new ones (though I did meet many people, mostly through friends I already
had).

I think your views on the CS degree are pretty much why I didn't get that
degree. I don't want to be comfortably employed; I have no intention of making
my life a linear path from college -> work -> family -> retirement. I don't
ever plan to retire, because there is nothing I love more than challenging my
creativity. If I had a CS degree, I would probably have a pretty high paying
job in a nice place right now, but I certainly wouldn't be traveling 5 months
out of the year (and in 2014, 11 months if things go according to plan). I
like programming, and especially designing, for the web, but I also like
working for myself. I have a pretty decent portfolio, and although I haven't
gotten any huge jobs yet (biggest so far are a dating social network and a
minisite for NASA), I make enough to support myself and my travels.

I also think getting a degree in CS would have minimized my passion for it.
Getting a degree in linguistics certainly stamped out any ambitions I had on
becoming a professional linguist. Although, I _did_ get an enormous amount of
value out of all of the electives I was able to take because linguistics is
only a 24-hour major. I would have, no doubt, learned more computer science,
but I know enough right now to get paid to do it, which gives me the freedom
to learn it on my own time. And, I'm trying to transition to becoming a
designer right now, which is its own set of challenges; something I would have
completely ignored had I been taking a CS degree.

Lastly, traveling is _definitely_ not cheaper when you're going through the
university. When I travel, I stay on couches (CouchSurfing) or work on farms
and homesteads (WWOOF), giving me guaranteed access to social interaction and
informal education (I am staying on a farm in the mountains of North Carolina
for two months while I work on a full-length album at their music studio, this
will cost me $150/mo. in rent — and they are eager to teach me everything they
know about foraging, which is very popular in this region, given all of the
naturally occurring edible plants and fungi; I have also budgeted around
$900-1200 for a two-month trip to Peru).

In sum: \- Social interaction can be found elsewhere, for free. College is
about learning, at least for me. \- The CS degree probably would have been a
good idea for someone who wanted a comfortable, stable livelihood after
college. This is not me. \- Using the university to travel would have cost a
lot more than my current travel plans. I would have certainly learned a lot
studying abroad, but since I plan to be "studying" and traveling "abroad" for
most of my life, I

Thanks for the advice, but it is really geared towards someone who is headed
for a different path, something more stable, something with a larger salary.
Living my life through challenges and adventures is exactly how I want to do
it. It pushes my mind and creativity to new places, and I have no plans to
become stagnant.

Also, if I had the money, you bet I would go back to school. I would get a
Bachelors in history, computer science, music, design, biology, and physics
and anything else I could. I love classes, and I love going to lectures. This
is why I'm so excited about MOOCs.

~~~
hardwaresofton
OK, so it seems like you've found a good set of friends, which is good, but
I'm still not sure that you experienced the full extent of the socialization
that college offers. But, it's OK if you didn't, it is a high price to pay
just to learn how to live with people. You'll be learning that anyway (or
probably already have given the way you're travelling).

So my view on the CS degree was that you should have gotten it, not to get a
stable job, but to make it easier to get ANY job that you're trying to get. I
didn't say to accept the linear path, I just said that if you had a CS degree,
it would be much easier to get hired, no matter where you go. And if you state
what you're trying to do, there are some companies that will respect that. I
interned for 3 months at a company before going to japan (a large one, at
that), and they kept me on for the entire year while I was in japan, I worked
from home for essentially an entire year. If they can do that for an intern,
they can do way more for you, who has a good portfolio.

Also, how is your knowledge of CS theory? You're probably not going to run
into automata theory working on simple websites, but it's kind something
people expect you to at least have seen/know about.

Your staying plan does sound way cheaper, so that's awesome, sounds like
you're gonna have a lot of great experiences under your belt.

At this point, I think you're pretty much set in what you're going to do
though, and it seems like a great plan, with some luck

