

Finishing - unstoppableted
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/05/finishing.html

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gabrielrotbart
Finishing is also important for deciding not to finish.

When you believe that you can finish, and you have difficult past experiences
to prove it (to yourself most of all) you can more easily walk away from
anything that is not worth finishing, without doubting your motivations for
doing so.

~~~
thebear
Good point. I think the same is true for a lot of things that you do in
college. For example, in college, they force you to keep deadlines. If you can
do that, consistently, for four years, then later in life, you can
occasionally miss a deadline and know that it was for a good reason, and not
because you're a slacker and procrastinator.

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dsirijus
I've went for 2 years to math uni, then for another two to physics uni, then
to music academy for, again, 2 years.

So, technically, I haven't _finished_ any of those, but what I got from each -
a solid advanced introduction to the field - is what I really wanted, all in
goal of making me a good game maker and a well-rounded person. So, I consider
them finished. With pretty good GPA to boot.

Only reason I didn't go to art academy too for 2 years is that I already
considered myself proficient in the field.

Point is, you cannot finish if you don't know what your goal is.

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smoyer
Finishing is great and there's definitely a sense of accomplishment. Starting
is usually fun ... it has a sense of adventure and a certain newness.

So if starting and finishing represent 5% each, that leaves 90% in the middle
that's nothing more than discipline and an overwhelming sense of vision.
Discipline is what I have to cultivate in myself - fortunately I recognize
both what that is and what it means. And it's discipline in the middle that
allows you to finish.

In any case, congrats to Jessica and the rest of this spring's graduating
class.

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cmbaus
If you decide to make the financial investment to start college, it makes
sense to finish. That does not mean it necessarily makes sense to start in the
first place.

~~~
Encosia
That investment is a sunk cost. It definitely may make sense to finish, but
throwing more money after your initial sunk cost shouldn't be why.

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6d0debc071
I finished university, I felt ashamed of having stayed so long. There was no
sense of pride, no sense of accomplishment. The predominant - positive -
feeling was relief. University was a hoop-jumping exercise, and beyond that it
meant nothing to me. An hour after my last exam, I stuck my laptop and the few
things I wanted to keep in the back of my car, chucked the rest of my stuff
into the bin outside the flat, and drove the 15 hours back home. In the end I
got my degree mailed to me rather than bothering to go to graduation. There's
a masters degree sitting in a plastic folder in the back of my cupboard
somewhere, it's been out of the envelope twice since I got it.

Maybe it's different for others, but for me I only ever get a sense of
accomplishment if I honestly value the thing I'm doing.

If you're doing something that you want, or that gives you a sense of
satisfaction that's going to be sufficient to justify suffering through it,
then rock on. It sounds like the blogger's daughter had a good time, all power
to her. But one of the big things that life's taught me is to recognise that
people are different (no, really!) and that other people telling you that
doing something hard will give you a sense of accomplishment? It's not
necessarily _true._ I stayed at uni because that's the story my parents sold
me as a girl, that when you start something you carry it through. But that's
not always good advice. When you're doing something that's just going to suck
the soul out of you often the best advice is to see if there's a way to stop
doing it before it costs you something that's going to take a long time to
recover from - if you do at all.

One sense of finishing something, and not necessarily any less valid than the
first, is to recognise a bad gamble and say 'It's finished here because I'm
finishing it. My life, not yours.'

I just wish I'd known that when I was 16 and was making my decisions in this
regard. So, if you are at that age and making your decisions in this sort of
regard, it might be worth taking an honest look at whether this is actually
something that will make you happy or just something that people are saying
will make you happy because it's hard. And, if it is the latter, seeing
whether doing other things that people tell you are hard that you don't
necessarily want to do makes you happy - and whether it makes you four years
and thousands of hours of work worth of happy.

~~~
Chanel_Bunnell
I recognise myself in your story. I took off with a backpack before the ink
had dried on my last exam paper. I look back on those years now, 15 years
later, and wish I'd had the courage to walk off earlier. In retrospect, it's
obvious to me that everything I learned at university I learned in year 1. The
remaining years were simply "finishing what I started" because a "degree is
good to have."

We're all different, and we all get different things from formal education. If
it's not for you, do your future self a favour and don't waste the time.

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Aqueous
I graduated from the same school a year ago. It took 10 years, because I got
very sick in the middle. I did so because I wanted to finish what I started.

