College college college college. Your 20s are when you figure out what you want to do. College is expensive but a great way to dabble in tons of stuff, socialize, and get ready for the next step. Being 21 isn't too late, plenty of people go to college at 21-22 after stints in the military. You'll be popular as you'll be able to buy your friends beer (legal disclaimer: don't do that).
Burn out is not really something physical. You probably need some rest, but it is less than what you think (measured in days). Your own mind is dissatisfied with some of what you are doing and it is raising red flags. You need to figure out what is it.
Do you like writing software? This is the first question. If you do, keep going, but you need to focus on something else. Maybe a slightly different industry, or smaller companies, or even something on your own.
I agree with the comments about college. You don't know what you are missing out until you do. It's great that you are self taught, which is an important skill for college.
There are a few reasons to enroll. You are unlikely to be implementing data structures in your day job. However, some algorithms are very hard to understand, and it forces your brain to work really hard to crack them. Then algorithmic problems at work become rather trivial. And the remaining non-trivial can be reduced to one of the problems you already know.
Second, there's the exchange of ideas. You'll notice that many billionaires are college dropouts. Meaning that they did enroll and took classes, and decided to quit because they found a big opportunity. Odds are you are going to leave college in debt instead of a billionaire, but you'll leave with knowledge and connections, which are worth more.
As a dabbling neuroscientist I'm very skeptical! Why? because Cortisol levels fluctuate based on exercise, diet, and perceived stress. If you go jogging every day and follow that up with 30 minutes at the riverside thinking -nothing- your cortisol can drop dramatically in 2 weeks.
Adrenal gland.. Mostly relies on good neurochemistry, which relies on 2 things: good diet, and good gut health. Meaning: eat your yogurt (and bio flora for your tummy) and get all your amino acids! Good gut health = great digestion -> what you eat becomes good neurochem -> happiness and clarity.
Although the findings in my previous comment are my own extrapolations from years of dabbling, I'm confident most people can become very healthy by having diet rich in helpful cultures (party in your tummy), all the essential amino acids (that will become good neurochem), and letting the body rest in an aware and balanced state without forcing anything (zen out and in) regularly.
There being no concise source on the matter of general health, diet, good neurochemistry, and mood, I can but offer a collection of disparate books:
Principles of Neuroscience (Kandel, Schwartz, Jessell) is a great textbook.
Emotional Intelligence (Bradberry)
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Suzuki Roshi)
I also read a lot of personal experience vault essays on erowid.org (regarding "experimental medicine," for lack of better terminology)
> College college college college. Your 20s are when you figure out what you want to do.
This is ridiculous advice for someone who is in U.S. So you want him to get into a huge debt w/o even knowing what he wants to do?
OP, if you want to find what you want to do or just "find yourself" don't bother wasting money and time at college and just travel for 6 months to some remote place and live there with locals.
This is equally ridiculous advice. First off, college is not necessarily a massive debt inducing experience. There are so many grants and loan options that it is absolutely affordable, if you do your research and plan appropriately. The early part of most college curriculums is built to help you find areas where you have interest and want to be employed. Not to mention the pursuit of knowledge is absolutely worth the cost.
Second, you mention traveling and living in a remote area with locals. This is definitely a good thing to do. But it can also drop you into debt just as quickly as college in the US if you don’t research first. And you may or may not learn anything if you are not careful. In other words it’s still a risk.
100% agree. I hated it. It was expensive, stressful, and unrewarding.
My loans won't be paid off until I'm in my mid 40s. I feel like a sucker who fell for a scam. It's objectively the biggest mistake I ever made.
I'm sure my perspective will be soundly dismissed on HN. I'm sure I must have done college "wrong" or something. Whatever. I'm not trying to blame anyone else. My choices seemed like good ones at the time; these things are only clear in retrospect.
I'd say >95% of the material covered in my business track could have been learned by reading "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman. If only it had been around when I started.
Right. I also am a self taught programmer working in industry since straight after high school, although in my case it has been closer to 20 years.
This has never been a problem in terms of skills or employment and advancement. The only part I feel I missed out on is the networking aspect, and perhaps doing a minor subject, some language, literature or general studies unit or two would make one a more well-rounded person.
It's hard to justify the time and expense just for these benefits though.
Going through the motions of going to school is a waste of time if you don't take it seriously. One can "grow up" or "see the light" by doing committing to anything substantial and seeing it through, and there are much cheaper ways to accomplish that than going to college.
For example, let's say one isn't sure about going to college. Instead of spending 4 years and a bajillion dollars to find out if college is right for you, and it might not be, how about washing dishes for a few months at a local restaurant? For one, you might love washing dishes. Two, a lot of stuff can come into focus when you spend doing something you don't really want to do. Just a thought.
I saw your other comment about starting something of my own and thought that was good advice. As far as college goes, I definitely wouldn't go unless I was serious about it and social aspect is especially attractive. Most people I interact with are 15+ years older than me and it's getting a little boring. It's also hard to make friends when everyone your age is in college.
I'm currently in college, what else is it about? (I'm genuinely curious) I'm studying mathematics (it's the only degree I could see being worth while in a purely intellectual and educational sense)
Consider that you're spending $X on college, when you could probably just as easily buy the text book (or not!) and do courses online for free. So what is it that you want to get out of college? If you don't know, why are you paying?
I'm not hiring, but I'd personally rather see someone who self taught themselves some specific discipline, and then used the money they would have spent on college to apply their knowledge to build something for themselves (whether that's taking knowledge of math and building an investment portfolio, or taking knowledge of software and building a business/app, etc.)
If I were you I'd just ask "am I getting what I want out of college?" and if not, change that. If you don't know what else it's about, observe, ask, research, ask people on HN, whatever.
> Consider that you're spending $X on college, when you could probably just as easily buy the text book (or not!) and do courses online for free. So what is it that you want to get out of college? If you don't know, why are you paying?
Heh. I got a specially tough mathematical logic professor and failed multiple times. It literally took me years until I finally passed the class. And several textbooks and nights with little to no sleep. I had to rinse my brain and put it back a few times until I finally got it.
Sure, go with a textbook if you are ok with some superficial knowledge. But it's nonsense to compare that with spending months studying a single subject under a tough teacher.
It is not something required to be successful, but I'm getting tired of hearing stuff like "just buy a book, it's the same thing". No, it's not.
It is, however, a good idea to do so, and use that to figure out if going deeper in those subjects would be worthwhile.
Disclaimer: never learned calculus properly. Teacher wasn't strict enough, and I didn't care at the time. Big mistake.
I know what it is about to me, I was curious about what it was about to him.
Now in terms of math I can only speak for myself but it would probably take me 10x longer to learn what I have learnt, if it wasn't for being surrounded by professionals and a peer group where I can have my assumptions tested against.
Now I'm not saying it's impossible to self teach yourself advanced mathematics, but without tutorials, office hours, students to talk to, professors to talk to, it's going to be a very difficult road and one I'm not sure I could do the self-taught method.
I've never been to college, but I guess I would say it seems like college is as much about figuring out what you want in life and finding people who can offer perspectives you may not have considered as it is getting an education. I grew up in small town and this sort of thing is attractive to me.
As others have pointed out it's a very expensive place to figure out what you want in life. I feel like figuring out what you want in life is just a product of growing up and being open to different experiences. College is probably a very good bubble to experience a lot of things in a safe environment where room for error is high (and I don't mean not passing your courses). But you could probably replicate this in other ways for example in the work place, talking to a lot of people, etc,.
You don't have to spend a ton of money on college. And valuing it solely based on money-in money-out ignores so much of it's value. It's part of your life, an experience. It's like saying traveling abroad, skydiving, or climbing a mountain is not an economical use of your resources. The social exchanges and experiences you get are pretty invaluable.
I think its possible to replicate the college experience outside of academia, but I think its a good way to take the risk out.
In college, you are in a cohort of peers who are prioritizing growing/learning over most other things. In the workforce, that is not a guarantee.
Sure you may be lucky enough to join an organization that is willing to take risks for the sake of learning, but I would argue that this is incredibly rare as companies are motivated to make profits and the ROI is not always clear.
This doesn't mean that college will automatically make you adaptable and intellectually curious. You will only get back what you put into it.
sexual education, making friends for life (as you get older, people get into groups of friends and it's harder to make real "life" connections"), networking with people outside your future industry, trying things, getting new hobbies, parties etc.
You're at your peak in terms of learning new subjects, so if you get a chance, learn a few random ones! It's said that apple's focus on design and typography wouldn't have happened if Steve Jobs hadn't dropped in on some calligraphy classes during college.
You can go to another country where college is much less expensive or free (like France or Germany, some of those countries even subsidize the apartment rent for students). It takes grit to force yourself to learn a different language but it can be worth it.
And, as a bonus, in non-english speaking countries foreigners will have often a easier time getting admitted in an exclusive university than locals because universities want to be more international and increase diversity.
It's not worth getting into debts for an education you could have for free somewhere else.
Be careful which college. If you are feeling burnt out, don't jump into a university like mine where "sleep is for the weak" was (maybe still is?) a motto.
In fact, avoid any situation which pushes you to give up a healthy sleep schedule.
Also if you're ambitious, college is one of the best places to meet cofunders and see what the latest up and coming tech is, and discern it from sci fi.
