You can't buy back your youth, kiddo.
Why do so many people talk about youth as some sort of idyllic time in one's life? I, for one, have found a strong trend of things getting better as I get older, not worse. Old people, in general, have more of everything, because they've had more time to accumulate it: more money, more friends, more family, more power, more skill, more social status, more life experience, more of pretty much everything (except of course for physical stamina, but this is not terribly important in today's world, as the success of numerous disabled people shows).
It's not just you who has this problem. The experience you're relating probably sounds pretty familiar to many people around here. It's easy to forget that geeks are still the minority. In my experience so far, this won't change much as you get older. The "Jockocracy" is alive and well even after one finishes formal schooling, it just becomes a little less obvious and a little less homogeneous.
There may be some bastions of geekdom around the place and if you're lucky you'll have a few people that you can geek out with on a regular basis, but by and large it's lucky we have the Internet, hey.
Trust me kid (it feels weird that I can call an 18 year old "kid" now, but it feels right, I must be getting old), you will look back at your 18 year old self in 10 years with eyes you can't conceive of having today.
It's not about things really getting better or worse as you get older. It's more just about things getting different. It's not that youth is or should be this "idyllic" time and things just suck more as you get older. I think you'd find that many people who would self identify as geeks would not say their youth was particularly "idyllic".
You will be much wiser in 10 years. I know this is a cliché, but it's also true.
You will learn more from your failures than you will from your successes (I know, another cliché but again, very true), but make no mistake, the successes do feel better at the time. :)
You will have more responsibilities in 10 years. If there is one thing that has changed for me if I compare myself now to myself at 18, it is this. however much free time you have now, it will seem like a luxury looking back in 10 years. That's not to say that your life will necessarily turn into one big soul crushing grind or anything, but you will simply have more demands on your time. Some you will have desired and some you will not have. I now have a wife, I now have a budget to balance, bills to pay, a job to work at and so on. It's hard to say if I prefer my life now to the one I had when I was 18. Truthfully, I would say there are aspects of my life when I was 18 that I wish I still had and there are aspects of my life now that I would never give up to be 18 again.
Enjoy your youth and your current lack or responsibilities, try not to take it for granted (but you will, because we all do). Try not to take things too seriously. Some of the most interesting people I know still don't/didn't know what they wanted to do with their lives in their 30s. I might even include myself in this category actually. :P
Just keep at it, one foot in front of the other, you only really fail if you stop.
Also, you come across as a bit of a whiner.
Work on your social intelligence. Disowning your peers in favor of books (what a timeless stereotype!) is only going to leave you emotionally crippled later on.
Also, not for nothing, but your stories (repeated abandonment by professors, peers, etc.) strongly suggest to me that you're missing important social cues. The research-paper anecdotes, in particular, tell me that you're doing something wrong. No professional academic or journal would take a paper submitted by a high-school student seriously without lots of personal mentoring. If you did have a faculty mentor, they wouldn't simply abandon you without cause. You're missing something important.
Actually, the advice to get laid (with a pretty and not too drunk person) might be good here. It will force you to confront any social deficiencies you do have.
No offense, but your personality leaves a bad taste in my mouth, acidic, like a pasta sauce that hasn't been cooked long enough. You have no interest in making any changes in your life, but you admit yourself that you're not happy with what you're doing. You ask for advice with no intent on taking it, instead hosting a pity-party where other nerds stroke your ego by telling you that the world has wronged you, reinforcing your broken worldview.
Getting laid might mellow that out bit. Does for a lot of people. A person is more than just a brain. You must tend to the whole organism, not just the ego.
Right now, I wouldn't want to work with you on a project, no matter how smart you are. Don't need a prima Dona that thinks he's always right.
Please tell me where I have ever said or implied that I was always right, or even right most of the time.
EDIT: I see you edited your post to say this twice, I suppose on the principle that "what I say three times is true".
"No offense, but your personality leaves a bad taste in my mouth, acidic, like a pasta sauce that hasn't been cooked long enough."
I will freely admit that I can be unpleasant at times, but I do know enough social skills to not insult random strangers who I have no reason to be hostile to.
"You ask for advice with no intent on taking it, instead hosting a pity-party where other nerds stroke your ego by telling you that the world has wronged you, reinforcing your broken worldview."
Wait, what? Look at the top-ranked comments on this thread, none of them could be remotely described as pitying me. Some people did give good advice, eg., lionhearted, zaidf, btilly.
"Look at the top-ranked comments on this thread, none of them could be remotely described as pitying me. Some people did give good advice, eg., lionhearted, zaidf, btilly."
Some of the most highly-ranked comments here tell you to work on a project where other people can't get in the way. That's the worst advice that I see. The world has gone collaborative. Learning to be a better collaborator will yield much higher returns.
And like I said, you come across as a whiner by putting the focus on all the external causes as to why your projects didn't succeed. I've seen so many people with a thousand external excuses as to why they can't do X that it quite offends me, especially coming from someone as talented and privileged as yourself.
Privileged? I do have some privilege, in that I was born in a first-world country and not a third-world country, but that's about it. My parents aren't rich or famous or even upper middle class. My mom constantly worries about the bank foreclosing on her house because she can't pay the mortgage, my dad works as a salesman and lives in a junky 2BR apartment. I myself am flat broke, I actually have negative net worth because of the student loans I had to take out.
I mean, physically, yeah, it's pretty much all downhill from there. but everything else gets much better.
I would not worry too much if your social life doesn't pick up until you are a little older. Mine did not.
Also note, if you don't connect with your peers, consider finding new peers. For me, moving to the San Francisco bay area (I'm in the south bay) has massively improved my social opportunities. Also, as you get older, the other nerds start to come out of their shells. At your age, many of them either studiously avoid other people or pretend to not be nirds.
Yea it's funny the way that happens. Perhaps this occurs more often than we'd like to think. For starters, just look at all the parents who don't seem to understand why their kid wants to be popular in school or why they seem unmotivated to study the subjects the parents want them to study.
I totally second that.
Youth consists of people telling you what to do and hitting you without any consequences for no apparent reason beside their own amusement.
For me things started to lighten up during college. At last there was almost no boring things to learn (in comparison with previous stages of education) and virtually no homework drudgery. There were fewer interactions with people that were likely to assert dominance over me just on basis of formal authority. Vacations lasted three months. You didn't need to take notes during most courses, just xerox them from someone with better handwriting week before final exams.
After college life got even easier. I just have to earn enough money to keep myself and people I care about alive.
The only struggle I have today is to build wealth generating system that makes money for me without putting in additional work so I can relieve myself from the last obligations.
Including responsibility and lack of freedom. All that stuff they have more of costs.
More of everything means more up keep for each of them, and less freedom to try something new. Have a wife and kids? Are you willing to watch your children be homeless because you decided to take a year off work to see Europe? An 18 year old could easily crash on friends'\families' couches afterwards until he got a place of his own making it not that big a deal. More skill? More to up keep so that it doesn't atrophy, also it means you are dedicated to whatever that skill is in. World class Software person decides he wants to do Mechanical Engineering? Sure his years of analytical thought give him an advantage over a complete green horn but it is a loss of status, ability, and pay.
Everything you do has initial costs and up keep costs. These costs limit freedom. Sure you can hide in your parents basement and only provide for yourself but that has certain costs as well.
I actually feel this way: I don't want to work for a body-shopping firm a few years after i graduate. I fear that very much. Coz thats what's been hapenning all around me. The mindset of the people around me is such - graduate, get a job.
So i keep trying things, and have been doing it since i was 14. I'm now 19. I'm still trying :)
So all the best to both of us and everyone around who's in this kinda situation.
Now I think I've changed my mind. If I have to work. I will. And I would work just to fund my other ideas, like what I'm doing now by doing small freelance jobs.
More does NOT equal or mean better. The startup world is a great example of that.
P.S. - There is nothing wrong with parties, dating, sports, and clubs. In moderation of course.
Being forced to learn boring stuff on daily basis for 10+ years (that actually longer since you are younger) while coping with your emotions and huge amounts of people you meet is far more hard then anything in adult life.
Because there is no turn backs in time (for now at least). Stucking in the things you like now and not trying else may lead to not even know what you would like to do.
As a personal example: I'm also very interested in cycling and cooking. They're a lot more approachable for most people, but (under the right circumstances) have plenty of points that segue well into talking about history, physics, etc.
I mean, physically, yeah, it's pretty much all downhill from there. but everything else gets much better.
I would not worry too much if your social life doesn't pick up until you are a little older. Mine did not.
Also note, if you don't connect with your peers, consider finding new peers. For me, moving to the San Francisco bay area (I'm in the south bay) has massively improved my social opportunities. Also, as you get older, the other nerds start to come out of their shells. At your age, many of them either studiously avoid other people or pretend to not be nirds.
If you look into how memory works, negative details fade and positive memories remain. I keep pretty extensive journals, and it's absolutely staggering how much less pleasant my earlier life was than I remember it.
Also, most people accidentally wind up in a secure, relatively unchallenging position early in life, and never get out of that. Youth was their only time questioning authority, learning, and growing at a rapid rate. But the people I know that kept those attributes into their 20's... 30's... and 40's and beyond enjoy their later years as much or more than their earlier years.
If you're looking to run your own companies, projects, write your own papers, and do your own work, then you won't be nostalgically remembering your youth later. You're in line for a very challenging, but very stimulating and enjoyable life that gets better as time passes.
This may be a bit controversial, but I'd recommend you ignore the "play around and enjoy it while you can" crowd - most of the people I know that skipped that advice are quite successful and quite happy with that choice. Play around is good advice if you're looking for a very stable and secure life later. If you're in control of your own destiny, go ahead and build like crazy now - it'll have a compounding affect for the rest of your life, and will lead to a very fulfilling and prosperous life (and you're much likelier to end up quite wealthy, which has surprisingly become underrated as of late - consumerism sucks and you can't buy happiness, but wealth opens up so much freedom and opportunity. By starting now when you have no heavy expenses and aren't accustomed to a high standard of living, you put yourself in line to be very wealthy later)
You should not shut out people just because they talk about sports, cars, or whatever when they first meet you. Everyone has something to teach you. Even when you are the smartest kid in the room you can always learn something from someone. Your challenge is to get past the bullshit smalltalk and get to the meat of conversation that you both find mutual interest in.