Ask HN: Do you feel like your potential is being wasted?

I don't wish I had a road with better opportunities; I wish everyone had greater access to those opportunities.

I feel guilty fighting with my fellow man. I feel guilty for out-doing my neighbour.

I feel... confused. Knowing that the key to monetary success in this world would require I turn into a person I could no longer be proud of. So I'd win, but I'd lose.

I feel angry, knowing that there are people in this world who knowingly work to make things harder for others.

But that's the world we live in.

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that the only true success in life is that which you create for yourself. Doing something you believe in. Providing for your family; contributing towards the community; making the world a better place. Everything else is just a proxy for that.

I am currently between jobs with nothing on the horizon, because I chose to leave a place, a career, that I felt was abhorrent. I don't know how it'll work out. I could end up as one of those statistics; an unemployed or underemployed graduate. But there's no other option but to keep on trucking - if you think you have potential, anything else is a waste.

- Why do you want to go to Stanford, MIT, Columbia, etc.? There are probably tons of great options that are cheaper and more accessible to you if you want to get educated. Don't make that dream an impossibility by creating artificial barriers. Do you just want to go there because it seems sexy and it'll make you look cooler? Be careful not to value status over substance.

- Life is short, you should do what you want to do. The transition probably won't be as painful as you think it is.

- The grass is always greener on the other side. Right now someone in some dirt poor country is wishing he was you and had the opportunities you had. They may not have the opportunity to change things, but you probably do.

The "dream" is to immerse in learning while being surrounded by a critical mass of intelligent, driven, and most importantly well-connected people. There's a reason a large majority of the top entrepreneurs seem to have come from the same set of schools.

Sam Altman - Stanford Paul Graham - Harvard, Cornell Jeff Bezos - Princeton Larry Page - Stanford Peter Thiel, who despite his current ideological stance, also went to Stanford

We all know about the exceptions, sure - but they are exceptions. Most of the top ones (Google your favorite entrepreneurs aside from the well known ones like Zuck, Jobs, and Gates) - most of them have prestigious backgrounds, and those without do much worse:

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Entrepreneurs-do-be...

Now, I've read Graham's (http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html) essay about this, which is interesting for the subset of people who happen to apply to YC, but it doesn't touch on the main point: that a top-tier institution where you can be completely immersed, be surrounded by incredible people you can network with, and not think about paying rent gives you astronomical advantages. I don't think there's really any credible debate around this particular point. You can't do that while you're working; immersion happens only when you can truly focus. If you're thinking about rent, food, bills, etc. you're not focusing. You're also not going to get the kind of network at a state school - you might get lucky, but for spending 4-6 years of your life, that's a huge gamble on top of the money you're spending. I've tried to work while going to school once, and it ended in disaster (it can wreck your physical health, mental health, and knowledge retention. It's awful, and those of you you have done it, I applaud you, but not everyone has what it takes to do that.)

To your third point: that's the excuse we use to tell everyone they should suck it up and be happy with what they have, and it's awful. You go down that ladder, and you're telling people who "only" get beat up once a week that they should be happy not getting shot. The benchmark we should be using is the world we'd like to create, not "at least you can eat." Come on.

That all said, I appreciate your comment even I disagree with you. I know you don't have answers, nor does anyone else here (but if someone does, of course I'd love to hear about it!) I certainly don't expect that. I know the state of things. I came here to vent and commiserate. I'm angry, and I'm envious. That's all.

"The "dream" is to immerse in learning while being surrounded by a critical mass of intelligent, driven, and most importantly well-connected people. There's a reason a large majority of the top entrepreneurs seem to have come from the same set of schools."

One thing I am having a hard time grasping with your description of your desire is, what is the end goal? Do you want to learn amazing things about an academic area that you really enjoy? Do you want to meet well connected people? Do you want to be a fantastic top entrepreneur? Because these are all pretty mutually exclusive. I did not go to a top university but I do know well connected people and I am a relatively successful entrepreneur (not a top entrepreneur by any means). I will try to give my background as an example.

As I youth, due in large part to my fathers mathematics background, I gained a love of theoretical mathematics. I was top of my class in high school and graduated early. I went to college and got scared about an academic career, due again mostly to my father who was an entrepreneur and engineer. So I switched majors a few times and landed on law. I dropped out of law school to be an entrepreneur and engineer myself, with the ultimate goal to support my rapidly growing family.

By worldly standards I was raised relatively well off in Southern California but I am no Bezos, Graham, nor Page. I went to state schools and have a non-technical degree. I have started and been successful in two companies, work for myself as a consultant now, and all things considered do exceptionally well. But a few years ago my goal of supporting my family became easier (success in business helps a lot) I got the itch to get back into academia. I have been doing "amateur" theoretical mathematics research for fun for years, and I haven't felt fulfilled in business or engineering in quite a while. So I came up with a plan.

Step one, while I would love to go to MIT or Cal Tech, I don't see that ever happening. So, go back to a state school and become very familiar with the staff there. I found that most of them DID go to those prestigious schools and studied under phenomenal professors and have amazing knowledge and interesting theoretical mathematician and physics. They also have amazing contacts to share. So I am working on receiving a bachelors in mathematics, then a masters, then a PhD from those folks, and really enjoy the experience.

Second step (concurrent to first), continue to do well in my business areas (mostly B2B application development consulting as well as some recurring revenue products). Will I get Graham/Bezos/Gates rich? Heck no! But I can get enough to make my third step and ultimate goal possible.

Step three, through the local university fund my own theoretical mathematics research. Why? Because I really enjoy mathematics research. And funding for theoretical mathematics research is REALLY hard to obtain, there isn't much of it, and there are some really brilliant minds in the field who deserve it. So, I use step two to fund step three.

The point is, I saw what I wanted and I found a way to get to it. I have very specific steps around each of those steps (step two, for example, is far more complex than I have written out here, and has milestones and subgoals). But it is working and I can pursue my academic dreams while also supporting my family and myself well.

That all being said, I understand my steps might not work specifically for you. As you mention, you need focus for academic discovery. All of our brains work differently and I have been blessed to be able to do these things concurrently. But the more important point is, if you have a goal, make steps and work to get to it. You may find that by making steps to get to your ultimate goal, you have to change that goal slightly (as with me, I will never work at MIT or Cal Tech). But you'll still find the satisfaction of making it, lose the anger and the envy, and ultimately be happier than you are.

My goals would be for getting deep knowledge in an area of study, more than I'm able to do on my own. After becoming an expert in that area, I would like to apply that to business. Examples: MIT robotics->start robotics company / work with roboticists at an existing company or Columbia Computer Science and Logistics and Supply Chain Optimization->start a company optimizing delivery/pickup routes for delivery drivers and providing 'deep' dashboards to monitor and reroute as needed. Also, I would invite everyone to look at this comment from Clare Corthell from Mattermark for something closely related, and important:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8445607

The thing that spurred me to write this was the realization that there are probably hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people in this country that could be making incredible contributions to science, technology, business, and society in general, but don't have the ability to realize that potential. It's one of those funny things where understanding you have a problem, even at a detailed level, does not imbue you with the tools to fix it. I think that's what makes me the angriest. Society should be falling over trying to help people push things ahead, contribute to the advancement of society (I read that some countries pay people to go to college), but instead it tells you 'have rich parents, go into incredible debt, be a lucky unicorn, or tough luck.' How many other people are sitting around doing some dreary job that does little (like the ad clicks example), who, if given the resources, would provide society (and themselves) with so much more? It's a colossal waste.

Hammerbacher's quote resonated with me when I first read it, but now it really hits home: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," Hammerbacher once said. "That sucks."

I really appreciate your comment. That's the sort of response I was hoping for. Other people who have experienced this, and what they did/are doing. Thank you.

Woah woah, cheer up bro.

I'm probably exactly who you're talking to in this post, but man, lose the self-hating melodrama. You're just making excuses for yourself.

Pick what you want to do. Imagine you did it, and everything went wrong. Imagine the absolute worse case scenario. Is it that bad? I bet it's not. So go for it.

Well.. The OP did say that he is "nearly 40" so I'm assuming the "absolute worst case scenario" involves driving his family into financial ruin.

At least, that's my excuse for not pursuing more fulfilling work.

Financial ruin is okay if your family still loves and supports you. Financial success is not okay if you stepped on everyone to get there, and your family hates you.

Just a thought.

Forgive me for bringing some political thoughts with me into this thread, but your post really resonated with me and I think you are a perfect example of why we should work towards a basic income. Imagine how many people there are who are just like you, who can't afford to pursue their ideas due to financial or social constraints, yet have the potential to solve global problems (or at least contribute to their solutions). We are wasting so many brilliant minds by forcing them to grind from 9 to 5 in order to support themselves and their families.

> Just immerse myself in full-time learning rather than working on unexciting web dev work and doing fragmented self-learning in my free time (which is what I've been doing for years, and it's terribly inferior to full-time, uninterrupted learning.)

The advantage however of self-learning is you choose what you want to learn, how you want to learn it and the pace. You don't need to jump through the hoops of writing essays or passing exams.

I am not sure what university is like in US but my experience is you get a lot of core topics you have to cover whether you like it or not. The pace is set for you. I found most of the time it was too slow but then sometimes too fast.

Someone else mentioned ITT a list of famous successful (as in money) people and said they had been to top universities. The question is do you want to build a $10 Billion dollar business and all of the responsibility and sacrifice that comes with that?

Or maybe you would prefer to be something like the anonymous creator of Bitcoin. No certificate required for something like that. Or create something to help lots of people for little profit. Or maybe simply doing a PhD and enjoying the subject is enough.

What does fulfilling your potential mean to you?

To me it sounds like you don't like the work you do, and going to university to do an undergrad won't get you a better job (assuming you still want to work in tech?). The best way to get a job you might like more is to learn some new skills and pivot your career.

I'd also like to mention that going to a prestigious university has generally no bearing on the jobs you get, it's the people. As a result hiring companies (in the tech sector) don't really care where you came from as long as you can prove your value.

Yes I definitely feel I'm not being utilized properly. However, I've been making strides to correct that. My current work went from full software dev with cool new tech like WebGL to having to repeat data entry work (3 or 4 times) because of incompetence within corporate. To get myself out of this I work on side projects and currently attending grad school via OMSCS at Georgia Tech.

Any time I find myself thinking something remotely close to that, I realize that I won the lottery of growing up in and being able to call North America (or more broadly, Westernized civilization) home. I certainly have more control over my path here than I would almost anywhere else.

You could do undergrad online (e.g. Open University) while working, then go to a graduate school full time.