I barely graduated college, and that's okay

Is there any real take away here? Effectively it is "I floated through life and got a few lucky breaks which led me into a relatively comfortable career that I enjoy". I'm hard pressed to find something unique or interesting about this long autobiographical read.

My story started out in a similar fashion:

I did terrible in HS, slept through most classes, aced most tests, and did no homework. I finished with a 2.7 GPA. I decided early on it was okay for me to go to community college because from there I could save money and still transfer to a good school.

I deviated from the norm when I then focused on my career while going to school, working for a consulting company at 18, then landing a job as an IT security admin. I transferred to a state school because it was easy and cheap and I had realized work experiences was far superior to college credentials.

I have since then had a mostly enjoyable and relatively lucrative career as a programmer. The key take away from my story? Complete school because the piece of paper is important but focus on work early if you want to stand out and get ahead of the crowd.

One thing I'm told has changed about the U.S. educational system over the last 20 years is that the amount of individual mentorship that students receive has strongly declined.

When I transitioned into graduate school, one big surprise was that school actually became easier in several senses: - I had a clear role model (mentor) - I had several good sounding boards for ideas (professors had more time for me than for undergrads, and graduate students were also closer friends) - More frequent communication with professors translated to better grades (if they're aware of your thought processes, they can more clearly understand how to interpret your work).

As a result, I felt much more involved in the work I was doing. That feeling of involvement made me more invested (and more confident) in my work.

I know that some colleges are working on programs to supplement mentorship and structure, and are finding great success. For example, in the ASAP program (http://www1.cuny.edu/sites/asap/), the graduation rate is more than three times the national three-year graduation rate of 16% for urban community colleges. It would be interesting to see whether life outcomes ("success") are any different for people who go through this program.

I personally loved this article because it lets others in the same situation know some risks that other people took to reach their ideal career.

I remember graduating college with a 2.9 but that's after being put on academic probation twice because i was burning the candle at both ends. Meaning i was working two jobs to pay for school, but was so tired I didn't do well in school. Not until 2+ years in the military did I start prioritizing what needed to be done. My GPA still wasn't high enough to show my worth, but i was happy with what i accomplished and knew what I can do. This was only a year ago, so I'm still not near my dream career, but my GPA won't stop me. Just one thing checked off on my checklist

I realize after graduating that I only wanted to finish school at the time because of society told me i couldn't have a career unless I did. So instead of going to school for education and learning i just went through the motions.

The basic thing i got from this article was just his willing to share what he went through. It might empower others to purse what they love or not, but one can't be scared to take a risk because you are scared of failure or consider yourself unworthy.

I'll put it this way- My first job out of college was one of the few that DID NOT want my GPA, and I ended up doing awesome, I'm fairly successful now.

Hi Vik, you seem like a younger version of me. I worked QC testing in an electronics factory between semesters. I graduated with a 2.1 GPA in the middle of the recession. I took whatever job I could find. Work didn't pay much but they did send me travelling.

In 2005 I applied to the foreign service as well. Instead of going to the second interview I bought a last minute ticket and flew to Europe. After traveling throughout Europe I based myself in France where I've been pretty successful.

The point being is all I had was my hard work and moxy to help me get by. All those rejection letters (sometimes not even that) had only emboldened me to prove my capabilities. I wasn't going to let my GPA be my only defining value.

For myself - while in college for statistics, I focused much more on my side jobs (in business and marketing) than college. I stopped going about a year and a half ago with a semester left, simply because the job opportunities got so good (opportunity/sanity cost of going to school was outweighed by fulfillment/high salary/career track of working more).

Eventually, I suppose I'll take night classes and finish college. But its quite low on my priority list. My work experience during college was by far more valuable to my career than the actual college education (which I thought was great, too).

I'm a little curious as to how he managed to kind of waft into the Foreign Service so easily. I have much stronger academic credentials, foreign language skills, and relevant work experience, and I spent years and years trying to get in to no avail, despite aceing the required tests each time.

I suppose its just down to fate, and I'm glad he found something he loved doing, but man, it's disheartening to read about someone casually walking into your dream job and just as casually walking away.

My story is similar to this. I, too, did poorly in school. There were so many things working against me. I was constantly too tired in the mornings for my brain to function, so I missed important concepts. Or, the pace of learning was too slow, and my brain wanted to run with it. Or, the content was missing important piece of information that help my brain connect the dots. My brain doesn't assimilate information well when it's forced to take it for fact without answering supporting questions.

The school system is not made for people like me, and we as a society are absolutely terrible at guiding people into careers they would excel at. I'm lucky that I guided myself to software development. Many others are not so lucky.

One day, we'll figure out how to guide people to where they can excel, and when that happens we'll be much better off as a society (post-scarcity, Star Trek future).

I also experienced a letter of anti-recommendation from a school administrator once, which by total chance my mother intercepted and prevented from being sent (and gave the woman quite an earful). Reading that detail makes me wonder if this is actually a common practice.

Stunning to me that someone would think to do that to a kid.

I enjoyed reading your story, thanks for sharing. As for brd's comment just disregard it. His generalization just means he's unwilling to get a deeper understanding of where you are coming from. Thanks again.

I enjoyed reading your story, as for brd below, diregard him. You published your own words and he shouldn't be criticizing and generalizing your journey to date> Thanks for sharing.

I need advice. Excuse me for how disorganized this all is, I'm just typing. I'd like you guys to give it to me straight, tell me if I'm being a spoiled brat who needs to grow up, or tell me if I should follow what seems right to me. I've made a throw away because I don't want this tied to my name, and my main account is my full name.

I'm not doing well in college. I just came from a midterm that I almost certainly failed. I've not done well in any of my classes besides a bullshit social science course that anyone can do well in. In my real courses, statistics, calculus, and a theory CS course, I'm failing desperately. I don't go to class anymore.

I can recognize that it's entirely my maturity and work ethic that is the problem here. When I do find myself going to class, I comprehend fully. I don't find it hard to catch up, even. When I leave class, I don't do homework and I don't study.

This is the first time I'm admitting it to myself, but I don't believe I can succeed in this system. I don't know if I'm lying to myself when I say I love learning, or if I'm just much more subpar than I'm willing to recognize.

It's not that I'm an unmotivated individual, it's just that I've always been a self-learner. I hate this whole system of, go to a class for 50 minutes and study a subject, spend an hour later in the day doing some homework in the same subject, and maybe do this every other day. When I learn, I'm much better at spending 10 hours really consuming the material, flying through chapters, and then doing that for 5-6 days in a row. Formal education doesn't cater to me in this regard.

I love to program. The few hours in the day that I'm happy are when I'm reading mailing lists and and working on personal projects. I truly believe that if I was to drop out, I wouldn't waste my time doing anything else. I'd be able to really embrace the style of learning that works best for me.

I think that a few years from now I would find myself more prepared for the real world than most of my friends, although, I think they would similarly find that they have an easier time finding work than I. But that doesn't worry me a ton.

I've watched my father be an EE for his whole life, programming and managing for a boring company that makes controllers. I don't want to enter that ecosystem _at all_. I have watched him hate his life in exchange for a paycheck, and I'd like to opt out from that system entirely. What best fits that? The market for full stack engineers / web developers / app developers. And alternatively, the start up scene.

I wonder if the reason I'm involved with coding at all is because it caters so much to my preferred style of learning. Maybe that's why I latched onto it so hard in late middle school.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Let me know what you guys think I should do, or if there are any questions you think I should pose to myself to really figure this out.

neat story, but i'm more fascinated on how he got into the foreign service- something that is arguably more difficult to get into then med school.

Thank you for posting this.

He did graduate, though. That little sheepskin may seem only like a small thing, but the difference between having it and not having it should not be underestimated. He also had parental support, which, until you live without it - in the US, it's many people's "safety net of first resort" - you just cannot imagine the benefits it gives you. You can fail in all sorts of ways and still come back - you have a place to lay your head when it comes down to it, and that counts for a lot. The difference between that and thinking "hm, homelessness actually possible!" is so stark it's hard to overstate. The poster "floated by" and is doing great; I can share some experiences on what it's like on the opposite end of the spectrum.

I didn't go to college because I had to leave home early (was told I had to be out at 16, was out by 17) to support myself, and received no parental support when I left. I did, however, manage to work myself from a tech support hamster at 17 to sysadmin, then junior developer, then finally senior developer. I never lacked for work, and have made OK, but not amazing money. That all sounds great, but it comes with serious costs, especially if you're just "decent" or "pretty good." Here are my experiences:

- You're probably going to have to work 2-3x as hard as an equivalently skilled person to prove that you deserve to be there.

- You may have to deal with much lower raises, or deal with simply being passed up for them altogether. This one can be more subtle, so can be hard to prove. So, you may be picked for the challenging work, asked to lead teams, told you're the best on the team by the boss(es), and receive the company awards, but when it comes to raise time, you wonder why you just went from 80 to 85k, and the people below you in rank went from 80 to 110 (and aren't happy with that and leave anyway. Heh.) This one sucks the most, because it's the one you have the least control over, and will ultimately impact the number of choices available to you later on.

- You may experience another subtle thing. This: "we know you're good, but you don't have a degree, so we believe you're less likely to leave because the hoops for you to change jobs is higher, so we can ask you for more than your degreed peers - and we're probably right about it." You will be the person on-call more often (if that applies to you - sysadmin/devops), you will be "expected" to stay later, and just generally push harder to prove yourself.

- You're going to spend a LOT of your free time teaching yourself knew things, honing your skills, and brushing up on the theory you never learned in a setting that allowed you to immerse. Now, maybe you have superior learning capabilities and can just sponge this stuff up in just a couple of your after-work learning sessions, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that for those of us who aren't, we spend a lot of time making them stick over the years. Now, we know that everyone needs to do this stuff these days, and that it's becoming more necessary every day. No question about it. However, you will have to do it even more to make sure you're at the top of your game. You may have annoying gaps in your knowledge, and will have to go back (in some cases, WAY back) to fill that stuff in. (Now that there's Khan/Udacity/MIT OCW/others, this is actually a LOT easier to do.) If you're only decent/pretty good, you're going to have run significantly faster to stay in place. Forget most of your social life. Again, this does not apply to you if you happen to just be an superhumanly fast learner, but for the decent/pretty good, it probably does.

- Culturally, your degreed peers may have some trouble adjusting to you. Of course this happens at every level (people who went to state school treated differently than those who went to a top university, for example), but you'll be the strangest of the bunch. People may wonder if you know anything at all(!), not just about your field (which is easy enough to prove), but about the world around you: politics, economics, sociology, literature, the lot of it. Sometimes you may be looked at as a strange feral orphan child. They just may not even have a baseline for what to expect from you. The software world(s) may be more meritocratic and/or egalitarian, but it's not utopia. Now, this sounds /all/ bad, but I actually have always liked this one; if you are a dedicated self-learner, you can blow people away pretty easily. They expect you to not be able to tie your shoes, but then you rattle off your knowledge X, Y, and Z and show them your elegant, well-structured code and they are agape. This one is fun!

- Remember that the degree acts as a proxy. It's a way for organizations to outsource not only judgment about your knowledge, but your socio-economic background (in most cases), your "level of socialization", your ability to "follow-through" (and your personal story about how you had to leave home early and support yourself alone and spend all your free time learning unfortunately will not count in many/most places. Sorry!), and how "convincing" you are. You may not be listened to (even if you turn out to be right, at least for a time), your opinions may be given less weight, people may feel more comfortable cutting you off when you're talking, etc. This one can be surmounted: if you are right enough times when others are wrong you may start be taken very seriously. Still, the bar is higher for you. Much higher. This one is probably obvious, but is worth stating.

- You may have to content yourself with smaller and/or less-respected organizations. I know, I know meritocracy, etc. If you're amazing, you can most certainly get into Google and friends, but again, if you're only decent/pretty good, you /probably/ won't. For those of you who have ever wondered "who works /would want to work at crappy place X?", it's not just CS grads who couldn't hack it at Google or the 'printer guy' who got promoted to LOB programming. Sometimes it's smart, pretty good devs who are either just short of what's needed for the bigger players or are incredibly intimidated by the interview processes/hiring filters. It's funny to think that these places are (based on comments I've read here on HN) inundated with resumes from people who are nowhere even close to qualified, but people who are qualified, or at least could be with some knowledge gaps filled in/"senior-level" mentoring don't even apply in the first place. Doesn't surprise me that something like Starfighters now exists to (maybe?) try to reach these people and mop them up. I would also say that you can be very valued at startups. You may be one of those great "get things off the ground" people, like many self-starters, and if you are, your metaphorical phone will ring a lot. I wouldn't say it evens things out, but it sure helps (and feels good to be real a go-to person!)

- Unless you really are one of the best, expect to always be questioned. You probably will need to psych yourself up a lot, because it's very easy to get disheartened and discouraged when you feel like you're never quite good enough/people are always going to assume there's "a lot he/she probably just doesn't know if we're honest" (even if you have been working for decades and proven yourself with real work)/you don't ever quite fit in culturally because you've never had the "college experience." You need to be tougher (psychologically) than your degreed peers, because you will have to work much harder to earn respect.

So this person floated, others swim upstream to get to where he is. It can be done for people without degrees, but it actually is hard. You really can't imagine what that little piece of paper - even if you just "barely" earned it - can do you for you. It's not just about getting hired.

"I’m already starting to see some really smart high schoolers skip college to get into the workforce because they know what they want, and good for them."

If these "smart high schoolers" have the ability to have someone else pay for their education, I recommend that they go to school. If they have Zuckerberg-parent level of support or are already mindblowingly skilled/knowledgeable, OK, sure, don't bother. They're probably going to succeed no matter what. If they are on the margin, though - parents wealthy enough to send them to a real university, but not wealthy enough to Zuck them, tell them to go instead. Or at least work for a couple of years, then go back. If someone gave me a few hundred thousand to go to a great university, I'd still go in a heartbeat. You cannot replace the quality of networks you'll get there. You cannot replace the immersion. You cannot replace the prestige. You just can't. The magic of university is being surrounded by "brilliant, ambitious, well-connected elites." I'm probably right in the sweet spot of the target of today's alternative education: I couldn't go to college, I'm a regular user of MOOCs, I do self-directed learning, I'm a devourer of books, I'm someone who does coding challenges, I'm fairly smart, AND I've managed some level of success, which proves it's possible, and yet I would still tell these people to go to college.

tl;dr: all is well that ends well.

It seems we only hear from those who did poorly in school that also bounced back and became successful later. I guess those that didn't don't have much incentive to telegraph their presence and their achievements (or rather lack thereof).

life advice from people under thirty