Ask HN: Advice for a Student?
I'm 18 years old and where I come from, you have to take an exam (consisting of physics, chemistry & math) to get into a tech/engineering college. And your performance determines what college you get into. Since the last 2 years, I've been feeling extremely lost & demotivated and I performed terribly on my exam so I could only get into very mediocre colleges. I decided to give it another shot so I took a gap year & I will be trying again but I don't think that results will be much different this time either. My preparation is in a really bad spot & the mediocre colleges here are straight up garbage. The quality of teaching is abysmal. I feel like I'd be better off learning things on my own than going to such a college. There are so many amazing CS courses online that I can use to teach myself. But for most jobs here, a college degree is an essential requirement. Most of my friends went to any college they were getting into and I feel I'm wasting time every single moment. The regret is too much.
I just don't know what to do. I'm feeling totally lost and directionless on where to go on in life. Any advice would be deeply appreciated.
Thanks!
18 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 28.0 ms ] threadIf your goal is to find work as a programmer, putting 3 years of literally any experience on your resume and passing some kind of technical interview is all you need to get a job in the current industry. Good luck!
Source: I am a US citizen, I have a non-technical degree, I have 8 years of """"professional"""" experience, and I passed a few technical interviews ranging from leetcode problems to portfolio review to random questions about SDLC
I agree with you, getting a degree would probably ease up immigration among other important processes. I didn't think about this previously.
>...putting 3 years of literally any experience on your resume and passing some kind of technical interview is all you need to get a job in the current industry.
This makes me rather hopeful. Thanks!
If you don't mind me asking, how did you transition in to a technical career and how were opportunities in the beginning when you didn't have much experience?
Thanks again! I appreciate your response.
I worked in sales for 5 years selling hard drives and etc to businesses. It was the only job I could land, and the pay was decent, but I knew that I wanted to be a developer because I enjoyed that work more, and obviously it's way more secure and pays more than most sales jobs!
I was having trouble even getting interviews, let alone passing them, due to a lack of experience on the resume and a lack of serious focus on logical reasoning skills for solving algorithmic problems. This kind of stuff absolutely does not come naturally, even if you have a computer science degree and lots of achievements to put on your resume.
To pass most interviews these days, I learned that you absolutely, 100%, most inflate the crap out of your resume with really fancy sounding words and responsibilities and achievements. Be realistic, but don't hold back. Then, you must send your resume out to 200 jobs sorted by most recent post, and after that you'll get like 5 phone calls.
After that, you put on your most positive and outgoing personality to talk about your passions and work and motvations. Then you hope that you catch 3 or 4 technical questions in a row that you have seen before in some shape or form ;).
Apply to literally every job title that sounds tangentially technical. Software Developer, Fullstack, Front End, Technical Architect, Business Analyst, Consultant, anything. The development job I landed was marketed as a Business Analyst position and the interview was probably a lot easier than other people face at the same company. On day one I was told I would be doing node and react XD
Good luck and have fun with the process ;)
Going by your experience, it looks like persistent efforts are key to breaking in the industry. I'll just keep going on & hopefully things will pan out okay.
Thanks again for replying!
In some countries, college degrees are mandatory to obtain jobs, and you'll need one. But college is not only for learning (remember: learn by yourself whatever you want, all is accessible) college is also to meet people, to create a network in your field of interest. So use this time to achieve this, meet the futures CTOs, coworkers or maybe your future cofounders ! This is far more important than you think, and in fact, I would have liked I had this advice more younger...
I totally agree with you on this. This sounds essential. But I wonder if there will be any smart people worth hanging around in a rubbish college? I think that the quality of students sharply declines at such colleges. Regardless, you bring up a really noteworthy point. I will keep this is in mind.
And thanks for replying!
> But I wonder if there will be any smart people worth hanging around in a rubbish college?
Well, you'll be there, so there are at least some smart people there, and possibly many who, for one reason or another, didn't do well in the exams and decided to do the same as you - get the degree, use the curriculum to structure your studies, and get a high-quality education despite the college teaching.
Take a group of people, wherever it is, you'll find 80% of followers, 15% of innovators and 5% of geniuses impossible to follow :) The college is no exception, because of cost, accidents of life, etc. Even a genius can miss his way in studies...
Use this time to learn all you can, meet the important people and be the better in what you want to do. It will never be wasted time.
Thanks a lot!
Well, there might be people like you too.. surprise them and get surprised yourself
> ... exam ... determines what college you get into.
Noted.
> I performed terribly on my exam so I could only get into very mediocre colleges.
Noted.
> ... will be trying again but I don't think that results will be much different this time either.
So you are demotivated, and despite the gap year, you feel you won't do any better.
> ... the mediocre colleges here are straight up garbage. The quality of teaching is abysmal.
Noted.
> I feel like I'd be better off learning things on my own than going to such a college.
If you are demotivated, why do you think you will do better studying on your own? Will you be able to create and maintain the motivation? What is it that motivates you?
> There are so many amazing CS courses online that I can use to teach myself.
Yes there are, but the ones worth doing require significant amounts of work, and maintaining that level of commitment is hard. Perhaps you need to work out why your preparation for your exams is going poorly, try to get to the root cause of your lack of motivation.
> ... for most jobs here, a college degree is an essential requirement.
Then you need a college degree.
> Any advice would be deeply appreciated.
So:
* You need a college degree;
* The colleges you can get into are rubbish;
* You feel you could study on your own.
Based purely on that it would seem that you should go to one of the colleges, meet their minimum attendance requirements, study on your own, making sure that you cover all of the material that will be on the exam, ace the exams, get your degree, and move on.
The fact that the teaching is rubbish will be irrelevant, and the existence of the exams will help to give you focus on your study. You will be forced to cover even those things you don't really like, which if you do solely self-study is a danger.
Take control of your own learning, but allow it to be guided by the college's curriculum. You will get your degree, be experienced at self-learning, and have a complete and well-rounded education.
I've often wondered about this. Right now, I am studying for my exams. And its mostly the stuff that I am not much interested in. I love studying math but I suck at physics and chemistry which keeps bringing me down. I think that when I'll be studying on my own, I'd be focusing on the stuff that I like and is actually important for me. I've recently started doing MIT's introductory CS course on python and I'm really liking it so far. I also enjoy working on the problems after the lessons. So yeah, I think I may be able to do better when I'm learning things that feel intriguing to me.
> try to get to the root cause of your lack of motivation
this sounds really important but I don't know how to figure that.
> you should go to one of the colleges, meet their minimum attendance requirements, study on your own...
You're right. This is probably the best course of action for me. It's just that I feel if I had to go to a rubbish college, I should've already done that but even on my second chance I'm not able to improve the situation. I really regret that I wasted so much time. I think that if I study on my own I could get probably quicken things but maybe I'm just trying to escape my problems.
And thanks a lot for your response. I really appreciate it!
You need to figure a way out to do well in your P and C exams as well; simply because even in your future career (full time job, freelancer, startup) there will always be elements that will suck. You could also use this as a test parameter: if you don't give up when the sucky parts strike, that career option could be one for the long haul.
>> I really regret that I wasted so much time
No point regretting, be careful to not make that a habit. Just figure out why you couldn't do well even on the second chance; fix those. And losing a year or two in life is a normal occurrence; every few years we will lose a year or two but if you put in the effort to learn from those they may actually be the pivotal years of your career.
If you think having someone to guide you offline can help; my email is in my profile.
I took the Gap year and couldn't clear JEE, the most prestigious test in India. So I took admission in some private college. Yes, education might not be the best but going to college is a whole different life experience I mean other than just studies. It might be difficult for you to just go to "any" college or you might feel like "you wasted a year" but it's not like that every day you learn something new and once you go to a college you'll realize that gap year was actually very important(not just for study but for personal development too.)
Also all these marks, who scored how much, how much you scored in high school etc all these matters until you go to college, after that it won't matter at all. Going to college will help you find a lot of different paths, different "career options".If end up going to college you'll meet people from different background having a different mindset that will help you a lot to develop your thinking and to understand how things actually work in the "real world".
P.S: You are 18 worries less, enjoy more :-)