| I don't think it's cargo cult. We didn't have a program for skipping years in my country. My older siblings are much older and in STEM, which means I was informally schooled by them and spoke three languages before going to school. I used to read Science and Engineering magazines laying around as a child, then you get to school and you're put with kids who are just learning how to actually read the alphabet, and they're using pictures and scenes, and write big chunky letters. They're learning addition and multiplication while you at home write programs. Any idea how fucking miserable this could make anyone? I was excited about disassembling programs as a teenager and couldn't wait to get to college and study Engineering and meet teachers so I could avoid reinventing the wheel, only to be disappointed (if you teach programming and a kid who just turned 18 shows you programs he wrote in a bunch of languages including x86 assembly but you don't care: wake the fuck up and turn him to a colleague who does actually care about this stuff). I'm sure a smarter kid would have figured a way to end up at the right office at the right teacher, but I've sampled many professors to loose faith. I tried to go study abroad in a very respected college to save my soul because I knew I wouldn't last in my college, received a response, then financing fell through like a Damocles sword. I spent 9 years in college. I resented academia where stupidity and cheating were more acceptable than absenteeism. If you didn't show up and did well, you were a cheat; if you showed up and cheated, you were okay. I was so used to proving I didn't cheat because the work was "too good" to be of a student (and this started in 4th grade with my fucking handwriting on a homework not being a child's handwriting. The teacher had accused me and it was my idea to write in front of her to disculpate me). I resented incompetent fossilized professors with out of date knowledge who'd just crush you for not following exactly their (factually wrong) exact way, and you could do nothing about it because they've been friends for 30 years with the dean or know the Minister or something. A system that reproached you of doing a good job, where doing nice work had bad consequences and of course it wasn't your work, just tell the truth. A system where it'd be so much easier to be mediocre. I hated every fucking day of school from the day I got in, to the day I got out. I'm all for increasing the average level of education, but "non-average" kids shouldn't be "tied" to average kids. Many people talk about "osmosis" and what the smart kids could bring when they're in class and these people don't really get osmosis: It's not the average kids who end up smarter, it's the smart kids who end up withering away. This may work for adults, but for kids? I think it's hard. The system judges outliers with the same mindset it judges the average. They're just not the same. Special needs kids are not just on the left side of the Gaussian. EDIT - To put things in context: I grew up in the midst of a civil war that made 200,000+ victims; son of a father with a job that made him a target; belonging to an ethnicity that is the prime target, and survived a bunch of explosions. Great childhood. When I say education is the worst thing that's happened to me and that's left the bitterest of tastes in my mouth, I hope I'm able to fully convey to which extent it has traumatized me. |
I feel like every bit of will to submit to education has been beaten out of me, and I'm done grinding my teeth. Feeling my energy draining away day by day. I was having symptoms similar to seasonal depression, except they didn't match the seasons but the academic year. The safety net a diploma offers is just. not. worth it.
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It's a load off my mind and I'm feeling very good about my decision. It's been a week, and I haven't found any good reasons to revert it. I'm getting my website up and running again, setting up backups worthy of a professional and practicing my coding. I've always been interested in the work people around me do, and because of that (and my previous programming experience) I'm meeting my first client right after the holiday.
It's not exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I think it's a great start (developing integration tests for an Angular-based EFQM/project management tool on a fixed-price + costs basis), and I'm considering subcontracting it to freelancers.
(Advice and comments are more than welcome. I'm 21 and HAVE to earn money for the first time, I want to build products as an entrepeneur but plan to do contracting to keep me afloat in the meantime. I'm located in the Netherlands.)