[x0ner]

During the early part of high school, a few friends and I began attending community college night classes for subjects we got exposed to in our day classes. By the time I graduated, I was half-way through a AAS degree and considered continuing locally a no-brainer.

Ended up transferring 70 credits or so over to a four-year institution 1 year after graduating high school and managed to walk away with a BS degree earlier than my peers and with no debt. Without community college, there's no way I would have achieved this; I owe a lot to that part of the system.

For many years, I felt like an imposter because of my community college background. The irony in it all though was that for a much cheaper, often more flexible schedule, and sometimes better teachers, I walked away with a lot of the same opportunity as my peers. Naturally, my "network" wasn't filled with ivy-leaguers, but I'd later rub shoulders with them in my employment and be considered equal.

More details around hacking through education: https://medium.com/@9bplus/hacking-the-education-process-1be...