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by feverfew 2877 days ago
I personally found that 13 (5-18) whole years of education was more than enough time to determine, at least academically, what I wanted to do in life. If you want to 'find yourself' take a gap year and do some self-study or self-reflection, without paying the inflated fees. Heck you can do a degree and still attend lectures in a different course even if you are not enrolled, if you seek to broaden your horizons.

Did you need the university framework to grow as a person, or maybe it was the independence, that allowed that growth?
1 comments
toomanybeersies 2876 days ago
Academically I knew what I wanted to do when I finished high school. I wanted to be a software engineer, and I became one.

It sound super fucking corny, but when I left home at 18, I didn't really know who I was as a person. University really helped me find that.

It's not just the independence, but the fact that at university you have a lot of free time, and you have a lot of opportunities to meet and interact with people from different backgrounds, who have different interests to you. I don't want to spend my days hanging out with a bunch of software engineers. I'm actually proud of the fact that in my circle of friends, I don't know anyone who's a software engineer. I actually hate talking about software or computers outside of work, I spend 40+ hours a week doing that shit, I want to do anything that doesn't involve software engineering for the other 128 hours of the week.

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randomdata 2876 days ago
> I'm actually proud of the fact that in my circle of friends, I don't know anyone who's a software engineer.

Would you only know software engineers if you hadn't gone to university? I did not attend university and did not know another software engineer (outside of interacting with some online like on HN) until about 15 years into my career when a good friend started dating one. It does not really seem like the norm to only know software engineers. We're a pretty small segment of the population (~0.8% of the workforce).

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toomanybeersies 2876 days ago
The fact that my friends aren't software engineers is a bit tangental to the fact that I went to university, as I moved country recently and had to build a new circle of friends.

But I do know people who's entire circle of friends is programmers and tech people. I guess if they're happy, then they're happy, but it's not for me. I enjoy my job, but there are other things I enjoy more.

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