[mechanical_fish]

While consulting and building websites is a fine thing, it is not the only thing.

Moreover: You literally have the rest of your life to do paying work. Unless the alternative to going to work as a kid is hardship or hunger (which would be an even more regrettable problem) I see no sense in rushing into the workforce.

It would be nice if your school had been interesting enough to capture your attention with one of the hundreds of other subjects of possible study. One, perhaps, that is mind-expanding and awesome but which doesn't pay. Math and science. Art and music. History and philosophy. Languages and literature. Machine shop and robotics lab. Studying these things is what school is for. Building stuff for clients is what the remaining five or six decades of your working life are for.

I find it heartbreaking that the most interesting thing you found to do in your school days was to get a NET+ certification. Obviously, everyone's tastes are different, and details matter, but my first-order reaction is to regard that as a terrible failure of your environment.

[firefoxman1]

Well like I said, I found lots of subjects interesting because they weren't ruined for me by school. I'm only taking a few classes in college now, yet I find myself spending every free moment in the school's library because I feel free to learn on my own terms now.

So I guess to clarify, what I meant in my first comment was that school sucking helped me learn the one of most important skills around: self education.

In the past few years I've become interested in several subjects that I wouldn't have enjoyed in a classroom setting. My recent interests have been philosophy (specifically Stoic and Epicurean), tea, Javascript and Node.js, Redis and MongoDB, Japanese art and aesthetics, investing/finance, Guitar, and classical music.

I hated learning Visual Basic, for example, because my teacher was aweful. That's what you risk when you put your education in the hands of others. When you teach yourself a subject, the only person you have to blame is yourself if you don't learn it well.

[mechanical_fish]

Okay, I feel much better for you now. ;)

But I managed to simultaneously enjoy school a lot and learn to self-educate. These things aren't mutually exclusive by any means. All good education is self-education, and a good school is one that operates with this principle in mind: The teachers and the environment should amplify your self-educational tendencies, not thwart them.

Mind you, you'll never find a whole school, of any size, that works that well. (Especially in high school, and especially these days, when my understanding is that school is more regimented than ever.) You have to find the special corners.

You should take classes that help you. One rule is simply to study any subject that has a good teacher, no matter what it is: Ask around, find the teachers that are any good, and learn from them. Another rule, which I suggest often around here, is to take classes that incorporate resources that you won't find on your own. Guitars are easy to find on your own. Entire student symphony orchestras or choirs are harder to find, and fully-equipped semiconductor wafer fabs are the hardest of all to assemble in your garage, unless you're Bill Gates.

[firefoxman1]

Ah I do see your point now. Knowledge is easy to acquire nowadays, but the resources to pursue the knowledge further, to experiment, and materialize it into something useful are much harder to find outside of a classroom.

Also, I really appreciate your tips on how to get the most out of my college experience.

[JonnieCache]

The number one tip for learning lots of cool stuff at university: you don't have to be enrolled in a course to attend it. The tutors generally don't give a shit who you are or if you're meant to be there. Just turn up to whatever you want, it's fine.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and make friends with someone who has access to the Film Studies department's DVD collection. That, or hang around the door with an RFiD scanner. If you lack one of these, make your own.

EDIT2: By the way, I take no responsibility if the administrators at your educational institution are crazy and you get in trouble as a result of anything you may have read here.

[firefoxman1]

Haha that's awesome. I'm definitely going to try dropping into some classes (I kinda like breaking rules).

[droithomme]

Here's some money saving tips then. Most universities don't charge extra for taking crazy numbers of units as an undergrad, so rather than just drop in why not take 30 units a semester. A lot of undergrad survey courses have multiple choice exams and don't represent significant additional workload, but can be fun, the psych classes are also a place that will have pretty girls you don't find in engineering.

Dorms and school cafeteria food are expensive. But living off campus means commute time and parking expenses. Two options are to secretly rent a couch from someone living on campus, and to find a location on campus to stash a bedroll and just live there. Where I went to school there were carefully camouflaged dugouts in a canyon behind the physics building where there were about a dozen students living incognito for free.