Ask HN: How to deal with the loss of magic as a student?

[tempor-schule]

I'm a 23 y/o Software Engineering student who is on the cusp of finishing his studies. The problem is I am finding myself in a situation where I am aprehending the fact I need to code. All the magic and passion I had entering my degree has all but disappeared. I tried restarting it by much of the common advice that is given here : do some personal project I am passioned about, take some break. I even moved out and did my last year of studies in Germany to try and change environnement but nothing solved this. I just continued giving the minimum effort in my classes as nothing that I studied filled me with some feeling, not the theoretical maths, not the shiny AI/ML, networks or language paradigms.

I am worried about it as I have not even started my career and I already have symptoms of what other people here in HN talk about mid-career. Another problem is that to obtain my degree (french rules) I need to realise a 6 month internship and I do not feel ready or willing to do so, as I feel I would be a drag for the company and it would also add to this whole situation.

Has anyone been in this situation, and if so how did you deal with it?

[elmerfud]

Not everything is about passion projects, actually most of life is not about passion projects unless you want to be extremely poor (starving artists), you manage to be independently wealthy, or you stumble in to a job that can be it. If your passions align with most peoples passions then those jobs are rare and you're waiting for the people ahead of you to die so you get a chance at that job.

Really what you're describing is simple fear of change. You've spent your whole life studying and now you see the end where the bulk of your time is not studying any more. You can go on to make a career out of studying but again that is an extremely competitive field and if you didn't plan for that before now it can be difficult to get in to.

It sounds like you've fallen for the marketing trick to keep people unhappy. The idea that you have passionate about something in order to do it and to do it well. That kind of marketing is great to keep you unhappy and continuing to throw money in various directions to pretend that a passion project is what you need in your life. It's a lie. What you need is probably something you've never been taught, you need grit. Grit is what keeps your grades high even when you're unsure about what's next. Grit will make you the best intern that a company has ever seen. Grit means that you don't have to like the task in front of you but you'll damn will do the better than anyone else. Grit is the difference between someone who achieves while others whine it can't be done.

When you've developed grit you've found true passion. Passion for thing means that thing controls you and if that thing changes (which it always does) you're plunged in to depression. When you can redirect that so your passion is about personal achievement regardless of the task you've found the grit to continue and passion you want.

[tempor-schule]

I think you may have misrepresented my message. I understand that not everything is happiness and joy in a craft, you need to eat frogs and force yourself through boring but necessary tasks. That, believe me, I understood. The whole discipline beats motivation but the problem is that why. You can force yourself to developp that grit/self-discipline but it can only last so long (in my case a few years) if at the end you find no joy on what you are doing. Grit is like hope in the desert, but you cannot live on hope alone, you also need oasis for the water inbetween.

>The idea that you have passionate about something in order to do it and to do it well. Idk why but in my limited student experience, this is true. The classmates with the best code, most experience and projects were the ones who were actually passionate. There is basically a 2-5 point difference between the people who wanted to be in the classes and the people who dragged themselves every morning.

I thank you for the time you took to write the message, and I see where you are coming from but it doesn't lead me to anywhere I didn't think before.

[elmerfud]

You're 23. Not to sound condescending, but I know it will a little bit, you're missing out on the life experience to properly judge the effect of grit.

Self-discipline is something that lasts a lifetime not one or two years and if you can't persist past one or two years you've not developed it and not understood what it is. Again I believe that stems from youth and it's not a wrong to have that perspective when you're young I know I had that perspective at your age as well.

Grit and self-discipline help you understand you do the things you must do because they allow you to do those things you want to do. You don't have to find a joy every thing you do you don't even have to in your job thinking that your job or the method in which you earn money must provide you some sort of self-satisfaction is wrong-headed thinking and has not been true for all of time and it makes no sense that it should be true today. If you're lucky it's true most people aren't lucky. So you do what you must to earn the income the level you need to be able to do those things that you enjoy.

There is a primary fallacy that people always say when they think they need some self satisfaction from a job they say money doesn't buy happiness. And while that statement in and of itself is true the way it's used is missing the point. Money allows you the freedom to find happiness in ways that you can not when you're poor. Money buys freedom. So you can do a job that you hate that makes you a lot of money but that's not your life If your life is to climb mountains that job provides you the ability to do that because now you have the monetary resources to travel the world and climb mountain and take the time off that you need. That's great understanding that I will do a job that I hate the best of my ability because it provides me the means to do the things that give me satisfaction in life.

[tempor-schule]

Ok I understand the message.

How would I go about building this self-discipline and grit ? And how would I go about developping while not ending in a burnout state in the near future ?

[hnthrowaway0315]

How to train for grit?

Some context: at age of 40 I think I have the ordinary grit. That is, I can complete work that I'm not interested in. I can go the extra mile to write better documentation or go back to laptop at 7pm for some extra support or write scripts for automation.

However I don't have the grit to complete my side projects. I understand that even for passion projects 80% of the code is just boring stuffs such as boilerplate or patching up edge cases so I already have the mental preparation. But usually I burnout too quickly after solving a difficult algorithm. Here is an example: say I want to build a 2d rpg, I worked on the game for a while and then decided to attack the more difficult algos such as path finding and line of sight. I grinded for a few days and completed those algos. I'm happy with myself but then lose the energy to complete the rest of the game(about 50-60% I'd say), which is technically easier but architecturally complicated.

How can I obtain the grit to complete side projects?

[apsurd]

quick reaction: the grit you have to complete work stuff maybe has to move to the side project. For example reverse your day: first 2 hours are for your side project. this likely will feel weird and shake up your current strategy, but that's the point!

as we get older we naturally come to focus on less and less whether due to raw physical capacity, growing responsibilities, and even just more sense. So i would suggest reframing the question as how to prioritize and focus my efforts, vs how do i add more capacity for a side project.

[pleasejustdont]

It's funny to read your post because I was pretty much in the same spot as you a "few" years ago. So you know what I did ? I dropped out ... I didn't do the 6 months internship ... And I'm still paying the consequences of that choice.

Finding a first job was a nightmare and I've been stuck in helpdesk for more than 5 years now. My advice to you would be to finish your darn Master degree no matter what. Whether you decide to complete it this year, or next, finish your degree. I'll add that the professional environment might be a welcomed change of pace and you might enjoy it more than studying, so go into the internship with a positive outlook.

[tempor-schule]

I am not gonna drop the degree, I am close to the finish line. I'd just like to take 1 semester or even a few months off and try to get from hating coding to a neutral place.

>I'll add that the professional environment might be a welcomed change of pace and you might enjoy it more than studying, so go into the internship with a positive outlook.

Thanks, I will try to look at it this way

[austin-cheney]

I am there right now. I enjoy building things. Recently I wrote a paper about loading a page in a browser that displays an OS GUI with full state restoration as fast as 80ms. The magic, for me, is only in personal projects and that magic is fading into nothing.

In the real world most software, at least in JavaScript, is sloppy complex shit written by people looking for easy. Web technologies have been around for about 30 years (JavaScript is 27 years old) and yet the job is still about which super monster unnecessary framework to use to put text on screen. The APIs of these frameworks are more complex than the things they seek to replace. That is so depressing.

[tempor-schule]

Thanks for your answer, it is reassuring in a weird way to see that it is a more common struggle than I thought.

>Recently I wrote a paper about loading a page in a browser that displays an OS GUI with full state restoration as fast as 80ms.

Btw about this, I am reading it and it sounds amazing [0].

[0] - https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/performance...

[pettycashstash2]

My suggestion is do something different for a year. This is based off a Harvard study. Don’t drop your studies. Else you can push through to complete studies if you are close and reward yourself with something special.

https://www.inc.com/kelly-main/harvard-researchers-show-best...

[tempor-schule]

Thank you, I will look into this clue.

[hayst4ck]

First, I felt similar to you, but working felt much different because work was accomplishing something while class felt like it wasn't doing anything. The context and the meaning was everything.

Doing new hire interviews, I promise you that many candidates interview worse than you. I started work with very low confidence, but interviewing other candidates vastly boosted my confidence. If you can conjure up BFS/DFS on demand, you are already in the top 50% of new grads. If you can do recursive backtracking easily, you're probably in the top 10%. Dynamic programming? Probably the top 1%.

If you feel your anxiety is too much, I would try to find a therapist. Forcing yourself to do something you hate will burn you out and potentially cripple your life. Maybe your problem is simple, like poor sleep, poor diet, or not enough exercise. Maybe your problem is complex like feeling nobody would love you, which definitely puts a damper on work that isn't very gratifying in the near term, since what's the point in investing in yourself if you're unlovable anyway?

Procrastinating work -> high stress deadlines -> poor sleep -> less ability to focus -> more procrastination -> more stress is an absolutely damaging cycle, and certainly the type of thing that is worth getting external help with.

If you game or scroll reddit for hours, you are almost certainly giving yourself a dopamine based dysfunction of some sort and probably need to think about how to curb that behavior.

My general opinion is that if negative emotions are strong enough to ask a public forum for help managing them, it's probably wise to see if a therapist can help.

If the idea of seeking mental help is off putting, I think it's important to think about physical therapy.

There is a movement called a hip hinge, it means bending with your glutes. Some people when told to bend over, will instinctively bend their back, not hinge with their glutes. A therapist can show you how to move with your hips rather than with your back. Before seeing a therapist, you don't even know your body is moving incorrectly, much less how to fix it. Would you judge yourself for the physical therapist teaching you how to bend over properly?

[tempor-schule]

>but working felt much different because work was accomplishing something while class felt like it wasn't doing anything.

Thanks, this is a message I have seen repeated around here and it changed my view towards the internship.

>Doing new hire interviews, I promise you that many candidates interview worse than you. I started work with very low confidence, but interviewing other candidates vastly boosted my confidence. If you can conjure up BFS/DFS on demand, you are already in the top 50% of new grads. If you can do recursive backtracking easily, you're probably in the top 10%. Dynamic programming? Probably the top 1%.

Thanks for the info, as I am turning to some old Data Structures classes and that problem solving seems refreshing.

>Procrastinating work -> high stress deadlines -> poor sleep -> less ability to focus -> more procrastination -> more stress is an absolutely damaging cycle, and certainly the type of thing that is worth getting external help with.

This is something I feel, I am just stuck on a rather hard position where I am living in Germany (with a mediocre German level) and seeking a therapist is hard in my position, I am trying to do some tele-consultation in French. Altho I will seek IRL therapy as soon as I can.

Thanks for writing the message.

[kleer001]

> All the magic and passion I had entering my degree has all but disappeared.

Good. Let it die. Magic won't put food on the table, a roof over your head, or build you a family (which you might want to start thinking about, the good ones are quickly being taken).

What you want is discipline, grit. Nothing else will help prevent unnecessary suffering in your life.

Just pick something. It doesn't really matter. At 23 your youth is nearly over and your potential is nearly wasted. Don't let it evaporate completely.

Whomever sold you that passion is the number one reason to get out of bed was an a-hole and means you harm.

[SteveDR]

Have you worked in industry at all? or just classes? The experience of programming for work is very different.

Regardless— there’s a lot of good work that doesn’t involve programming that is easy to get into with a CS degree. Design, Management, Security, DevOps, IT, and many many more.

Identify which parts of the field you really enjoy and are good at and go from there. I also recommend cal newports talks / book “so good they can’t ignore you” for anyone making early career decisions

[apsurd]

hmm, well everything is just something to do. This helps me because it's great discovering magic, but it's sad when it goes.

the magic is not specific to the thing like programming. so you lost the magic, it no longer compels you. i suggest thinking about the why behind the why. why did you get into programming? for me my why behind the why is "i like to make things". it's more nuanced, i learned html and css cuz i wanted to make a website for a t-shirt company i was also "making". HN is big on entrepreneurship; it's because a business is just something to make with a lot of upside. most technical people are "makers".

i'm intentionally riffing, no direct advice. Ask yourself more questions about why you see magic.

btw: after 12 years doing software, much magic is also gone. another commenter mentioned what a shit show js frontend is. What you're feeling doesn't get better lol. Rather, we can reframe our perspective and appreciation. I still code and still want to make a business. but hell no i'm not the 23yr old i once was. and can only do a few hours a day. The world has lots of magic in it!

[tempor-schule]

>i suggest thinking about the why behind the why. why did you get into programming? for me my why behind the why is "i like to make things"

thanks, this is a good clue

>btw: after 12 years doing software, much magic is also gone. I understand that the magic goes away as you get disenchanted and gather an expertise around a skill. I think I may have put a bad title as it is not that I wanna recover that magic as much as transition into a state where I get things done without hating my guts. I am stuck hating software engineering maybe as a combination of my studies, the pandemic and plowing through 4 years non stop of sacrifices.

I just wanted to see how people in my situation got away from it, maybe not to absolutely loving software again but transitioning into a healthy relationship to it

[badpun]

For me, it was about expectations. I.e. I never expected a career to be a great, grand thing. So, when I was bored and tired of my CS studies (not to mention actual jobs that came after it), I just took it as a natural state of things, and plodded on regardless. 20 years later, I'm 41, financially independent and basically retired.

[tempor-schule]

That looks like a good path honestly, any advice for my future career ?

[badpun]

I used geographic arbitrage - i.e. living in Poland and living modestly (no family), while mostly earning Western world wages ($100k-$170k a year). That's what made it possible while taking plenty of breaks between jobs for the sake of sanity. If you're in the US, probably try landing into a FAANG? You need to make a lot of post-tax money relative to your spending for this to be feasible. Ideally, you'd be saving 80%+ of your post-tax income.