| School was a rollercoaster for me. In high school you could tell the classes I liked or checked out from by my grades. It was also when I was introduced to programming. The first time I went to college, I burned out after a year, drank too much, and flunked out. After doing minimum wage jobs for a year, I took another crack at college and did OK. I'm now almost 15 years into this profession. Here's some of my advice: * School and grades will one day be behind you and it won't matter. * While you're in school, go and see a therapist for at least anxiety and depression. ADHD is co-morbid with those, so you might hit three birds with one stone. Even if nothing is "wrong" they can still point you to programs and services on campus. * Computer Science curriculum is much harder than a programming job. * You will be evaluated throughout your CS career. Don't take it too personally. Interviews are the worst offenders here, but there's also performance reviews. And yet nobody knows how to evaluate programmer performance properly. > I came in as an English major because my grades weren't good enough to enter the competitive CS program Especially don't take this personally. Lots of weird people find weird ways into this industry. For example, my old boss was an elementary school teacher five years ago, took a Masters in CS, and started as a junior programmer in his 30s. As a final point, the mere fact you are reaching out here means you want to be here. You should be here. Don't let one little competition (especially for a crowded CS program) drive out that desire in you. |