| I recommend freelancing. I am currently taking a year off from college and am on the path to leaving entirely because I started freelancing a few months before making the decision to take a hiatus. In school, I was not learning enough in a way and speed that matched my needs or mindset. I like to dive into topics and immerse myself in them quickly, while building cool things - I also like to make a living while doing so. A few months before I made the decision to take time off, I tried freelancing and gave myself a goal - if I could consistently make $X/month, then I would take a year off and work full time on freelancing to explore my options. Although this sentence could be an entire book, the short story is that I hit that goal and even started writing a book & building an audience^1. Anyway, I decided to take the 1-year-long leave and start freelancing/writing full time. I quickly learned two things: The first is that I love to learn. The second is that learning from quality sources can be free or extremely cheap. Since college, the only direct payment I make for my education is $9/month to TeamTreehouse. Through things like TeamTreehouse, building clients' and personal projects, I've taken my skill level of creating iOS apps from beginner to advanced, which helped me increase freelancing income and gave me the knowledge to write a book. In short, freelancing will allow you to learn more about a technology you're interested in, learn about building a business, make some kind of income, and hopefully connect you with some cool people and opportunities. ^1: I wrote a whole post about how I got into freelancing and writing a book on my website, but the main point is that you should start by building a small portfolio of projects and target businesses (especially local) that have money to spend. Freelancing/consulting is a science, and you can start making a decent amount of money relatively quickly if done right. |