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by kasey_junk 4467 days ago
College is not the end all be-all experience. There are lots of other opportunities and learning on the job is one of them. You will almost certainly be at an income disparity without a degree for at least the beginning of your career.

That said, if you can't find an engaging and challenging experience learning about software in your college, either A) you are at a bad college and need to change or B) you haven't actively tried to take full advantage of the resources available to you.

When I was an undergraduate I took graduate courses, TA'd intro courses, worked on research projects, got published, etc, and I wasn't some uber student. I just was really interested in things and spent a lot of time asking professors and graduate students stuff. I had the opposite problem, there was so much I wanted to learn about and so little time to do it.
1 comments
coolsebz 4467 days ago
Thank you for your response! I have felt a bit that the college I'm at is not really good for me, and that's the reason why I went online and got as much resources as possible (MIT OpenCourseware, Coursera, Udacity, Stanford lectures available). Those guys really do teach stuff! But it is out of my reach to go to one of those colleges, sadly :/
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jakobe 4467 days ago
Why is it out of your reach? Because they are too expensive?

If you want to study at a better college, look for professors in your field, find someone that does something interesting, and ask them if they will take you as a student. If you are good, some institutions will actually pay you for studying there.

This is easiest if you already have at least a bachelors degree, and want to go to grad school. At least in Europe, most grad schools pay PhD students (in science/engineering), and if you are smart, it's not that hard to get accepted.

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coolsebz 4467 days ago
I didn't know I could talk to professors for this, but it sounds interesting! Thanks, I'm going to try this!
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jakobe 4467 days ago
This is probably more important towards the end of your undergraduate studies.

At least in Austria it's quite common to receive a stipend for your masters' thesis (in science/engineering). It's not always enough to fully cover living expenses, but it sure helps a lot (eg. I got 400€ a month while working on my master's thesis).

After that, PhD positions are almost all paid normal wages.

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