To the students with CS majors
I hate the whole degree vs no degree debate. Drawing examples of famous people who dropped out and made it big is plain stupid. There is a lot of survivorship bias that goes unaddressed.
Another thing they mention is "Everything is available for free on the internet". Yes, it is, but along with that a lot of distractions are also free. You gotta be a monk to avoid getting sidetracked. Without a definitive path, all the free resources are useless.
They say college curriculum is outdated, teachers teach for the sake of it, and a lot of time is wasted in classrooms. Yes, these points are true too. These are valid reasons to not go for a degree if you think learning happens only inside a classroom. The opportunities are endless outside the classroom doors, you create a network, you learn from classmates, you can build stuff together, learn by doing instead of sitting in front of youtube and learning from some random guy on Udemy who'd never even reply to your messages, these guys set up teams to get your doubts clarified. You might learn a thing or two, you might be an expert on a framework, and you might even land a job with that, but the experience of building stuff with a friend, with real people around, communicating stuff and getting it clarified in real time is unmatched.
Get your degree, and learn stuff in a good environment, it will help you in one way or another, the path to getting a job is not learn-> implement -> get a job , rather it is learn -> implement -> have fun in the process in an environment where you feel you're growing horizontally and vertically -> get a job
That said, let me tell you how I wasted 3 years of my engineering being delusional, naive and gullible.
I was in a tier 3 college, however, I don't believe in college tiers( for a cs student), tier is more of a state of mind. When we start labelling colleges by tiers, people are more susceptible to accepting a pre-defined reality.
But what does that mean, what are those realities? These realities are something like the class-based system. You belong to a particular community once you have enrolled into a college that is labelled tier 1/2/3. If you are gullible like me you will accept your reality, with time you also might stop aiming high, and it's pretty normalized. A lot of your classmates will be there for the sake of a degree, a very unmotivated lot, they will be doing the bare minimum, and with even a 10% effort of your full potential, you will be doing better than most of your peers, that is when the delusion kicks in. This is a very scary state to be in. Two quotes come to my mind for this particular scenario
You are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with
If you are the smartest people in the room, then you are in the wrong room
I partially agree with both of them, and 100% agree if you are in a delusion that you are doing great with just 10% effort of your full potential/
I partially agree because there are quite a few nuances to it.
When we are averaging based on the 5 people around us, if you are with an unmotivated lot, even then there are things to learn there, they are probably passionate about other stuff, just not passionate about the things you think are essential in life.
It's fine to change the room if you are the smartest in it, but make sure you are helping others before leaving the room. You'll feel pretty shitty if people leave the room where you're not the smartest.
Coming back to the class-based divide system and delusion.
Some people accept their realities and continue to be mediocre, there is a braver lot, that takes more risks, the one that is in charge of their destiny not because of the class system, but despite it.
It takes courage to break shackles when being in shackles is normalised.
The shackles here can also be termed as a scarcity mindset. The textbook definition of it is
A scarcity mindset is when you believe there are limited resources, so if someone else has something, you feel there is less of that resource available for you
The opposite of it is the Abundance Mindset, which needs to be developed with time to get rid of those shackles we are talking about.
The worst thing about this whole situation is, you might not be aware of the shackles because you might be delusional due to the 10% effort that is making you better than the rest.
I felt that when a company came to our college to hire interns for a data analysis internship. The best part of that internship was that it was paid, and 8 of us were selected from a lot of 400. I spent a year there, delusional, thinking that I am doing something good in my life and getting paid. They paid us 5k in a month for 48 hours of our time. I thought things will fall into place eventually, and I kinda stopped learning about programming and software development. This internship went on for a year, It barely helped me to get a job in a domain that I wanted, it was irrelevant and pointless, and I paid a price for the temporary comfort that I enjoyed that year.
I could have made the best out of that situation by working on the domain I wanted to get into, but I wasted that opportunity. Things might have been different, but there is no point regretting in retrospect, it's unnecessary draining of energy and time. The internship might have been irrelevant, but the money was real, and it has the power to make you do the stupidest things.
However, experiences might be irrelevant, but there are ways to make the best out of them. Just make sure you are being paid for a shitty job, or else there is nothing much you can do to make the best out of it.
Talking about college tiers, your reality is not something a community sets for you, back yourself to go above and beyond, and have the courage to dream. We did our final year from home, I was low on confidence, didn't back myself, and accepted the reality the community had set for me. Microsoft opened a new office in Noida at the same time. My father said me to apply for Microsoft, I was so low on confidence that I self rejected myself, and thought how can someone like me work there among one of the most talented and motivated lot? I didn't even dream of it and thought that I don't belong there, because my dreams were limited to getting any random SDE job. I was in a place where I thought that getting any job would be fine. I didn't dream of the stars. I am happy I am beyond that point now, that scarcity mindset is behind me, and I back myself to reach anywhere by working for it. If something exists and people have it, you can have it too. Nothing is stopping you to get that, it's a free market, go get the things you think you want, and show the gatekeepers it's not their world.