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I've hit a point in my life, where I really don't know what to do, or where to turn. Many of you are older and wiser than I, and have probably been in similar, or the same, situation before, so I ask for peoples advice on this one.

I am currently 16, and studying for my A levels, in the first of two years. My problem is that, for the most part, the college teaches things far too slowly, and not in a way I can engage with well enough. I prefer to pick up a book, or go on Google, and teach myself these things, and really get my hands dirty. To learn at my own pace.

Furthermore, I like to learn my own things as well, and do my own things. Hence, why I'm developing an operating system, and turning over in my mind whether to start doing some backyard engineering.

My dilemma is that I cannot sustain both my education, and my projects and self-teaching endeavors. My parents have warned me, and this has ended in several arguments, that I either stop my projects, and stop teaching myself, to get my grades, or give up college, get a job, and do my own thing.

The problem is multifaceted. I have already explained my arguments for leaving, but my arguments for staying: You can't get a (decent) job without the grades. One aspect of society that really pisses me off. You can't go to uni, can't get a decent, well paid job, without any grades to your name. Checkmate.

Furthermore, if I were to get a 9-5 job, I would have no time for these things anyway. Hence, the system is catch-22.

I would also have a stranglehold on how many friends I can actually have, who are in the age range that it is socially acceptable for me to be friends with, as most of them will still be in full time education.

Personally, I think I can boil most of this down to fear of the unknown, and fear of venturing out into the world, taking a step away from having someone to fall back on. But the simple answer is that I just don't know. What can you advise? I know you can't make the decision for me, but some advice would be most welcome here.

Stay.

Not only do proper grades and formal education give you a headstart when looking for a job. Saying that "I quit education because I prefer to self-teach from a book" looks really bad in a resume, no matter how much you actually know or can do.

There is a way things are done, and many jobs are in no small part about how well you can cope with it. This might sound like opportunism, and in part it is, but it is also about being able to adapt to a game where you cannot dictate the rules. That is a skill.

Higher education is also a time that allows you to mature as a person. At your age, I had wild dreams about my future myself, one of them skipping higher education and become a writer of novels. Looking back today, I know that I would have failed utterly - not even because I'm a bad writer, but because I would have failed at life. I had much yet to learn, not only about educational subjects, but about interacting with people, about studying itself, about being responsible for myself, what it meant to be living the life of an adult.

If college is too slow-moving for you, enhance it by additional self-studies - but stay on track. If you start slacking in college because reading a book or surfing the web is "easier" (or "better"), you're probably deluding yourself. If you really are as smart as you feel, it should be dead easy for you to come up with good grades and having some time to do other, more interesting things.

The option of doing things in your spare time dwindles away if you have to work the night shift for minimal wage, selling burgers at McDonalds by day to make ends meet.

Hang in there. Prove to yourself that you can overcome obstacles without breaking out of the system. For every person that became happy that way, there is a dozen who ended up in the gutter. Being the individualistic exception looks good in the movies, but I wouldn't bet my future on it.

Yo:

Hey mang, school is for fools, leave school mang. It's the system mang, they don't want you to think! It's the gubberment and stuff mang. Don't be part of the system mang, free your mind mang. The politicians mang. The politicians pull the strings mang.

Lol, your kernel project is probably unremarkable, and supports features that are "vanilla" and unimpressive, has no innovation, brings no new "switching imperative" cool new takes on computing that could convince staunch NT/*nix users to switch over to you, and pioneers no new techniques in any sub-field of operating system development. You're doing A-level studies and you somehow already know that it's useless?

Oh to be young and foolish again. Your GDT+IDT kernel with a PCI bus scanner that spits out gibberish in VGA text mode and some other sparsely linked features is worth giving up formal education? Stop overestimating yourself. Even the most talented, intellectually gifted people should hedge themselves about with a fallback landing zone just in case things don't work out the way they wanted.

Let's assume you are one of the more advanced members here in terms of progress on your kernel. So you have what? Memory management, a custom driver API (short-sighted and narrow-mindedly designed) loading some modules most likely in a manner similar to Linux (very unique!), some ISA IRQ management and drivers for legacy devices, no support for swapping, no well optimized and designed code that scales under high load, no fancy graphics, ...what do you have? Which market does your kernel appeal to? What real world application can it excel at? Servers? Desktops? Mobile devices? At the end of the day, nothing is viable unless there are businesses and individuals who need it to function. Who needs your kernel?

"Arrogance is earned" -- Gregory House
"When mama spend her last to send you to class...never you ever play, boy" -- Buju Banton

EDIT: Here, let me put this forward very simply: if you really were as talented as you think you are, then your mind would be so sharp and your efficiency so high that studying for school, undertaking private studies and developing your kernel all in parallel would be child's play for your great intellect. If it's not like that, then you're most likely not as smart as you think you are.

CWood wrote:My problem is that, for the most part, the college teaches things far too slowly, and not in a way I can engage with well enough. I prefer to pick up a book, or go on Google, and teach myself these things, and really get my hands dirty. To learn at my own pace.

Teaching is a slow process for some reason, you need to repeatedly practice again and again to memorize and form experience linkage in the brain.

You may still read a book or go on google, but without that "far too slowly" element, you may Teach yourself ____ in 7 days and make use of it, but it's very easy to be forgotten later.

The school years is where you get things done on personal projects and such. Once you start having to support yourself, everything else becomes secondary, and I can promise you that no matter how boring, time demanding or just plain useless the studies might seem, they give you a chance to build up your own projects and maybe even start a business. You always have more time and energy for these things when studying compared to when working. And as always, a degree is gold to have. When or if you need a 9-5 job to fall back on, for various reasons.

See it this way, better to be prepared. How many people do you know of that can change their mind and start to get a degree at age 25-35 when job and family has already come in the way? It's way easier to just get it done while you can and discard it if not needed than the other way around.

I can relate to finding college far too slow moving.

When i was at college i was sudying A-levels in computing, english and business studies.
I found computing so slow for me that when given the summar project, i had completed it in the first week after being given the assignment, so to fill my spare time i volunteered with other stuff. For example, helping set up the new computer network, and helping other students who found the going harder.

This helped me more in future years than any of my personal projects ever did, as they gave me experience that carried forwards into my work. For example helping set up the college computer network gave me the basic experience needed to get my first proper job as a network engineer, and helping others has given me a good perspective on how to document my work.

I did still have time for personal projects, as lets face it compared to full-time work, the amount of time you spend at college and on college projects is miniscule...

Based on my own experience, I too advise you to stay in school. I made the decision to drop out of university because I'm the kind of person who much prefers self-study (and, as some members of this forum know all too well, to slack). I got to talk to a guy who I eventually found out was a Google security engineer who turned out to like me enough as to recommend me to one of their recruiters. Alas, she said that although I might have the required skills and knowledge, they do not hire people without university degrees and that I should try calling her/them again once I get mine.

To elaborate on what Love4Boobies wrote:

I, too, had mediocre grades at school (7 points average, German secondary grades). Not because it was all to difficult, but the opposite: It was so easy to "pass" that I never actually invested much energy into getting better-than-average grades.

I eventually dropped out of university (again, not due to intelectual failure, but simply because I couldn't get my act together and was hemorrhaging time). I'd probably have ended up as truck driver or somesuch, if I hadn't gotten the opportunity at a second-chance education.

Since I realized I wouldn't get another chance, I hung in there, very consciously not taking it easy despite most of the classes being boring and sluggish, and finished with a 1.4 average (German tertiary grades).

I can say with conviction that nothing I knew, or could do, would have earned me that crucial first employment. It was the sticker of the training facility on my car that got me the first attention, with my good grades and the company's past experience with people who had graduated from that facility getting me the first interview. It still took a bit of luck to make it to the second interview. (The first interviewer would have dropped me for not having any business experience, but was overruled by the business manager, who wanted to know what I can do, not what I did before.)

You simply cannot impress with your personality and skills if you are weeded out by the HR people in the first round because you don't have a degree, diploma, or somesuch.

The bottom line is, anyone who can do the things those companies are looking for, won't have a problem finishing a decent education. If you find you cannot, don't deceive yourself into believing it's the college's fault.

Every job I've had has looked at experience first and qualifications last. I do have some unique things on my cv though such as having had stuff published in technical books and little things like that have always gone further in getting me work than any paper qualifications ever have... but my advice is still of course to stay on the course and get it done, you won't regret it!

brain wrote:Every job I've had has looked at experience first and qualifications last.

Agreed. However, that doesn't help you with your first application, now does it?

Today, no-one looks at my grades twice. The 10+ years actual experience accumulated in the meantime account for much more. But for that first job, formal qualification was crucial. I didn't learn much in the 18 months second-chance education that I didn't knew before, but I would never have passed even the first round of HR screening with a claim of "I can program!" and a disk with my private project's code on it.

You have to realize that there will always be other applicants with comparable knowledge and a diploma. You'd have to stand head and shoulders above them to offset that disadvantage - and at that point you should ask yourself, why is no-one else with your kind of qualification applying for this particular job?

A common phrase in job openings: "...with a college degree or comparable practical experience". In order to prove that your private projects are "comparable", you have to get someone to actually look at them. Most HR people won't bother, since they are expected to process hundreds of applications per opening, and tend to be merciless in tossing out people with no degree and no easily recognized track record. Their idea of "comparable" is having worked with a big company for a couple of years, not a hobby OS.

Further to that, a big difference between working school/university and then in a company compared to on your own projects is that you are not working on what you necessarily choose to do on a day to day basis. Working to somebody else's schedule, their specifications and in their environment is important from the perspective of a recruiter.

Additionally, when studying at school or university there is somebody who is making sure you haven't missed something important. When studying by yourself, you tend to follow what you find is interesting - this tends to lead to very deep, but patchy knowledge and experience. Having a breadth of applicable knowledge and experience is important if you are looking to ever apply yourself to different problems (or persuade someone who is recruiting you that you will be able to).

You have plenty of time to study. Think of it as investing in yourself. You have plenty of years to spend doing someone else's bidding for a wage - don't hurry into it too fast!

Their idea of "comparable" is having worked with a big company for a couple of years, not a hobby OS.

Very true... I find its something interesting to discuss in an interview but you have to get in there first most of my jobs have been with smaller businesses who's hr dept is the md and maybe an office manager. these small companies are always good to get your foot in the door as they will be more likely to actually read a whole resume and maybe even look you up on Facebook or view links in the document...

For mid size company there can be hundred of resumes every day, that's why you'll most likely get filtered by brain-dead HR or even machines without academic records. HR simply won't risk asking a stranger with no academic records to interview, even you are the next Einstein.

Thanks all for your response. I should add, however, that I didn't word things quite right. It isn't that I cannot sustain both, it's that my parents won't let me sustain both. Personally, I might just stick two fingers up at this and do so anyway, coz at the end of the day, I'm determined to have my own software company, and projects like this are really the way to go to do so.

Ultimately, people are right. My education is the time to toy with this, but ultimately the situation really boils down to: social life, education, projects, work; pick two.

CWood wrote:Thanks all for your response

I like this way of opening a response to answers to a thread you have posted. More should do this, i believe it to be respectful to others who have put time into answering the original posters thread.

CWood wrote: it's that my parents won't let me sustain both

Rare, parents limiting. If you feel they are limiting, Do Not Let Them.

You can, and will do what you put yourself to doing. Some things can only be decided for your self, by yourself. Others opinions are views not of your own.

CWood wrote:coz at the end of the day, I'm determined to have my own software company, and projects like this are really the way to go to do so.

Because* on this forum, there is a way i can see someone striving to be more professional, and one thing many look for, is spelling.

CWood wrote:Ultimately, people are right. My education is the time to toy with this, but ultimately the situation really boils down to: social life, education, projects, work; pick two.

And why is it that you cannot do it all? You can usually merge 2 of them, without thinking you are.

CWood wrote:and projects like this are really the way to go to do so.

Dedication, and confidence, will prove its state. When its done, you are shown to have both.

Both will be needed.



Stay in education, to answer the title. In my Opinion, you may have experience for the job you are wanting to go into, but education will make it a breeze.