I was pressured to go to college immediately after high school. But I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Although I had sense of my interests, it was quite large and I had no clue about what to choose. How do you pick one thing to be your career if you've many interest? Nobody around me was very helpful. I was good in math and science, so people instantly tossed up "Hey, go into engineering--with a degree like that you can do almost anything." Well, the engineering discipline can be quite intensive and not leave much room for exploring anything else. I hated it.
I was also stuck... didn't really know what to do. I switched to Liberal Arts in hopes of finding "my calling." It was then when I realized I was good with computer programming. But I could no longer get into that major, because of two things: in liberal arts (as an engineering undergrad, I could have switched) and my GPA was lacking. I was trapped... couldn't really see where to go from there. Accordingly, my GPA crashed and burned. I got lost in a sea of confusion, finding refuge with friends who were similarly distraught. I ended up on academic probation. And eventually, I had to leave. It wasn't because I was stupid (I had a 3.7 in high school)--I had horrible advisers and couldn't find myself.
What did I do? I joined the USAF. I "got outta Dodge" and left everything--parents, friends, and familiar surroundings. It was really one of the best decisions I ever made. I was able to be completely on my own and rebuild from the ground up. I ended up graduating from Univ. of Maryland with an excellent GPA in Computer Science.
The sad thing is that I really didn't need to go through all that. Had I taken time off after high school, I could have explored a number of avenues to discover myself. Instead, I wasted my time in college, blew it, and had to rebuild from scratch.
Anyway... enough about that. Hope you find it helpful...
~Xev
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