Why did I choose not to go to college?
The reasons I understood at the time, and what I think about that decision now.
I don’t have one clear reason. The decision came from a mix of ideas and misunderstandings I picked up over the years.
I never really wanted to work for someone else. I wanted to build my own things, follow my own thoughts, write my own books, and choose what I spent my time on. The people I spent time with probably shaped this too. Without realising it, I started becoming like the people around me.
How I ended up deciding
The internet influenced me a lot. I saw many people dropping out of college. School, especially high school, had already damaged my social life. Some teachers were rude, and I didn’t attend a good high school. Over the years I became more introverted and turned to the internet.
Deep down, I may also have been afraid of college. I never expressed that fear or even thought about it clearly. Almost everyone I looked up to seemed to have dropped out, so I wondered what the point of college was. I thought I could go one step further and not go at all.
I wasn’t ready for what came next. My plans aren’t working, and things don’t look good right now. There were family and personal reasons too. I don’t want to disclose them, but they mattered.
The choices I had
I didn’t take the JEE or competitive exam path in 11th grade, so I had very few college options. I could have gone through a donation, but it was a large amount of money that I felt would go to waste.
My sister played a big role in convincing the people around me. I also lied to many of them and said I was preparing for JEE, even though I never was. I still don’t know why they expected me to crack it.
What I want to learn
I’m 18 and a half now. I have recently become interested in economics and mathematics. No, not maths. I haven’t studied mathematics in a while. I only said that to sound cool, I guess.
I have read a couple of economics books, but I am not deep into the subject. I have also read a few history books and sometimes fool myself into feeling that I know 80% of it. I definitely can’t say that about economics. I haven’t studied microeconomics, macroeconomics, or much beyond the fundamentals taught up to grade 12.
Someday, I would like to follow that interest because I want to understand how to develop a city or a state. It is a cool idea to imagine. I want to know why some countries succeed while mine struggles, and how a place could turn itself around and become more like Singapore.
I’m interested in hardware too, though I haven’t built much. I wanted to make a drone, a lock for a house, glasses with AI built into them, and a machine that would shock me if I didn’t wake up on time. I abandoned all of those ideas. Maybe it was the money, or maybe I simply didn’t care enough to pursue them.
Where I am now
I have also learned that I may not be the great programmer I thought I would become. I’m not a good marketer either. Programming is changing quickly because of AI, and I don’t feel prepared for it.
I’m not reaching my full potential. Even now, I feel like I’m using only 10-20% of what I could. I’m lazy. I don’t write much about how I spend my time. I don’t journal. I don’t exercise. I don’t have plans or goals. I have dreams, but I’m not achieving them, and I feel depressed because of it.
Maybe I should have gone to college. Perhaps it would have improved my mood. Anyway, this blog is heading nowhere. I just wanted a place to vent.
I guess I’ll end it here. See you next time.