TIFU by fucking over myself, my parents... honestly everything. By submitting ALL my SAT scores to ALL of my colleges.

It's hard for you to have any proper perspective at this point in your life. This is what you know and what everybody tells you is right; in defense of them it makes sense to push rather than let you just coast and strive for mediocrity.

I'm now in my mid-30s. I have no idea what I want to do in 5 years but I thought I had that shit figured out when I was in high school. I went to a fairly prestigious school, graduated on time, got a job immediately, then spent a year in that field. I've never done anything remotely related to it since. I've since spent some time in the military, lived in a few countries and wildly different parts of the US, I've done the most basic manual labor, blue- and white-collar jobs, whatever seemed interesting. The number of people that have a vision at 17 that still holds at 30 are few. My dad spent about 10 years in school for microbiology, worked in a lab for probably 3 days, and then moved over to finance. As far as I know he's never set foot in a lab again or given a second thought to it since. My friend went to school for accounting, got her MBA, became a CPA and is now a photographer. I only know this because I was bitching about taxes. The list goes on.

All this to say that it doesn't matter. Do you know what an impressive education gets you? People wondering what you're doing down here with them. Harvard may get you a job but it isn't a promise of satisfaction. After college nobody gives a shit what school you went to, or even if you went. I've stopped putting my education on my resume and just go with my work experience. Zero impact. I couldn't tell you what schools 90% of the people I know went to or if they even went. You didn't fuck up your life. You've unintentionally taken yourself off the path of the mistaken notion that a university and degree will get you everything you ever wanted in life. With the exception of a few industries it literally does not matter how you came to be there. The tech industry (of which I'm a part) really doesn't give a shit about school or degrees. You'll never go wrong with Cisco certs in the meantime. Learn to write code (free), get a GED (probably free), prove your Cisco competence and you'll be in a better place than most undergrad computer science programs.

/r/tifu Thread