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The average cost of college* in the United States is $35,720 per student per year. The cost has tripled in 20 years, with an annual growth rate of 6.8%. The average in-state student attending a public 4-year institution spends $25,615 for one academic year.
Average college expenses in America are well over $140,000 for any four year degree from most universities. Going to a “good” college or having to stay six years (like me) would be well over $200,000, and for what?
College costs are simply not worth it. Every single advantage of college can and has been achieved by thousands without it. I would still go to college, just not right away and definitely not in a main-stream American college, not even the “good” ones.
Instead, here’s what would do differently were I 18 contemplating what I know now and having to deal with the current world.
First of all, I would not go on a Mormon mission. It practically bankrupted my family of 10 (oldest of eight) and for what, some mythical blessings? No. I loved my mission, but nearly died several times and am still dealing with trauma from it. Did it make me grow up and shit? A bit, but not more than an independent travel abroad would do.
In fact, most of what the Mormon’s essentially forced me to do by telling me I would not go to Heaven if I did not do a mission at my own expense was profit them. The church already demanded 10% of all our incomes (just for starters, you commit to give everything including your life to the Church in the secret LDS temple ceremony that no one warns you about). But that is not enough, they want to get more money and power so they send naive boys into the world as little uninformed con-artists to get more from others in the name of a “message of happiness.” (And no I am not misrepresenting it. It’s the biggest fucking con game in the religous world short of what the Witnesses and Scientologists do.)
I would still probably stay in high school. I learned practically nothing my senior year at high school, but it was one of my favorite. I was able to really have some good times with a close group of friends. Not everyone has that experience.
I would do a Snowden and get my GED and leave if my high school exprience was bad. There’s nothing that demands you even attend high school at all (except parents). If I were not into high school (and that is hard to tell today) I would just leave as early as 17 by passing my high-school equivalency exam.
I would work and live with parents or grand-parents until I was able to get my first tech job. There’s nothing wrong with this, but you need to prove to your parents that you have a plan and aren’t just free-loading playing games all day and eating their food. You do that by taking responsibility for chores around the house and holding down even a shitty job. Store up that money to pay for technical certifications and building a personal tech learning lab at home, for now. Sure you can play games and socialize. You should. Just don’t over do it.
I would try to work for technical company or store. In America, Best Buy might not be the best, but it is better than McDonald’s or even serving in a restaurant because even if restaurant tips are better, the experience and exposure to the technology is far more valuable long term.
I would get my A+ certification. As much as I hate the company that gives it and the multiple-guess format, I would rush getting this certificate since it is the gateway that the most American companies use to identify people who are “serious” about their beginning tech career. Getting an A+ is far more important than even a college degree for getting entry-level technical jobs. If you work in a tech company, even in retail, they might even help you pay for it.
I would learn to build (mostly) Linux machines. While you are working and learning your A+ use that time to build as many Linux systems on your own as you can. Use old hardware. Get garage space. It will make learning the A+ stuff way more fun and useful. You should include Windows in there as well (and probably will if you are a gamer). Don’t combine Linux and Windows (dual boot). Instead, build two or more systems: a Windows system for gaming, a Linux server, a Linux laptop for hacking, and perhaps one or more Raspberry Pi computers. As you build them, learn to network them — including how to make your own Ethernet cables. When you do this you’ll dominate the A+. Document everything you are doing generally in a personal, public blog that can be included in under a “Projects” heading in your resume.
I would learn to code on my own. This one I actually did when I was 12, but I would definitely do it at 18 again. I would focus on learning bash scripting first (to coincide with Linux). I would also learn PowerShell to go with Windows and the A+ certification (and to hack Windows machines). Then I would learn C, and Go, and Python, and finally just enough Web (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to make my blog nice. I would rush learning bash, PowerShell, and Python probably and have them mostly mastered by the time I took the A+ certification.
I would get a GitHub account and maintain it. Of course, all of my “good” coding projects would be in GitHub (no public hello world stuff in there). It would supplement and contain my resume and the source code of my blog. Potential employers will look at this before anything else that’s not on your resume.
After certifying I’d get a better tech job as soon as possible without leaving your parents home yet, get a good tech job that is paying you directly for the expertise you learned on your own completing the A+.
I’d move out on my own after getting my first tech job. The money from even a beginning tech job will have you swimming in money as a single person in just about ever city in the World. Enjoy it, but don’t overdo it. It’s easy to overspend at that point in your life. Save up that money and set it aside for exploring the world and doing things that college would have helped you do, like discovering who you are, meeting other people, and exploring the world literally and physically. This is the great moment of your youthful power. You are young, very well provided for, still healthy and horney and hungry. Live in that moment, but learn from it. Don’t waste it entirely in front of a computer screen, or overworking for an employer that abuses you (like Nike did me). This is the jumping off point for the rest of your life. Make sound decisions by getting as much exposure to ideas and people and technology that you can. You are not yet committed to anything, not even your current job. Leverage this freedom to build your foundation, to prepare the soil for the roots you will eventually put down, whether you plan to or not.
Find a mentor. Make aquaintenances with people who have been around the block, in my time the “grey beards” as they called them (even though I would never use that term today. They will be very willing to share their lessons-learned.
Get several tech certifications while employed. Combined with the on-the-job learning from your new tech job, continue to learn and push your mastery of essentials and in-demand skills. You have your lab you first built at home to mess with that you spend a fraction of the the money on that you would have wasted on college. Leverage your learning lab while supplementing it with more “paper” that the industry has decided matters even more than college degrees. As of today, here are the certifications (in addition to A+) that I personally would pursue (based on my interests and the level of trust these create with potential employers). Every one requires lab interaction over a web portal to the terminal (not just multiple-guess):
I might also get some of the other Offensive Security certifications, but they are spendy (but still way cheaper than a college that charges $2000 to force you to run for 15 minutes a day in “Physical Fitness” class).
Even with minimal real world experience, getting these certifications, and the knowledge that comes with them will easily get you a tech job as an SRE or Infrastructure Engineer or Cloud-Native Engineer or Security Analyst in the $140K+ range pretty much anywhere in the world (so long as you are being paid by countries tied to the dollar and euro).
At some point along the way, if you really think you missed out on life because you didn’t have enough time to read whatever the fuck you wanted on your own, or socialize in any circle of people of your choosing, or travel the world without fear of getting back in time for whatever bullshit semester schedule imposed on you, well, then you can still go to college.
If it were me, I’d quit my job after making all the ridiculous money and use it to live abroad in a foreign country that welcomes ex-pats to live there and go to college for free. I’d use my money to pay cost of living, learn the language in the best way possible (immersion), maybe even teach English as a second language to make side-money, and enjoy pursuing a ‘bull-shit’ major like philosophy or psychology or world history or Russian or French literature that would never get me a job. Now that’s a college experience I would really enjoy, not one that would dessimate my future with unforgivable debt, forever.
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#life #education #learning #college #advice #certify