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Comment Code Schools (Score 1) 347

I want to say a couple things that I've learned over the last couple years about this very subject. I've recently turned 30, so I'm not much older than you, and I started @pdxcodeschool, which is a 12 week intensive school for becoming a web developer so I understand your argument. My hope is that since I'm not much older, and I understand your argument at my bones, that I'll be able to provide a satisfying answer to why you should stay in school.

Firstly, you /can/ change colleges. Especially if you're only in your second year, most schools will accept 2 years of credits max.

Secondly, not everything taught in college is taught in the classroom. This is the last time you're going to meet a huge number of people in a compressed space. If you're like a lot of others, you may meet your wife/husband there and you will probably meet many of your best friends for life. This is the last time where you can royally fuck up and not get arrested (though not too royally I'll admit). This is probably the last time the government will pay you to study abroad in exchange for you learning a language of interest like Arabic or Chinese. And lastly, this is probably the last time that you're going to have 4 years dedicated solely to improving yourself.

Thirdly, I went back to college when I was 26 and the experience was dramatically different for me. All the annoying classes that I took when I was 18 were actually pretty amazing because I was so much more invested. I went back because I wanted access to larger companies like Google which literally will not accept you without a degree. I'm still working at a small company, but you may find that you want to do something different after you do web dev for 8-9 years; maybe you'll start a code school like I did, or maybe you'll decide you want to do GIS or something else that's really cool. I really feel like you get out what you put into education, if your teacher is droning on take that time to hack on something at OpenHatch and get into open source so that when you come out you have an awesome resume (because that CS degree really _isn't_ going to get you a job even though they're promising it).

Lastly, you could quit and join a code school, but I can tell you that overall maturity is a huge factor in our selection process. We can't feed our kids if we don't get paid, and we don't get paid if our students can't find work with our help. Our students spend 40 hours a week in the classroom, 20 hours a week at home studying, and spend another 5-10 at networking events and community groups. Not a single one of the students comes in without having read the homework because it's embarrassing to be catching up instead of making something awesome. The students @pdxcodeschool are putting so much of their life into this, even if I weren't a content expert I suspect that they would be able to get jobs as programmers after this much dedication.

I understand your feeling that you're wasting your time and I hope that this helps you find a path that makes you happy.

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