It goes without saying that I was never a hugely academic person. To that point I took a year off to work in SV my junior year of college but later decided to finish my CS degree, barely.
I've been able to navigate my career in ways that I cannot regret though, comprising of multiple strong internships at tech startups in Boston, about a year at Amazon (turned out to be a horrible culture fit) and now at a blistering fintech startup in New York.
If I was to base my ability and "potential" for success on my academic record in college, repeating classes and graduating with a 2.9 GPA it seems like I'd only be slated for QA work? I should add that I was diagnosed by three different psychs and one neuro-psych with ADD Inattentive Type at 22 (great timing).
Does anyone else struggle with the guilt of their poor academic past shadowing their current success and improvement? If so, what do you think changed in your perspective / approach to self study?
Thanks everyone, stay healthy :-)
The first semester of college I was on a National Merit scholarship. After that, I like to say I was on the Dean's "other list". :-) I was kicked out of college (electrical engineering) - twice.
I'm smart but not super smart. I do think my brain works differently that most. It comes up with the non-obvious answers first. Example: I was in the hospital and the nurse said: "I'm going to change your [wound] dressing." I immediately answered with the first thing that popped into my head: "Lets go with the raspberry vinaigrette this time."
Does anyone else struggle with the guilt of their poor academic past shadowing their current success and improvement? If so, what do you think changed in your perspective / approach to self study?
I don't feel guilty at all. I got where I am a different way and I never thought about college after I graduated.
I do identify with that feeling, however. I was never a great student.
Before university I had poor grades and only took standard level courses. I frequently didn't even complete assignments. I spent most of my time being a computer nerd. I was accepted into a great university solely due to my "impressive" extracurricular experience: running computer nerd clubs at school, programming for fun, tech internships.
In university I had little trouble doing well in CS courses. In the beginning, they were easy to pass without even trying. In the later years, the CS courses were hard, but I enjoyed them. They actually gave us a considerable amount of freedom to direct our own study.
My non-CS courses were a different matter - I nearly failed two my first semester. It was harder to coast at uni, so it forced me to become a decent student. I graduated with a 3.5, which was much better than I ever could have imagined.
But really, the important takeaway is that I hate school in general and I always will. I have known this innately since I was a child, forced to sit in a chair indoors when I wanted to be outside in the woods. I love learning, but I don't like being told what I should learn, and what I should do, and especially what hoops somebody else wants me to jump through. I don't care if I am failing/succeeding to measure up to anything but my own criteria. That is my true personality, and I think I am fine to be that way, so I don't feel guilty, or harbor regrets about my past school performance. It took me some years to accept myself in this way, and I hope you will be able to as well eventually.
There is a strong correlation between academic rigor and success, but there will always be outliers like us.
Natural talent, social skills, blind luck, network, etc. are all important factors in determining success.
No reason to feel guilty, but also realize people could read this post as a humble-brag.
“I worked a lot less hard than you, but I’m more successful” is not a statement a lot of people will take well.
The worst feeling was hanging with peers that you felt they were way beyond your skills and seeing how everything was "natural" to them.
Yesterday it was the fifth anniversary of my college graduation. One of my frequent dreams is that I didn't graduate because I failed a course. Strange, since college was not even that demanding for me; one of my best friends was brilliant and he let me piggyback the hardest projects.
The main difference I see between people like us and other highly accomplished academic developers is that we deliver (since we are highly pragmatic) and we are enjoyable to work with (our guilt overcompensates with empathy).
Yet, I had studied 10x more in the last 5 years (post-graduation) than in college. My mind matured significantly, and luckily it had developed a sense of natural curiosity for computer science, programming, design, finance, etc.
That wouldn't necessarily mean you were bad at the subject. Just that you didn't learn well in that particular environment.
Alternatively, if you've got ADD and find it hard to maintain focus, maybe you just didn't care to work as hard in college as you then did in the internships and roles you took on afterwards. We've all had companies and organisations where we've been good/bad culture fits (like Amazon as mentioned in your post). Perhaps your college/classes were a poor fit as well.
Alternatively, it could simply be an age or maturity thing. I'm sure many people here would do much better at school or university if they returned today, simply because they'd take it a bit more seriously and have more years of experience under their belt.