My story was quite the ride, and honestly I wish I had considered or had something like this when I was going. This one is going to get a bit long, so fair warning. (Thread)
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Like all College Juniors I thought I was infinitely clever and guaranteed a job. I just had to ride it out, get a good internship, and I was set for life. Saying I was arrogant would be putting it mildly. Anyways, I get an internship interview with Amazon and the fun begins.
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They ask me some basic algorithmic questions and I can't even manage a few for loops to do it. I get completely and utterly destroyed, and deservedly so. It was a question about finding substrings and we'd never done a thing remotely like it in college. I panicked.
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Suddenly I had to face a reality that I didn't know a dang thing, and it stung. I was left pretty well dumbfounded for weeks afterwards. I made a decision after that, and I credit it to me being where I am now.
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I decided to stop going to class, and keep a bare minimum to pass. I spent every last cent I had on Amazon and online resources to learn everything I could. Quite frankly I was mad. All the time I spent at college was near worthless. So I studied, read, did, and fought.
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I ended up graduating with a 2.89 GPA, but a wealth of knowledge in Ruby and a desire to prove myself as a competent engineer that never really went away. At the time it was terrifying. I took a risk and gambled on my education, but looking back I'd do it all over again.
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I talk with people like you every day. Luckily you realized it before graduation. Not everyone does.
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Yeah, which is exactly why I'm trying so hard to reach out to other students like that and get them ready. It's also why I tend to donate heavily to middle school and high school programs for tech, because I want them to have a good head start on things.
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+1. Is there any way as an individual to help these people out? It would mean a lot to give back, I had to drop out of college, be a waiter, teach myself to program, build a startup, sell it, and learn CS to get to Google, and it was awful_ to do it alone.
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We train them for free until they get a job, need to help with living stipends soon
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The responses to this post are a bit scary. I am one of these people. I dropped out of high school from getting bullied. No one would classify me as someone who can't write, a shitty leader, or having no engagement with society. You can't define people without their story.
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I dropped out... 4 times! And also don't think you'd find many folks questioning my commitment to my trade, my teams, or the companies I have worked for.
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I only dropped out twice
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I dropped out of high school twice, and college 4 times, too! All I see are winners, honestly!
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How good at math can they be if they think % goes over 100?
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The latter
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Damn, that's nasty, sloppy grading
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Knowledge is easy to come-by. Inspirational educators are harder to find.
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Please. You have no idea if an educator was the reason for the turn-off. Relying on a teacher to build up a sincere caring suggests the individual just blew the class off because not interested. Then, all good because "I did not care." Super irresponsible. Try that at work...
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Not sure I agree that every person needs to be interested in every topic to be a successful human
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Why is this relevant, or important? Why should I care? What can this do for me? What hinges upon this? All questions best answered by an enthusiastic and inspiring educator.
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Or...ya need it to graduate, perhaps? This is COLLEGE, not middle school.
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