What something you wish you had done during your 20's?
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I got a degree and took a lot of drugs. But I think I should have been more sensitive and treated people better. That said, I believe your twenties is truly about being a dick so you can learn why being a dick is not a good idea in Capital Letters for the rest of your life.
(I'm literally 40 today, have a wife and a son, and main concerns are getting the shopping done on time and playing digital board games)
Definitely travel. It would've been nice to be able to get out of the states for a few weeks before I had all of the responsibilities that come with a full-time job, folks depending on me, a whole-ass flock of birds, etc etc.
My goal is now to (hopefully) travel before I'm 40 (currently 34, 35 in October). I'd like to hit up the UK (I've got a good friend there) and Japan (I'm a huge weeb), if possible.
My advice to the youngins out there: If you've got the means, definitely do a bit of travel between either highschool and college or college and a full-time job.
Absolutely agree. If I could go back in time I'd find some way to visit Asia and Africa in my 20s, maybe involving working as an ESL teacher (as many of my friends did this throughout Asia).
I was lucky enough to be an exchange student in High School in Western Europe and do some traveling in college in South America. After that, I wasn't able to afford travel until I was in my 30s. So for anyone still in High School reading this, be sure to apply to any study abroad programs now!
Now that I'm in my thirties, I can answer this. Two things come to mind.
First, really should have just done college after high school. I really wasn't looking forward to more school after graduation and wasted about 5 years before going back for my CS degree. I'm in a good place now, but could have had a 5 year head start on life if I'd just gone straight in.
Second, please take better care of your health while you have it. I was skinny as a rail in my early 20s and sort of took that for granted. I'm not obese or anything right now, but as you get older keeping in shape takes conscious upkeep. Get in the habit now and it'll be easier to maintain later. It's harder to lose the weight once you have it rather than keep it off.
great answer. im currently doing what you were doing all those years ago, procrastinating more school, so you and the other person's response about getting a degree sooner rather than later are resonating with me. if only i knew what to get a degree in 😠and great advice about health, especially dental hygiene
As others have stated here, CS might be a good fit for you. I don’t have ADHD, but I’m neurodivergent, above average intelligence, and easily bored. I also know that, for me, work is absolutely shit. CS has allowed me to have an endless array of related skills to veer off into side quests, projects, whatever you want to call them. It keeps me from stagnating and the pay can be enough motivation to show up.
i considered CS but went with IT for a less math-heavy focus, i am absolutely shit and way below average at math
Heh, I relate to this a lot. Went for CS a decade ago and bombed out because I couldn't grok calculous. Now I'm working as a systems administrator and making 6 figures a year at an MSP. One thing I will absolutely recommend is if you go into IT, is to make sure you know how to use native platform scripting (bash/powershell) and work on keeping up with it as well. It will open all sorts of doors for you.
Knowing powershell as well as I do 1) is a decent part of how I got the job (pitched myself as being able to automate parts of their build processes) and 2) quickly made me indispensable for my team and within a year of starting I was already promoted to a senior administrator.
i wanted to do CS too, but the program didn't interest me at all, i just like coding, the course was all theory and physics, plus yea the fucking math lol. i am enrolling in school Monday in a Computer Networking Tech program, hopefully to get an Associate of Applied Science degree in 2 years, then go into IT right after. i have dabbled in powershell a teeeennny tiny bit, like 10 lines of script max lol, it seems fun! your reply has inspired me to really start learning Powershell. its in the CNT program as well, so i will be extra prepared.
anything else i should know? i am kinda worried about 1. being a woman (a WOC at that) and not getting hired due to that and 2. being too dumb/feeling like an imposter. do you think being a woman in IT will affect my chances of getting hired and rising the ranks?
Honestly, any place that won't hire you for being a WOC is a place that you wouldn't want to work for anyway. As for being a woman in IT, don't think about the people who would look down on you for your gender and focus on being the best tech you can be. I've worked with numerous POC and women, and outside of noting race/gender at the beginning of an interaction, people worth their salt don't give a shit about that as long as you can pull your weight and get the job done.
Regarding powershell, look into the book "learn powershell in a month of lunches" or something like that. Will give you a good base to build off of. Then from there, find excuses to shoehorn it into stuff you're doing at home, as that's the best way imo to really learn a language. For example, one of the big projects I wrote was a massive powershell script to scan my media intake folders and automatically convert files to the standard settings I use for my library.
For your last point, I can't really give you any meaningful advice because even after my time in the industry and the praise I get from my management and peers I still struggle with feeling like I'm too dumb to figure something out or I'm just pretending to be good at my job. Imposter syndrome is just something you get used to after a while.
very true, guess im just worried about simply not getting hired at most places i apply to, but ill cross that bridge when i get to it
thanks for the rec! currently looking into this and eager to learn :D
this is me while learning javascript. any time any little thing inconveniences me, i make a script for it and solve the issue. it's sooo fun.
understood, i think nearly everyone has this. fact of life.
another question if you don't mind, is an associates applied science degree going to work fine for me to find jobs? im worried it's not enough, and in 2 years i will wish i had gone for a 4 year,, idk. maybe this is too broad a question but throwing it out there anyway. im attaching my program for an idea of the things i'd be learning, if it is relevant or helpful to know
I think it will depend on what your AAS is in, but it is definitely sufficient to find a good job. For example, I've only got an AAS (my local CC had a program for systems administration, I got that and took both the Linux and windows paths), and I've never felt that an AAS was holding me back/I needed a BS to move forward.
My experience is that a degree of some kind is helpful to get you past the HR bots, but the people actually working in infrastructure don't generally care. I've had waaaay more instances of a certification being required/needed for a position/raise/promotion. On that note, figure out what specialization you want to go down, and begin working on some certifications, and don't be afraid to pick up certs in other specialties that interest you.
I have/had certifications for Windows and networking, but I've never had a networking gig (officially. I was backup to my net admin at the 3 tech map I worked at). The knowledge has helped me figure out issues that stumped peers because they didn't have much networking knowledge.
If you're looking to start out and don't know what to go for, check out the CompTia site, they have a ton of good and entry level certs that you can use to figure stuff out or get a basic idea of other knowledge domains. I took A+ back in the day, and I really wish I would have gone with network+ at the time, but I got my ccna years later, so it probably wasn't a big deal in the end. But it at least got me through the HR drones at my first gig.
Looking over that course list, that's actually a decent program from the looks of things. Gives you basics for windows, Linux, networking, desktop and security. Should cover all the major bases and help you figure out what track you want to go down. About the only other thing I took that I don't see on your list is DBs, and I don't blame anyone for not wanting to deal with DBs... SQL was my least favorite course.
its in computer networking tech, thats what the program is called. hoping its enough, your answers have been encouraging. i bookmarked the CompTia website, will circle back to it when the time is right :D thank you so much for your thorough answers. they are endlessly useful for me, cause i'm sorta just winging it atm haha
BS looks better than AAS, but honestly that'll only really apply for your first couple jobs. Once you've got a few years of experience, your specific education matters less and less. I will say that a BS is "better" in terms of teaching you more, but your Associate's credits will transfer if you ever decide to go that route.
Also, once you pick up one language, you basically know them all (with some obvious exceptions). If you know PowerShell, you can pick up Bash pretty easy. If you know JavaScript, you can pick up Python. If you know Python, Java is pretty easy. If you know Java, you pretty much know C#. Learning a language becomes just figuring out how that languages does things. Picking up a new language goes from being a process that takes a year or two and schooling to taking maybe a week and watching some videos. There are some exceptions (Python doesn't tell you much about SQL, and systems languages like C/C++ are their own animal).
its been 3 months since you left this reply, and im nearly done with my first sem in computer networking tech! im in college because of your replies, how crazy is that? anyway, i have a lot of career related questions, i'm feeling both doubt and excitement and worry and everything you can imagine about continuing on with this program. your replies were so impactful for me that i am back here 3 months later rereading them to get a better sense of direction.
feel free to say no this of course if uninterested, but would you be willing to chat on discord? you're very insightful and intelligent and i could use some of that from someone who knows what theyre talking about lol
As much as I'd love to chat and give you more advice, I'm loathe to give out my discord publicly (been an issue in the past). It doesn't look like I can PM you, so if you want to send me yours, that's cool, otherwise we can chat here if you have more questions.
My advice for picking a degree: pick something that you want to do, but also something marketable. The degree is useless if you can't get a job in it.
If you're worried about college being difficult, it can be, but 95% of your success is going to be based on motivation. I was a TA in college, and the best students were the ones that asked questions, came to office hours, and participated. I saw many a "smart kid" bomb a test due to overconfidence.
If you're not sure what to do, you can start with general education credits or even do the first part of your degree at a community college to save money. A lot of times a 2 year associates degree will serve as the first 2 years of a bachelor's.
this has been an eternal struggle for me as someone with ADHD. i cycle through hobbies weekly to monthly, i never stick to one thing. one month something can mean everything to me, and the next, i never want to touch it again. this is what makes it hard to pick a career to do for life, i don't actually know what i like. it's like i like everything, but actually nothing. i decided i need to just buckle down and pick something i can stand to do for life, considering IT. i think if i work hard and try to stay motivated and disciplined, i can make it through like you said. i def plan on doing community college for the first 2 years.
Something in IT is great, I think, and will be applicable to such a variety of fields and allow you to pivot in your career. Once you're progressing in your career, well, I've seen or heard of people making surprising shifts. So much learning for various jobs is really institutional anyways and will happen on the job. Just make sure you learn to well, learn. Always be playing with and learning new tools and processes and be adaptable. For instance, you could start out a developer and find out you like managing projects on your team and finding ways to make things more efficient and wind up a project manager who also understands what your team is talking about and working on.
Invest in stocks. Get a four year degree. Purchase a shitty starter home even if you don't like it.
why would you invest in stocks?
Compound interest. Buy into a total market index fund that will get you more or less 7% on average a year. Let’s say you have a $100 extra per month (doesn’t actually matter whatever you can afford).
Sally from age 20-30 puts her $100 in every month. At the end she has about $16000. She stops adding anything, but keeps that money invested. By 65 she has $170k.
Jeff doesn’t start investing until he’s 30, but he’s consistent and does the same thing, $100 a month from 30-65. He ends up with about $165k.
What that means is Sally made more money than Jeff even though she did the same thing for 10 years that he did for 35. She just started earlier.