Ask HN: Please give your experience/opinions to help me with my future path

2 points by newsisan 15 years ago | 1 comment

Okay. This is my situation:

- Live in Melbourne, Australia

- Very interested in tech startups or tech businesses

- Also, as of recently, interested in the 4HWW lifestyle

- Currently in final year of highschool

- Debating between (major: CompSci):

   - a decent uni (Monash - top 250 in the world) 10 minutes drive from me

     - pro: easy, cheap ($8k per year)

   - an awesome uni in the SF/Valley area (UCB/Stanford)

     - pro (for all sf options): live with people like me, who are more open to my crazy ideas, and who are the desired customer for many of my ideas

     - con: extremely expensive, away from family friends, might not like living there

   - a reasonable uni in the SF/Valley area (or community college?)

   - going to Monash in Australia, and then applying to transfer to UCB

     - con: no guarantee on being able to transfer

   - ditto the above, though from a community college in SF

   - not going to uni at all, and travelling 4HWW style

     - con: miss out on the 'uni experience'

     - pro: much free time

What I would love, and what would help me:

- Please tell me anything you can to help my decision, including:

   - Your experiences

   - Your opinions

   - Contacts for people you know who went through something similar (international admission to Stanford/UCB, moving to the USA for a startup, etc) - or at least the decision (eg considered moving to SF for a startup but didn't)

   - Good places (forums, organizations, etc) or people to give questions like this post to

   - Would taking a holiday to check out the USA help me? If we did - what should I do if the trip was solely for the purpose of making this decision?

elbrodeur 15 years ago |

This part of life is pretty difficult. You have so much promise. You can do anything. It's just a matter of picking a direction. That direction will shape you into a great ______. Or so we all thought...

To a certain degree, it doesn't matter what you choose: I certainly didn't choose to be an entrepreneur until a couple years after college, and I certainly didn't imagine -- when I was in your position -- that I would come to love building businesses and technology. And there was no way I could comprehend what it means to make money or not make money or choose ramen and equity over money or work for 80 hours or not work at all.

I thought I would be an author. I was going to write my generation's Great Gatsby or the Neuromancer of Neuromancer's time. That didn't quite happen. As it turns out, very few things happen as you expect them to -- but that doesn't mean you can't choose your course or plan for the future.

To give yourself the best shot at achieving what you want -- even if that changes... whatever you decide on doing -- you should make sure to surround yourself by people who will challenge you, stretch you, call you on your bullshit and help you up, brush you off and push you back into the fray when you fail. A good University will force you into this situation. University was a shock for me -- I was no longer a big fish in a small pond. I was mundane. Or at least, I felt insignificant. But being around people who I esteemed highly forced me to aim high and helped me to not give up.

So, yeah, I don't know what to tell you. Just aim high and don't give up, I guess.