Ask HN: How to improve academics after drop out?

2 points by nsiradze 1 year ago | 1 comment

Hi Everyone,

I'm just 19 years old, from Tbilisi, and I'm looking for ways to improve my academics.

I graduated high school but never went to university. (Yeah, I'm not a dropout; it was clickbait)

I've been working full-time on startups and various companies since I was 14, and my CV has become very cool. Now, I'm a growth engineer. living on my own from this age.

When I didn't go to University, I was thinking like - It's okay, I don't want it. " I still feel this way, but I want to enhance my personality. I want to learn more about the world and improve in different fields, not just software engineering.

So... I'm looking for a way to do that.

My question is, where should I apply? Since I'm in Tbilisi, remote opportunities can be a priority, but I'm open to relocating. Are there any scholarships available?

Thanks, I appreciate the strength of the community.

austin-cheney 1 year ago |

Read books. Read a great variety of books both fiction and non-fiction. After nearly a hundred books your level of education will increase in ways you cannot imagine.

Case in point. I am a military guy. I used to not read books very much. The first time I was in Afghanistan I started reading aggressively. I was constantly traveling around the country and while traveling could not rely on electronics for entertainment, so I read books. During that year I taught myself to program, I read probably 3 dozen novels, and towards the end of the deployment I read the CISSP CBK cover to cover. I took the CISSP exam and passed it the first time back when it was 250 questions and on paper.

Of the novels I read they were mostly thrillers, action stories, science fiction. It was mostly guy and nerd stuff. There were a tremendous number of donated novels in Afghanistan to keep military people entertained. Occasionally you get to a place and the only books available were romance novels, clearly the female soldiers were reading more than the males. I tried reading a science fiction/fantasy/romance novel once, but the one picked was porn written in words, and it was weird. Most of the investigative novels I read were written by female authors, I am not sure why that was, and they were really good. I read several non-fiction books as well.

Just read and build stuff.