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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 š and great advice about health, especially dental hygiene
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.
For IT you could do Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, etc. There's a whole lot of angles you could come at it from too. Would you want to maintain systems or develop them?
If databases interest you, you could be a DBA. If networking interests you, a network engineer. If you want to do development, you can focus on front-end development, back-end development, full-stack, embedded systems, and more. Maybe hardware interests you, so you'd like to be a computer engineer. Computers/IT has a lot of components to it, and even if you find yourself a person that likes to bounce between different things, there's a lot here that you can bounce between. School will have you touch a little bit of everything, and you can find that part you want to specialize in.
I relate to this feeling a lot. Iām not much further ahead of you but i am at a point where i have a solid career ahead.
I bounced around a lot too as far as interests go, and I still do. I would say go for what sticks out the most and makes the most practical sense. For me, that was CS, i had started picking it up in high school with some classes, but then there would be long stretches where i never write one line of code.
In my opinion: work is shit. There are shitty jobs, and less shitty jobs, but if work isnāt shit, it doesnāt pay (why pay someone to do something you can do yourself?). What you need at this point is discipline. There were plenty of times i wanted to give up on college or CS in general but I recognized that I would only make life shittier by doing so.
A lot of people will tell you that you should find something you like doing. This is terrible advice, tons of people go into fields they love that donāt have a lot of job prospects and assume they will be the exception. Find something you donāt mind doing, but will bring you success. Donāt think of it as a lifelong commitment. With money comes freedom. You can always change careers down the line if you truly hate every position you get.
I think this is a good point. Work doesn't have to be a passion of yours. It shouldn't suck the joy out of your life, but there's nothing wrong with with just seeing your job as a job. I currently work as a software engineer for an insurance company. I don't give two shits about insurance. But my team is good, the work is fine, they let me work from home, so i don't mind it.
Community college is a great place to start, allows you to get your toes wet without too high stakes. Speaking as a software engineer, don't worry to much about the adhd stuff, there are a lot of us in the tech field (being able multi-task well and hyperfocus on something we are somewhat interested in are actually pretty valuable in his field). I'd probably advocate for making sure you adhere to a strict schedule for a bit when first starting out, makes it easier to not burnout on school long term (it's hard I know, but once you establish those little habits school stays more managable).
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.
As others have stated here, CS might be a good fit for you. I donāt have ADHD, but Iām 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
It's tricky. Depending on what direction you take, CS can be very math heavy or not. If you get into algorithmic stuff, deep learning, data analysis, etc., that has a lot of math. But if you focus on, for example, front end development, there's not that much.
I won't lie and say CS has no math. At my university, you were able to avoid higher level calculus by doing a bachelor's of arts instead of a bachelor's of science. Calculus 2 is usually the highest level you have to take, which focuses primarily on integration. I was kinda in your boat of being hesitant to do CS because of the math, but I ended up minoring in it. The CS-focused math is mostly logic stuff and discrete math, which I feel is way easier than calculus. And honestly, calculus isn't nearly as bad as its reputation would have you think (until Vector Calculus, that almost broke me).
Look into it, but I'll say that while the math is there, it's not as bad as you're probably thinking. And if you know you're not going into heavy algorithmic stuff, see if there's a path that avoids most of it. And once you're out of school, you'll never touch calculus again (unless you do a lot of physics, maybe? Game dev, perhaps?)
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.
any place that won't hire you for being a WOC is a place that you wouldn't want to work for anyway
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
look into the book "learn powershell in a month of lunches"
thanks for the rec! currently looking into this and eager to learn :D
find excuses to shoehorn it into stuff you're doing at home
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.
Imposter syndrome is just something you get used to after a while.
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
another question if you don't mind, is an associates applied science degree going to work fine for me to find jobs?
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).
You're welcome, glad I could help!
And if it makes you feel any better, I've basically been winging it the whole way. Seems to be working out for me so far.
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
Oh crap youāre right. My brain loves math, but like you, my ADHD son struggles with it. IT is a great way to work in the same field without the numbers nightmare!
As someone with ADHD choosing CS as a major was the worst mistake of my life.
why is that?
A degree where moat of your classes grades are from projects you can't panic complete the night before is incompatible with my condition, and now I have all the debt of a BS from my failed attempt with none of the potential
I was able to get in the best shape of my life in my late 30s, but it took living alone, not having enough money for food, and having four acres of property to keep up so I could sell my house.
Mowing for three hours on a small bowl of rice and beans or pasta with vegetables three times a week will melt that fat right off. But you'll be miserable almost the entire time.