I have never been a traditional person, I learn differently than others, sometimes I climb in goofy ways, and one time I even ate a sandwich inside out (pretty dastardly, right?).
I didn’t go to college after high school, I worked as a climbing arborist while taking online courses for web development with Udacity. After about two years I landed a job in my new field of work, and left the tree service. After that I took some more specific courses pertaining directly to my work, but I had no real plan for way to go next. I started growing complacent and not working to grow my skill sets, or expand my knowledge to other areas in my field.
Now in a job dedicated to staying relevant with technology and the latest, that is like laying on a slanted glacier and sledding into a killer whales mouth: it’s fun for a little while, until it’s not (nailed it).
he’s just ‘play‘ biting
So I went to college, like what the hey, all the cool kids are doing it, and I hear the cafeteria food is bomb. I enrolled in CTU online, tested out of a few courses, and took a time management course (because it directly applies to programming).
After a month, I realized this wasn’t doing it for me. I like the idea of college, I don’t like taking classes that don’t relate to my field, and I’m pretty consistently against money schemes (unless it’s my money scheme). I dropped out (wow, that was an abrupt sentence).
Wait, wait, wait, don’t freak out yet, it wasn’t willy-nilly. I sought advice from many of my peers including my Udacity Career Mentor JP Miller. As it just so happened, he was having a similar idea. He told me about his plan to make his own Computer Science degree from home.
I personally think it is a brilliant idea, and allows you to have more control over your path. I chose to follow along with this idea (by totally ripping it off and claiming it as my own original idea), but then decided to hone in a little more on what I wanted to get out of it.
I don’t really want to take an actual CS degree, my pursuits are a touch more specific, so I chose to be more precise on what I want to learn. Learning is a lifelong pursuit for me, and of course even this won’t be the extent of everything I want to know — but it’s a start.
I want to be a really-really(-really?) good web developer, with some knowledge of machine learning and math to incorporate into my web applications. I started a learning path on trello:
Trello_Organize anything, together. Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance…_trello.com
Most of my development learning is with Udacity (because I’m an alumni, and a sucker for them) and much of the core math is with free college courses in tandem with Khan Academy.
Is this article over yet? Probably. The point is this is just another goal in a lifelong learning endevour (that sounds like a space shuttle) and I still have things to add to that learning list and always will. Don’t go to college, or do— this is just a snippet of my education and career, and hopefully you gained something from this article.
Have anything to add? Want to tell me off? leave some comments below! (oh, and uh, clap or something?)