I Refuse Going to Collage and This Is What’s Happening to My Life

My experience for not going to college is overwhelming and my mistakes are something you can learn from

image by Ben White on Unsplash

As a child, I have always loved animation and computer graphics and as I grew older the love became a passion and passion became the carrier that I want to chase. The challenge for me is that collages for CG art are very expensive and my parents can’t afford it, but as a millennial, I won’t let that stop me from fulfilling my dream so I decided to use the power of the internet and be self-taught.

Making a decision of not going to college was tough, almost everyone that cared for me tries to convince me into changing my mind and the only actual support I have is from my mom and my brother but due to my decision I now have fewer friends and my social life is very small.

As a 21-year-old 3d artist I could only say I have learned quite a lot throughout my journey. these lessons will useful to anyone who is a self-taught that strives to succeed in their carrier.

through my journey of being a self-taught CG artist, I have faced life challenges that would have put me into giving up if I wasn’t determined.

My challenges

• It’s hard for me to know what I don’t know. I rely so much on youtube tutorials or online courses with no or less syllabus which makes it difficult for me to know what to learn at a particular giving period of time for a particular thing and somethings I feel there are missing pieces that I just can’t figure out, I always feel like I haven’t learned enough to make me a strong portfolio that will give me the chance of having to work a job
• Discipline. I am not going to lie, I easily get distracted and self-discipline is what I struggle with, but my biggest battle is procrastination. No matter how much I try to put myself to study I somehow get distracted and since I am not in an actual class I just keep skipping my daily routine or exchange my study time for sleep or tv.
• Having a conducive environment. Usually, when you take a class you have an isolated palace to study or work but as for me, the case is different as a self-taught am left to either stay at home which is more distracting or wander from places. I started my first course at a shared office where I had to pay for a workspace and drive a long distance the expenses weren’t cheap and the place was just too far from home so I just had to quite the shared office and keep learning from home the most distracting place for study or work and adjusting wasn’t easy.
• Community. I have no classmates or peers that we can physically share our problems or compare our work to, I am left with Facebook groups that I can share my work with and it might be helpful but not as much as having an actual community you can physically interact with. There are little people I do a similar thing with and the people that go for classes and certificates see me as crazy.
• Self-doubt. Somethings I just feel like I am making the wrong move and when it comes to learning something I am not sure if I am just wasting my time fruitlessly.
• Connection. Good colleges usually work on a project with companies, studios, firms,… and the students get to experience working with a big company and if proven able they stand a chance of internship even before they graduate. I don’t have the connections, I will have to work my way through the world of competition and before I could get a good job I would have to stand out. Alone you really have put yourself out there.

The mistakes I made

• Paying for courses I don’t need. In the hunger for more knowledge, I paid for courses that turned out to be irrelevant to what I was actually supposed to learn with respect to my area of study. Paying for courses you don’t need could be a waste of money and time, sure no knowledge is waste but let’s be honest here are you really going to keep studying a course you don’t need while having limited time and resources?
• Trying to learn too many in a short time period. I have made the mistake of wanting to put all the processes of learning something all in a very short period of time and it took time for me to realize that everything is done stage by stage in an orderly process. When you try to learn everything in a very short amount of time, it doesn’t usually stick to your brain and you do need to need to master a particular process so as to gain muscle memory before jumping into the next process.
• Shiny object syndrome. Instead of being focused in a specialized area, I get distracted by anything that impresses, I would waste my time trying to learn something I can’t relate to my desired skill and I just kept switching from lane to lane. This has affected me by slowing down my learning progress.
• Unrealistic goals. After taking six months of course ‘‘from beginner to master’’ I thought I was ready to set into the world and conquer, I blindly joined a startup that took four months of my time, the start-up that gave false promises and unrealistic deadlines. We were to be a phone manufacturer company, and I was to be the product designer, but we were all not experienced and don’t really know anything about mobile manufacturing, to cut the story short everything ended up a flop.
• In a rush to start making money. I was too quick to start looking for paid work rather than improving on my skills, I had intentions of making money from my amateur skills which led me to take low paying jobs that don’t pay well and this gave me a setback.

The benefits

• I get to learn at my own pace. I only focus on areas I am interested in, I don’t have to be forced to study courses I don’t have to learn or read for exams.
• I am exposed to working on real projects. As a college student, an individual is expected to study hard in order to pass exams while a self-taught individual gets exposed quickly to working on an actual project. As for me, it was after my first course I got my first project for $50.
• I discover more about the topics I study. When studying I do deep research to make sure I get everything right and it helps me have more information about the topic I study, rather than just what I am taught I, in class, I make my own research.
• I learn more effectively. Studying a topic on my own let's explore information that makes my mind to think more deeply and make a connection on what I learn.
• Studying on my own encourages my curiosity. As a self-taught, I study to understand not just to memorise, whenever I study to understand I try to apply and if I am not able to apply what I studied I get frustrated but the good thing is that it makes me think “why” why did it not work and that opens my curios my mind to study more and want to learn more

Going to college is not for everyone as been self-taught is not for everyone but if you want to be self-taught avoid distractions then study and practice more.