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I'm not sure if anyone would still remember me.. I was a Korean pro player back in WoL aka Rain (Terran). There is another Korean pro who used the same nickname and he achieved way more than I did, so please don't get confused with Protoss Rain.
This is me  Rain (Korean Terran)
English is not my first language, so please take into consideration!
So, as some of you might know, I moved to United States in 2014 to attend community college, and finally I transferred to 4 years university earlier this year. I just wanna write a story about myself, who dropped out of high-school, and how much I am struggling right now due to lack of my educational experience.
The main reason why I decided to retire was simply because I was not doing well. I was doing pretty okay, but I was not able to compete at the top level anymore. Even before I started programming, I knew at one point I had to go back to study, and it was the perfect time for me. At the time, I could speak a little bit of English, and I was enjoyed learning the language more than anything else. Therefore, I decided to study in U.S, and found a community college in Sacramento CA.
I did pretty okay in the junior college, and I transferred to University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne aka UIUC. Its a pretty decent school, and I'm kind of proud of myself about it. But after I transferred, I'm struggling a lot.
Not only because the materials I learn is a lot difficult, but also I don't really know what I wanna do. I'm currently a Chemistry Major, even though I originally wanted to be a programmer. I just vaguely thought that something related to computers would work out well for me, and that is why I chose to major in Computer Science. I took a bunch of programming classes in Community college, and I figured out this isn't my thing. So I had to make a quick transition to Chemistry which was the only subject I enjoyed and did well at the time.
Now I start losing interests in classes I am taking. Calculus 3 is whooping my ass so hard, I will probably have to drop the class soon, and physics and other subjects... I'm not doing well either. I start asking myself.. "is this what I really wanna do for the rest of life?"
And now that I think, I never really had a time to think about what I really wanted to do and it is too late to change anything. I'm 24 (Korean age 26), and I haven't served in military yet which is mandatory for most Korean males. So that is automatically +2 years, and I have +2 years to graduate. So I will be around 28, when I am ready to make money.
All the Korean kids I met here are younger than me, and finished their military service. And it makes me ask myself what I have done with my life. Yea. I wasted too much time trying out new things and see if I can do well. I did internship in WCG for 6 months, and I found out working in a Korean company would not work out for me, I tried to be a LOL player right after I retired, and that did not work out either. I even took a semester off to become a pro poker player. I should have realized that I am not young enough anymore to mess around with my life.
Someone asked me what do you really wanna do after you get a degree, and I was not able to answer it. I just vaguely answered I wanna work in the lab, and I know that is a total bs.
Yea I feel lost these days. I don't even know what I really wanna do or I can do. I don't have motivation for anything. Starcraft was the only thing I truly enjoyed, and I don't wanna think I wasted my life on playing Starcraft. It is still one of the best experiences in my life.
Chemistry would be the last thing I would try or I can try, and if this doesn't work out... then.. I don't really know what to do.
 
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youre not alone man, a lot of people this age feel this way
try some books if you are feeling lost
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Hello - sounds like things are pretty tough for you right now. This always a difficult time of life, having to make a decision that feels like it will impact on the rest of your life and not having a clue what you really what to do.
Your English is really good by the way!
It is normal to feel the way you do - I certainly never knew what I'd end up doing after I finished studying. I appreciate that younger people don't have the luxuries I had just a few years ago when I could make a few mistakes and not have it hit me that hard.
I was in a punk band when I was your progaming age - learned so much about myself and had such a great time, did a few tours, got a record out, never became a millionaire. Wouldn't be who I am today without it - you should feel the same about SC2! The memories you have are what count, you've achieved what only some could even dream! But I reckon you've learned more than you think from being a pro, even skills you take for granted you'll quickly realise are way ahead of others in whatever field you go into.
In terms of school - my advice is to make as much out of it as possible. Any opportunities that come on career development, student societies, given them a shot. While the grade and study are important, the skills that go around it are really hard to come by.
Good luck - I hope you come out fighting soon!
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1264 Posts
My philosophy is the opposite of "follow your dreams."
Find something you're somewhat good at. Try multiple things, and the first thing that gives a real career opportunity just take it immediately. Once you have the first opportunity, become an expert as fast as possible. Especially if when someone is in their 20's, the bumps in the road are not so consequential in the long term. Try losing your job at 60. Now THAT is a problem.
Every career path has its pros and cons. The grass is never greener on the other side. As long as you don't want to kill yourself every morning when you lift your head off of your pillow, you will be able to find some satisfaction in what you do.
My anecdata: I was a consistently terrible student and I dropped out of a polytechnic school as soon as I got a job offer. The job offer was not exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but it's good enough and there is bread on my table.
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On March 11 2018 11:00 Thaniri wrote:
My philosophy is the opposite of "follow your dreams."
Find something you're somewhat good at. Try multiple things, and the first thing that gives a real career opportunity just take it immediately. Once you have the first opportunity, become an expert as fast as possible. Especially if when someone is in their 20's, the bumps in the road are not so consequential in the long term. Try losing your job at 60. Now THAT is a problem.
Every career path has its pros and cons. The grass is never greener on the other side. As long as you don't want to kill yourself every morning when you lift your head off of your pillow, you will be able to find some satisfaction in what you do.
My anecdata: I was a consistently terrible student and I dropped out of a polytechnic school as soon as I got a job offer. The job offer was not exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but it's good enough and there is bread on my table.
Adding onto this to make it more balanced and informative:
![[image loading]](http://www.cabarrus.k12.nc.us/cms/lib09/NC01910456/Centricity/Domain/6838/Venn%20Diagram%20-%20Job%20Happiness.jpg)
I went from "happy but poor" to "rich but bored", sacrificing what I love in the process.
It'd be wonderful to hit that center where all 3 factors overlap, but for many people you can only choose 2 out of the 3.
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It's been too long since the last Rain blog. Good to hear from you.
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I wish you good fortune Rain, I hope you figure this out.
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Hey, its going to be ok. You are not wasting your time. 20's are your time to figure out what you want to do with your life. Keep branching out, maybe go back and do military. I struggled with school as well in my mid 20s, wasn't until i found a job I liked when i was 27 did things start to make sense for me. Just keep your chin up.
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Oh, I remember your blogs! Hello. 
I love physics, and I attended a college for it, but midway trough, I got bored, depressed and disappointed by the system, even though I still love physics. I somehow managed to finish it after losing motivation and my way, but it took me way longer than normal. It's rather funny, because for the first one-two years I was doing really really well, on par with top students.
Now I don't know what I want to do. I mean I know, I want to do many things, but I have to choose one, and the road to my dreams is a long and difficult one, and choosing one thing over the other is hard.
My plan is just to get a normal job for a while until I figure out something, or I get an opportunity. I think that's the best course of action.
As for your problems, I suggest finishing the college as fast as you can, give it everything you got. Don't worry about military, think of it as a opportunity to get fit, train your discipline, and meet new people. At the very least, once you get into the military, you can stop worrying about what to do, for a while.
I think you're thinking too much, same as me. We gotta stop thinking and worrying too much, and just do things. When I was in high school, I had the same problem, but once I started worrying less about failure and started doing and trying things, everything got a lot better. Even when I failed, I learned a lot from it. At some point along the way, I stopped fearing failure and started enjoying what I learn from failing. Life was easy and amazing at that point. Everything was interesting, even the things I found boring before. Gotta find things that are interesting, even in boring text.
I guess I forgot those lessons during college, and I have to re-learn them again now. I can guarantee that it works though, since I've done it successfully before. "Just do it!"
For parts of calculus, I used this problem book to practice and learn, it's a really good Russian book (we call it Demidovich, after its author's last name):
http://www.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~vybiral/MAII-2016/Demidovich-Problems-in-Mathematical-Analysis.pdf
Each section has a short theoretical introduction that shows you what you need to know to solve the problems from that section. It then lists a million of problems, from easy to hard, there's a progression so you don't get stuck, and it usually has a bunch of similar problems so you can check if you learned how to solve that kind of a problem after doing the first few.
Just sit down and start solving them one by one. If you don't know some, skip them and return to them later, read the introduction and previous problems again, and stop to think about the problem. This book helped me a lot. It's straight to the point, unlike many other books.
There was one other really book for calculus that I used, but I can't find it right now. All I can remember is that had "Engineering" in its name, and was written in English, by someone with an English name. It was mostly about differential equations.
For physics, good starting points are probably Schaum's Outlines and David Griffith's Introduction books, followed by some more in-depth books. Depends on what you're studying.
As for programming, I find the college lessons and text books on it to be extremely boring and useless. If I had to learn it like that, I would never have learned programming. I learned it by doing small projects, scripts that do some things that I needed, usually related to online games I played. Then I just googled things I needed, searched stackoverflow.com and looked things up in the documentation of the programming language I used. I slowly started doing more complicated things, and now my knowledge is decent. Things you learn in school/college are useful, but if you don't need them and don't apply them to something interesting that you need, it's not fun, it's just a boring chore, and you forget most of it.
Good luck!
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I don´t understand why do you see the age as such an issue. Why do you feel like you need to do X at age Y? Unless you have a life-threatening condition or real bad luck, you are very likely to live for another 40 years with full capability to do thing and possibly even a lot longer, so why would you care about a couple of years? If you feel that people your age are in "another place" and that makes your social contacts difficult, just seek younger friends.
I finished my PhD at 35 years last fall and I have zero regret about the road I took, despite even actually having a potentially life-shortening disease.
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Sometimes you have to "look for enjoyment" in the things you do" if it isn't something that you naturally enjoy.
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I know exactly how you feel. I love video games too and thought computer science would be my thing but i realized it wasn't. Then i worked for a couple of years and traveled a bit. The years passed by and i started in university at the age of 26 so i just wanna tell you, it's never too late for you to study and do what interests you and what you want. Otherwise you're going to regret it later. I started in university when i was 26, i'm 28 now and my class mates are 3-5 years younger than me but it doesn't matter because we're all in out 20's so it doesn't feel that much of a difference. I'dd be 29 when i finish my bachelor and 31 when i finish my master but it doesn't matter because it's better to do something that you like and interests you.
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On March 11 2018 11:22 EngrishTeacher wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2018 11:00 Thaniri wrote:
My philosophy is the opposite of "follow your dreams."
Find something you're somewhat good at. Try multiple things, and the first thing that gives a real career opportunity just take it immediately. Once you have the first opportunity, become an expert as fast as possible. Especially if when someone is in their 20's, the bumps in the road are not so consequential in the long term. Try losing your job at 60. Now THAT is a problem.
Every career path has its pros and cons. The grass is never greener on the other side. As long as you don't want to kill yourself every morning when you lift your head off of your pillow, you will be able to find some satisfaction in what you do.
My anecdata: I was a consistently terrible student and I dropped out of a polytechnic school as soon as I got a job offer. The job offer was not exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but it's good enough and there is bread on my table. Adding onto this to make it more balanced and informative: I went from "happy but poor" to "rich but bored", sacrificing what I love in the process. It'd be wonderful to hit that center where all 3 factors overlap, but for many people you can only choose 2 out of the 3.
Interesting picture, but I don't care all 3 since I was ~25. Especially the money part, I hate money with passion since I was born. Money factor will never exist in my head.
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What about outside of your studies, what do you like?
Maybe it could be worth to find something you like outside of work. Then you could manage to find a job with your degree (if you can finish it, and I'm sure you can!), and focus on enjoying your free time? Some people have this mentality.
Fnatic.Rain!
I'm myself in a class in which everyone is younger, and most of my friends have a job and I'm here being late on everything (and in other aspects of my life too)... if that can help you to know that you are not alone.
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imo it's better to get military service out of the way first, because i feel like if you go to university then graduate THEN have to spend 2 years not making money, you're going to be super pissed about it. just get it out of the way early then party your way through school imo
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China6331 Posts
Your experience is absolutely astounding and inspiring.
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Thanks for all the valuable advice! I guess I am not too late, and most people around my age are struggling with the same issue. Yea I guess I gotta work hard on things I'm doing right now, and I might be able to find something I truly enjoy. =]]
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If you enjoy learning languages the arts might be the place for you..
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I believe that people in your situation have not "wasted their lives", because they have experienced many things in life already.
These experiences in things you didn't enjoy or succeed tell you what you will not be. Knowing that is a big step in constructing yourself, and it's much better to attempt to do things, and fail, and learn stuff, than not doing anything and stay on the rails.
It's even better to ask yourself those questions now at your age than 15 years in the future, when you'll be trapped with job, mortgage, and kids.
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EPT
