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Well, i had one of the most depressing chats the other day in school. I was heading to math on halloween, and as soon as i enter the classroom i got pulled out, The lady who asks what you want to do in the future and all these other questiosn wants to talk to me. She also tells you your GPA and all your test scores and all that shit.
So we go into her office, and i know my GPA is oging to be low, i figure it's like 1.5 or something. The shock to me is she tells me my GPA is a miserable .586 or somethign mentally retarded like that. At this point i'm thinking how retarded this lady must think i actually am. I then laughed it off and said "Well, i guess i'm going to RCC." Rockland Community College. Anyway she goes "Yes, but i don't think you should be going there." God i'm telling tihs very randomly so far, i will try to keep it more organized from here on out.
After she tells me my GPA i tell her how dumb she must think i am, at that point she says how she doens't think i am dumb, and pulls out my IQ scores from 2 years ago. She told me according to my GPA, i barely have a pulse, but according to my IQ tests i should be attending MIT. It was a compliment and a slap in the face all at the same time, So she asks what i have been doing for the last few years, Well to sum it up, i have had literally no motivatin whatsoever, and i pretty much tell her that, what's there to look forward to after highschool and college? I live of mediocrity and a job i don't like? The fun is gone. She told me that that wans't necessarily the case and started asking me about my aspiration for a career, what i particualrly wanted to do. I told her that i was interested in a job that would allow me to travel around a lot, becuase i have no desire to stay in one place for an extended period of time, i don't mean travel around the country, i want to see the world. And at some point i hope i will. Then i elaborated syaing i either watned to design video games or something relating to history, Archaeoligist came to mind, i would get to travel and see the world, and view things most people never will.
But at this point during our chat it seems like an unrealistic dream. This year of highschool i finally stepped up and am going and doing everything i should be doing, i have a girlfriend who actually makes me have to go to school, she depends on me driving her, and no matter how much of a failure i am i will never bring someone down with me. Therefore since i drive her every morning, i'm awake every morning, ready every morning, and going to school every morning. But even with all A+ this year, which is easy enough my GPA still won't be hihg enough to go anywehre besides RCC, which i confessed i had no desire whatsoever to go to under any circumstance, considering it doens't support any of the majors i am interested in.
She tells me that theres more then one way to get into a college, and GPA is one of them. She told me that i have to sell myself in other ways besides my GPA, tell them about everything, how i had no motivation until recently, then that alone will not help, i need to show them something, basically she susgested i create some sort of game, or have soemthing to show colleges besides a my grade list. I was laboring under the delusion that Incompletes didn't count as anything twoards your grade, and just disappeared. I don't remmeber why i thought that, but it turns out they count as F's and my summer school grades, i have no idea what they count as.
So in short, now that i'm finished with this somwhat blogish thing, i would of posted it as a blog, but i desperately need help and a blog woldn't get enough attention.
I need TL to help me find good websites and places to learn how to use Flash, or other programs to design video games, and anyone who is willing to help me learn it's most apprecaited, what happens involving tihs over the next 2 years will most likely determine the rest of my life. For better, or for worse. So i ask the most useful knowledgable place that i know of, that's right, i come to TL for all the help i need, i confess and ask for help to virtually no one, when the lady asks who knows me best and who knows what i want to do in the future, i could honeslty say no one did, I never really talked about it at all. Until now, now i am using all help available to me and do everything in my power to assure myself that in the next 10 years, i can look back and say "Wow, i came so close to ruining myself, but i threw it all together." Rather then living with my parents, or dead, or in the army, or whatever i end up doing. So TL, now that i view my archaeology career, since theres nothing i can present to a college that i can tihnk of to involve that, so by not doing good in school, i limtied my options. So TL, can you help me save my life?
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United States20061 Posts
No, you're fucked. With a fucking .5 gpa (i dont even know where to start with that) you're nto going anywhere besides CC. Go to community college for 2 years, get a straight 4.0, transfer into a state school, finish strong their, go to a respectable grad school, then get you're dream job. But yea you're fucked. till then.
edit: i'm still trying to comprehend how you can get a .586 short of going to school without using hands, blindfolded, earplugs, answering in jibberish, etc.
edit 2: seriously you can get at least a 2.0 doing almost not hw and just doing anything besides taking a shit on your in school assignments/tests.
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I got fucked every which way for about 2 years.
I went to about 30-40 days of school a year for the last 3-4 years. When i went i usually did fine, but attendence destroys me apparently. It really blows, i walk in and do the best on my tests out of the entire class then fail anyway. But i still have 2 years, junior and senior to finish this shit up. A+ across the board should up it a little bit.
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Anyway that's irrelivent to the point, i asked not how much of a failure you guys think i am, or how impossible you beleive it be, i asked for suggestions and help learning game design.
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TBH i think learning game design right now would just be bad usage of your time, you should make sure you ace everything and i mean EVERYTHING, and not only that but i'm sure there are other things that you could be doing if you do have any spare time left that would be more constructive than learning about making videogames
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United States20061 Posts
yea i'm pretty sure you have to go to school to pass school
you should work on that, and adjust to college nicely
You're lucky, if i missed like 1% of the days you missed i would have been kicked out of school where i live.
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I can pass school right now without really trying, i understand it all, finish homework in 1-2 hour sand have about 5 spare hours of time. Which could be better focused towards other things besides nothing.
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by pass i mean ace. I have A's now.
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United States20061 Posts
get a job
community service
school clubs
sports
etc.
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On November 03 2007 12:43 decafchicken wrote:
Go to community college for 2 years, get a straight 4.0, transfer into a state school...
You can get into good schools from CC, ya know. Especially with 4.0.
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What a messed up system if your grade for the entirety of high school counts towards your college qualifying. It's stupid to expect 14 year olds to be dedicating themselves to high marks.
In Australia only the marks from the last two years of school count for anything, and it's only the marks from the final year that actually determine your entry scores for university education.
Sorry I can't offer anything useful, except perhaps that you should investigate the open-source software community. I'd imagine there's a great deal to be learned and achieved within it for someone sufficiently motivated.
Edit: Also, from what little I've heard, it is possible to do what others in the thread have been suggesting, and use really good Community College marks to boost your way into tertiary education which has more clout with potential employers.
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Monkey, do you live in Florida?
I remember when I was going to school in California up until I was 17, then I moved to Florida to finish the last half of my junior year, and senior year in high school, it was a joke.
The work in FL was dumbed down when compared to CA, they also didn\'t care as much that I missed hella school, and for some reason let me sleep in class a lot.
I\'m glad I\'m out of high school, that shit was boring as hell.
I\'m looking forward for college though, I start in January.
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you don't necessarily HAVE to do well in school to get a good job, etc. but it sure makes it a lot easier, even if you ignore what you might've learned from school (both the specifics and the more general abstract skills like studying, discipline, etc.)
i wouldn't focus too much on the video game industry if i were you, especially design. relative to other industries, a lot of people want these jobs so it's tougher to get a spot and pay is generally reduced. i know nothing about archaeology, but i bet you'd need a graduate degree from a good university before you'd be able to travel around on expeditions.
i think your best two options are either to go for community college with the aim of quickly transferring up, or get a job with good growth potential where you need to kick ass and impress people. the latter would be hard given your track record so far, so this'll probably rely on networking -- like anybody you know through your family or close friends.
if at all possible try to spend time with people who are hard working and successful. their attitudes and advice will be contagious, and you'll find yourself doing better too.
as for your immediate future, i think you'd be better off doing something around other people who can vouch for you as competent/hardworking instead of working on a game on your own. maybe volunteer somewhere or see if you can get a part-time job or internship. credibility is what you need right now.
congratulations on dumping the mindset that laziness is good. far too many bright people have been set back by that due to getting away with it in high school (including me, somewhat).
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Calgary25986 Posts
In my experience, nothing anyone posts here will change you. You'll use it to feel better and continue down the same path.
Good luck and I hope you prove me wrong.
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
On November 03 2007 12:39 MoNKeYSpanKeR wrote:
I need TL to help me find good websites and places to learn how to use Flash, or other programs to design video games, and anyone who is willing to help me learn it's most apprecaited, what happens involving tihs over the next 2 years will most likely determine the rest of my life. For better, or for worse.
Everyone I know is amazed by how easily I breeze through CS courses here (or hates me for it, perhaps  ). I believe it's partly because I've got a huge experience advantage over them: I've been doing this stuff in my spare time since grade 9. So you might not realize it, but FYI if you start trying to make fun little games and other apps now, combined with being already particularly intelligent, it can make you dramatically better than your classmates in the future.
But that's not important. The important part is that it's also fun . (seriously, that'd be my main motivation factor for learning it if I were you  )
Do you know any programming languages? If not, then probably the easiest way to start making games is to play around with a tool like The Games Factory or Multimedia Fusion, software produced by Clickteam (alternatively, you could learn to use Flash: I'm mentioning these tools not necessarily because they're better, but because they're the way I got my start). Not only is it a lot of fun, but you will be a better programmer because of it. Using these programs to build games will teach you concepts like variables, if-statements, loops, etc. which carry over to actual programming easily, not to mention the problem-solving experience. I only learned how to write real code in grade 10, and it was ridiculously easy because I'd had so much experience with The Games Factory beforehand. So ultimately, the hardest aspects of learning programming can be learned by using a program like these (Flash would be equally useful, too). Going from, say, the Event List in The Games Factory to real code is a trivial difference, like learning to write multiplication "a*b" by writing "ab".
Don't worry about learning a "real" language. There are perhaps 3 aspects to becoming a good programmer:
1. learning the basic concepts: variables, if-statements, loops, and functions/procedures
2. learning the concept of pointers/references to objects, and other more technical, lower-level concepts
3. learning to write good code (easy to understand, easy to change, etc.)
#1 you can learn right now by picking up Flash, or The Games Factory, etc. You'll also gradually learn #3, to an extent. #2 is what you should learn when you pick up a "real" language (e.g. Java). I strongly suggest learning and understanding the concept of references/pointers before you start to learn Java (or C++, or C, etc.), otherwise you will end up doing a lot of stuff "just because", without really understanding why you have to do it =P. I didn't learn this stuff until first year university, so you don't have to feel any pressure to learn it now.
Lastly, here's an example of what you can make with The Games Factory (please ignore the fact that it is also a shameless plug ).
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Lmao. That GPA is amazingly low. I'm inclined to think your IQ scores were a fluke simply because you'd have to be extra-extra retarded to get that kind of GPA; laziness alone wouldn't have cut it in getting such an extraordinarily low GPA. It's ok though, life has a nice buffer period after finishing high school during which it sort of "sinks in". When it truly sinks in how fucked you are I hope for your sake that you will take real action (the kind that won't require a TL.net consultation) or you will end up with those other homeless people who have above average IQs. They usually have the excuse of being mentally ill though, what will be yours?
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0.5 gpa? 
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United States10774 Posts
On November 03 2007 13:18 MoNKeYSpanKeR wrote:
by pass i mean ace. I have A's now.
What kind of classes are you taking? You should at leat challenege yourself to take advanced classes...shows some motivation.
PS
I have honestly never met someone with a GPA lower than a 1.5 (didn't even know it was possible)
How the FUCK in the world do you get a 0.5? How many credits do you have?
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Well it's not TOO late. This is your junior year right? If I remember correctly, you missed a lot of school days for the past two days. Just try the best you can in junior year (seriously, get A's continuously to make up for it). Junior year is the most important year in high school.
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EPT
