Never lock yourself in. Anyone who says college is a waste of time and and locks people into being sheep either haven't ever attended a college and are still brainwashed by what primary education has turned into, or they're doing college wrong lol.
Or, they've realized that it absolutely IS a waste of time for
some people, and
those people can be more successful by doing things their own way or even starting their own company. That's what I did.
I dropped out of college (Information Systems) in 2008 after one semester. Partly because I felt like I was wasting my time/money, but also because I was lucky enough to see what was about to happen to the IT industry. I waited four years before I went to college. Just after I started, I had friends who had graduated with advanced IT and computer engineering degrees who could barely get jobs working helldesk for just over minimum wage.
Despite that, I
still ended up getting hired as a Network Engineer and SysAdmin at a Fortune 500 in 2009. I'm entirely self-taught and I've had zero formal training aside from studying for network and security certs. I got the job because I was already extremely knowledgeable, had previous IT startup experience, and I knew someone in a position to offer the job to me. For two years everything was fine. I had no trouble performing my duties despite the lack of a degree or formal training. In late 2011 the company I was working for outsourced IT and I was laid-off with a lot of other people.
All the while, I had been planning to start another company. Something unrelated to IT. Getting laid-off was the catalyst I needed to actually do it, so I started a company in the worst economy since the 1970's with no funding and no investors. I leveraged Wordpress and other open-source packages so my startup cost was around $7 (for a month of VM hosting) and the Nikon D5000 I already owned.
After about of month's worth of research and website work, Nites was born. I started out doing photography and social media marketing for bars and music venues in the neighborhood I lived in at the time (NoDa.) Within two months the company was sponsored by Pabst and I had brought most of the bars and venues in NoDa on as partners. I was already bringing in at least $2,000/mo. revenue and I only had to work on the weekends.
Now, I do a little bit of everything: music and film production, photos, electronic press kits, websites, media distribution, branding and marketing, social media management, the list goes on. I taught myself all of these skills using Google/YouTube and my own intuition.
As of September 21st it's been three years since I launched Nites and I'm still self-employed. I don't make a ton of money every month, but I make enough to support myself and my mom comfortably. I have a nice house in a great neighborhood and I have a great social life. I have everything I need, most of what I want, and I only need to work about 50 hours in the average month to accomplish that. I obviously do work more, because beer money
I also have some side-ventures I'm going into with friends; those are currently simmering on the back-burner, but stay tuned
I want to retire at 35 and buy an island, because fuck cubicles and the corporate ladder. You can do it too. If you have a marketable idea and an internet connection all things are possible; the only other thing you need is willpower.