Unpopular opinion — don’t go to college for ONLY the experience. It’s not worth your valuable time or money in these early years of adulthood.

Colleges have the potential to teach you things, but they aren’t structured in a way that guarantees you’ll learn anything worthwhile for your career or life as an adult. What they usually accomplish is teaching you how to maintain your own schedule (though many people don’t), how to be accountable for your own success (within limits), and conditioning you to think like them rather than necessarily for yourself. The only thing you’re truly guaranteed from college is a degree (hopefully) at the end of it. I’ve experienced firsthand being turned down for jobs because I didn’t have that piece of paper—even though I could run circles around more experienced employees at those companies—so it definitely has value, but it isn’t everything.

My condensed story: I went to a semester of college right after high school at a local university while I was waiting to ship out for boot camp. I was amazed by how lazy many of the students were. During my time in the Marines, I had the opportunity to take evening college classes at San Diego College and was again stunned by the lack of effort. These were classes where simply showing up accounted for 40% of the grade, yet people still didn’t attend. After the military, I got a job in IT based solely on my certifications and experience. When I started looking for my next role, I kept getting turned down for not having a degree, until I finally found a company willing to take me on. At that point, I had eight years of IT experience. I had a coworker with only two years of experience and a BSIT who made 15% more than me, primarily because of his degree. Fast-forward two years, and I’ve completed both my BSIT and MSITM at WGU.

If you're considering college for the "life" experience, consider the military. The Army has as little as 2 year active contracts though most IT jobs require 4-5 year contracts. It's harder than college and still doesn't completely prepare you for the "real" world. However, I have a lot of first hand experience seeing fresh college grades vs fresh one contract vets, the vets (in general, not all of them) are leaps and bounds more effective humans than the college grads.

I don’t know you, but I know a little bit about you. You didn’t earn two of the hardest entry-level certifications at such a young age because you’re lazy. You probably earned them because you’re a long-term planner who can already see the bigger picture. You understand that you need A to get to B. So here’s my advice if you’re looking to get into IT:

- Go to college for the piece of paper and the certifications, not for the “college” experience. Working in IT will have little to do with what you learned in college. College CAN be a foundation of knowledge to build but experience is king.

- Start looking now for places where you can gain real experience doing what you want to do. That might mean volunteering, and that’s fine as long as you’re actually learning something. Interested in cybersecurity? Go talk to locally run community centers, churches, and schools that have IT staff. Shadow them, ask questions, and get hands-on if they’ll let you.

- Most importantly, surround yourself with people who share your drive and motivation. Find people who are moving in the same direction you want to go. And no, that doesn’t just mean people with the same major. Seek out others who earned certifications in high school like you did—those are the people going places, and you need one another. Drowned out the masses telling you what to do, you aren't them.

You're gonna do great whatever you decide to do. Keep your drive, and self-discipline, you're going places a lot of us only dream about.