Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs - Episode 44: Should You Drop Out of School?

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

In this episode, Bryce and Conor talk about whether you should drop out of school and learning vs getting good grades.Date Recorded: 2021-09-11Date Released: 2021-09-24Dr. Gary ParkerHash TablesRed Black TreesIvan ČukićFunctional Programming in C++C++NowTogether by Vivek MurthyIntro Song InfoMiss You by Sarah Jansen https://soundcloud.com/sarahjansenmusicCreative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-miss-youMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/iYYxnasvfx8

My mother always jokes that she didn't ever really believe I graduated until she got the diploma. And even then, she like gave the diploma a good hard look and she was like, is this something that he could have fabricated? Wow. Yeah. She's Bryce's mom. Welcome to ADSP, the podcast, episode 44, recorded on September 11th, 2021. My name is Connor, and today with my co-host Bryce, we reminisce about our university days and opine on whether or not you should drop out of university. I actually, when I graduated, I had to fly back from Toronto to Vancouver. And I did it mostly for my parents.

And they gave me that degree thing. And it did not mention. All it said was Bachelor of Science. Nothing about Actuarial Science. I was so disappointed. I handed it to my mother. And I said, you can have this. I can't believe they just painted us all with the same brush.

Like, I suffered. I had a friend at Lsu got a degree in um it was biomedical or biochemical engineering or something um i don't remember what it was specifically but it was something in that area but the the actual thing that they put on his diploma um for for the degree area was not like the thing that people in the industry were looking for and so like he had a degree in the area but he wasn't able to get a job in the field because the spelling of the degree was just not not the one that folks were looking for like maybe it was yeah i don, I don't remember what it was specifically, but like maybe it was that the word engineer wasn't in there and that he had gotten an engineering degree,

but it didn't have engineer in there and that caused problems for him. But it was funny. I didn't go to my graduation. And as you listeners know, I dropped out of college the first time around. And then when I ended up working at a research center at LSU and my boss basically tricked me into going back to school and getting a degree by essentially telling me it was the only way I could remain employed for him long term. So I was like, sure, fine, I'll go take a few classes. And then like eventually I had enough credits to graduate. But I had met all the requirements of the LSU College of Science to get the degree.

And taking all the classes, I turned my terrible gpa into a less terrible gpa because when i dropped out my gpa was one which is bad for those who are that's academic probation but yeah but so i i went to like tell me like this was 2014 into the fall semester i was done I'd done all the credits. And I go to tell the College of Science, like, hey, like I'm, you know, I should be good to go now. And they tell me, no, no, no, no. You've met all the requirements. But to get a degree from the College of Science, you must have taken a certain number of credit hours while registered as a student of the College of Science.

And you only registered as a student of the College of Science like one semester ago. And I was like, but I've taken all my required coursework. And they're like, yeah, but like you've got to take six credit hours more. So I was like, all right, well, like fine, whatever. Or is that two courses? Yeah, so I took like two courses during the winter break. And my parents were not thrilled that I didn't come home to visit them, but I'm like, I'm just gonna take the two easiest courses and then just like be out of here.

And long story short, because of that, they do have a graduation ceremony at the end of the fall semester, because it's a giant school. So some number of people graduate at that time. But I missed out on that one because I didn't technically graduate at the end of the fall semester. I graduated at the end of the winter, like intersession.

And then, like, I left Louisiana. And at the time, I was not particularly enamored with Louisiana. So I had no interest in going back to actually walk for my graduation. So I didn't actually go to my college graduation but my mother um she i had the the diploma mailed to them because i had i had just moved and i didn't have a mailing address yet i i hadn't found a place to live in berkeley yet my my mother always jokes that she didn't ever really believe i graduated until she got the diploma and even then she like gave the diploma a good hard look and she was like is this something that he could have fabricated?

Wow. Jeez, Bryce's mom. That's, uh... I believe in you, Bryce. I believe in you. Even if your mother doesn't. I think you perhaps don't understand how devious I was as a child. LSU's in New Orleans, right?

Or however the Americans say it. But that's also why I'm bothered that my diploma says I graduated in 2015 because that's not actually correct. I was done with college like December 2014, but they issued my diploma, you know, the next semester. Look at that. I graduated before you um did you when did you graduate it took me six years because I I did a year abroad and I also

did a bunch of internships um so technically I only did eight semesters academically um but yeah I I started in 2008 September 2008 and I graduated in May 2014. Yeah, I think I actually only really did like 2.5 years as a college student. I had like one year where I took like a handful of courses and then I had a bunch of credits from high school but then like once I made the decision at LSU that I was going to get a degree I just took like an insane number of courses um like more courses I I think I found some way to take more courses a semester than you were supposed to be allowed to take. And I, yeah, but I took a very high course. I was just like, I just want to be done with this crap. So this is this is great.

So we we are we have similar notes of similarity in our backgrounds, as I mentioned last episode. And then I said it stopped at the credenza and the furniture and the decorator. But now we're back because I also, similar to you, didn't really pay close enough attention to the requirements to graduate. And I signed my full-time offer in like October or November of 2013 and told my employer that I was at a co-op at the time that, yeah, I should be able to graduate in a single semester. I had planned to do two more because I needed six courses and a bunch of them were hard. But they basically said, like, if you can do it in one, like we don't care about your grades. You'll have signed the offer just like if you want to come back. And I said, sure.

So I went, signed up for my six courses and then applied for graduation like in the January. And then they I got rejected. And then I got rejected. And then I was like, what are you talking about? I'm good to go. And they said, you're missing similar to you. I had all the right number of credits, but I had missed that I needed a certain number of upper division credits.

So 300 or 400 courses. And I was short by one credit. And so I had to take a seventh course, which was not allowed. You're only allowed to take a maximum of six. But there's one exception. If you're in the final semester and that seventh course is necessary for you to graduate, you can get permission from the registrar's office. So I went to, I believe Sandy was her name. She's a lovely lady. And I sort of begged. I said, hey, I have this offer. I'd like to go make money. And it was a pretty bad semester. I would have been put on academic probation. I finished with a 1.8 GPA that term. And I'm

pretty sure a couple of my- 1.8 GPA club. We're, yeah, I feel like we're setting bad role models for any of the university kids that are listening. Don't do what we did. Go to your classes. Don't drop out of college. I actually get a surprising number of people that DM me and ask me about whether they think it's a good idea for them to drop out of college because I did it and, you know, turned out all right. And I have also advocated that, you know, I think at least for me, I didn't really learn anything in college. It was a very miserable experience. I really didn't enjoy it. I did not enjoy the whole system. did not enjoy um the fact that they tried to you know

make me conform to this system i did not enjoy all the arbitrary requirements i didn't enjoy being treated like five-year-old um you know i they wait they treat you as five-year-olds i guess that's sort of how i feel like you know like are you man are you mandated to show up to class in america no yeah i just i just mean that like you know like like they tell you like are you man are you mandated to show up to class in america no yeah i just i just mean that like you know like like they tell you like oh you can't take you know you can only take this many credit they don't treat you like an adult and at the time that i was going to college um when i was at lsu i was like working a full-time job and like i was running a computer lab at one of LSU's research centers. So I wasn't really like in the college phase of my life.

It was just like a thing that like I had to do. It's a hoop. Yeah. And like I've never really been a big believer in traditional education systems. And I just didn't feel like I learned much from school. But anyway, so a lot of people will ask me privately about, you know, whether I think they should drop out of school or not. And I actually, I don't frequently advise people to do that.

And here's just some of the reasons why. Well, first of all, a lot of people contact me and ask whether they should drop out of school when they're like two or three years in. And as much as I hate college and hate like the modern education system and think it like fundamentally needs to be reformed. If you're like three or two years in and you've got like one year left to complete it, one, you've already sunk a huge amount of time and money into getting that degree. And like there is a tangible benefit that it'll have in your career for you to actually have been a college graduate. Like you can survive as not a college graduate, but there is some benefit to just having it on your resume.

You know, it does open up some doors. It does. Especially if you want to travel and like and work abroad, like having a degree is a big thing. We're going to get to that in a minute. We'll get to that whole thing in a minute. But just like there is like even though even though I don't think that the college experience is very valuable, I do think that the college experience is very valuable i do think

that the degree is very valuable hold away pause what do you mean by college do you mean the classes or do you mean like the the period of your life that is college attached to that because i think those are two different things really yeah okay yeah um continue at least just for me it like it was not the right life experience um like i recognize that for some people it is, but, um, I just, it's just not an environment I ever liked. Um, but so if you're more than 50% of the way through this investment, both in terms of investment of your time and investment of your money, um, I think the bar is really, really got to be large for you to drop out. And I've had some people who have contacted me in their last one or two semesters saying,

hey, look, I got this job that's lined up and they want me to just like quit school and come work for them and and i i i i think that it's really unwise and unfair for companies to offer to do that because like if if somebody is like one semester away from finishing like just they should just finish yeah just do it yeah like you know even even if you're miserable in college if you've made it to the point where you've got like one year or two years left you should just finish like it's almost always the right decision for you to just finish um because the opportunity cost is pretty low like i get there are some circumstances where i could see it being the right call like if you told me that your buddies were going to do a startup and that like you want

you really believed in it and you wanted to get in on the ground floor um and that like you know it was something where you couldn't wait a year or you'd just completely miss out sure fair enough um but uh but yeah so so that's the first thing is most people come and ask me about um whether they should go to whether they should finish college you you know, partway through. And I sort of get that because think about it. Almost nobody is thinking about not going to college or I should say for people that have the means to go to college. You're not thinking about not going in your first year or before you even go normally because you haven't realized at that point that it wasn't the right

thing for you. Like it's natural that the time that you're going to start thinking about whether you should finish college is when you're 50% of the way through. Because that's the point where like you've been there long enough that the honeymoon period's worn off and like you've learned some stuff and maybe now you have some other opportunities lined up. So like it's very natural at that phase to start thinking about, yeah, maybe I don't need to do this. It's not natural for you to realize like immediately your first semester in college, like, oh, this is miserable. I don't want to do that. But if you did go to one semester of college and you just thought it was miserable and you had some other opportunities lined up, like that's a circumstance where I might recommend

that you drop out. I'd have to learn a lot more about your situation. And that's the other thing, which is one of the first things I ask somebody if they're talking to me about dropping out in college is I basically I want to know, are they or are they not a white male from the U.S. or a certain set of European countries that have preferential immigration status to the rest of the world. Because if you are not a white male from either the US or Canada or like a European country in the Schengen area, then not having a college degree is going to have real impact on your ability to immigrate and your ability to get a job. Like if you're a white guy who's a college dropout in the US, like you're going to be fine. You're going to probably be fine, you know. But if you're, you know, a black woman, that is going to have much more of a real impact on on your ability to get a job

and so maybe for you the degree is actually more valuable um and like especially when it comes to matters of immigration um i know some really some really really smart people um who do not live in the u.s um and like in particular some of my my friends and colleagues who live in nigeria these guys you know what one of them i think you know do you know bassett yeah yeah yeah absolutely brilliant guy um but you know he's he's had a hard time, um, uh, getting internships because of the country that he's based in. Even, even in remote work times, you know, it can be challenging for people who are not in the U.S. because if you're, if you live in, uh, Nigeria or if you live in, I'm trying to think of another country that would be a good example, say Iran, you know, all of the big, it's possible that the big multinational tech companies may not even have operations in that country. So even if they'd be willing to give you a remote internship, they may not have the capability to do so because HR does not have a way to set that up.

And then, you know, figuring out how to get an immigration visa like is really tough. It's become a lot tougher in recent years. And it's much harder when you don't have a degree. Especially if you're from, you know, a certain set of countries that have extra, extra restrictions on them. Like I, the research group I used to work in, in LSU, we had a lot of Iranian students and most of them got their master's in Iran. Some of them were undergrads who came over, but it was just, it was, let me tell you, it's real tough to get into the U.S. on a student visa if you're from Iran. Yeah. And, and yeah, so, so it's weird,

but I, the college dropout who has spoken about how I I do not enjoy college frequently. I oftentimes find myself advising people that perhaps they should stick around and finish out school. Yeah, I I completely agree. I don't think I had the like we didn't have super similar experiences like i was not a big fan of yeah the traditional education system i had a couple really really good professors like gary parker dr gary parker he was um i took two or three actuarial mathematics courses with him he by far was the best professor i've i had in university and and actually treated, he treated all of his students, not just with as like as adults, but he, he expected you to like elevate yourself to, you know, whatever,

wherever you were at in your life. You know, I remember one of the first things he said in, uh, ACMA 320, which was sort of the, once you conditionally or unconditionally got into the program, um, he said in the first lectures, he says, you know, I'm going to do my best. And all I ask is that you do yours. And he just he cared so much about his students. And so I had a couple really good professors. But a lot of professors aren't great, you know, they're not there to teach, they're there to do their research. And they just, they have to do teaching as a part of it. I think that's the case. But, you know, I don't think that I don't think that my problem with college was necessarily, you know, a problem with my professors. I had a number of really good professors. One of my I took a bunch of philosophy and religious studies classes at LSU.

And that was those were like the one set of classes that I really found rewarding. And I had a really great professor, um, who taught them. Um, and there were a bunch of other professors that I, I worked with or interacted with who were very, um, you know, they were very good. Um, I, I certainly, I had, I had a handful who were quirky or who were clearly very smart, but they were not educators or they had just not been trained to educate, which I think is one of the problems with the system, which is just because you have a PhD in physics does not mean you have the training to teach physics. Like I took a comp sci course in data structures and the class was going too slowly. So they decided to skip hash tables. Hash tables for a number of years was a data structure that I had heard of. And all I knew of it is that was the data structure we skipped. And fast forward to one point I was interviewing

at Google and I had an onsite. This was way, way early when I had just sort of trying to switch from actuary to tech and they sent you these documents and one of the things in the documents was like out of all the data structures that you should know coming to the you know interviews where we're going to ask you a lot of algorithms data structures problems know the hash table like know how to implement a simple hash table is by far the most important or hash table hash map whatever you want to call it is is the most important uh data structure and i was just like laughing when i read that because i was like oh yeah that you mean the data structure that my prof skipped because we

didn't have time uh we we went through all the different flavors of the red black trees and the self-sorting and blah blah blah um well that's another, that's an example of another problem, which is the people at the university that are teaching the classes are not always the people who know what skills you need, like what skills are currently in demand in the industry. Yeah, well, that's, that's a, that's been a problem for forever. It's like, especially with CS, it's always lagging by, you know, if you're lucky, five years. If you're not, it's lagging by, you know. I don't think, I've actually heard of a couple universities in Europe.

Like Ivan Chukich, if I probably mispronounced that name. But, you know, the author of Functional Programming in C++. I know he, at one point is, I think he's sort of still a professor. He works at KDAB. I think maybe he's moved to somewhere else. But I know that there's a couple of profs in Europe that teach modern C++. But it's far and few between that you're going to find a course that actually teaches you, you know, the standard library you know algorithm data you know data structure headers and whatnot and uh it's it's mostly like the implementation of just some

generic thing and they're like choose whatever language you want and how often are you going to be actually implementing a red black tree for work no like every language you know java has your tree map c++ has your whatever, maps and sets. And not that that stuff's not valuable, but there's another version of a course that they could give that would be so much more useful. So wait, so you said you didn't have a problem with the courses. So why? I think one of my fundamental – well, I didn't have a problem with the teachers. I did have a problem with the courses.

And one of the reasons that I have a problem with the courses is because courses are graded um and i understand the rationale for why it is necessary to um grade students but um i do not think that it produces desirable outcomes um when the i think the reality is that a very large chunk of students learn how to get an acceptable grade from a class, instead of learning the actual content of the class. Certainly, this was my approach. Because if I wanted to, the two things are often at odds um uh if i wanted to both really learn something from the class and also get a good grade like those were two separate things in many cases because the ways in which we have to like you know assess student performance in classes I just think are like horribly inefficient and

so at least for me as a student instead of like learning the content I figured out what I needed to do to get, you know, the best grade. And not even that, I learned what I needed to do to get, um, uh, you know, a grade that was acceptable to me because I didn't have, you know, I didn't have time to do more than that. And, and, I mean, to be fair, you know, I, I worked full time the entire time I was in college. So that, that certainly might, you know, contribute to my, my frustration here that I was never a full-time student. And when I say work full-time, I meant like, really, I would work like, you know, 50, 60 hours a week. You know, maybe, maybe a bit less when like my last few semesters. But I also think that the fact that courses are graded make the teacher-student relationship very different. different, that there's always an inherent conflict there.

You know, is a student really interacting with the professor to learn or to improve their grade or to get the professor to like them so that they, you know, score something that is going to be treated subject subjectively like an essay better um and uh and so i think that it becomes hard for students and teachers to build actual real mentor mentee bonds that you need to really learn something when there's this arbitrary grading system. And also, I think the required curriculum that a lot of schools have, I think is just sort of nonsense. Especially there's a lot of schools

that still require some core curriculum of something. I know I, at least in college, had to take some number of classes that I had zero desire in taking and that I only took because I was essentially required to. And I do not think that you're going to get great outcomes out of students that are taking a class merely because they're required to. I'll actually push back on that a little bit. I used to think the exact same thing. Like my father is a journalist, I think it's been mentioned before. So he's a big writer. And I'm a big,

I was a math person at the time. And I hated writing, or I shouldn't say I hated writing, I hated any form of course that someone's opinion, it was involved with the grade that I was getting, which is why I really liked math, because math was not subjective. If you were doing some sort of calculation, there was the right answer is not sufficient. And so the teacher is going to judge the mechanism by which you came to the answer. Yeah, I mean, I had a math teacher like that in high school. And I despised I despised that because like, you know, they would see what looked like a one with like a little hat, which was actually a seven as one of the digits of a number and like everything else was perfect. And then they'd be like, well, you have a one there. That's incorrect. I'd be like, how did I get everything else right?

And like, that's clearly a seven, except I just didn't put the little line through it. Anyways, I think for the most part, for the most part, math and physics and stuff, there's a lot less subjectivity. Whereas you're writing a paper for, you know, a philosophy course, it's just completely, um, you know, how do they think you did? Um, that being said, I did end up having to take, you know, two, uh, qualitative or W courses, which are like writing. Um, and I ended up taking a history course and that was probably one of the courses I learned the most from because it was the first time in my life, very sadly, that someone had ever taken the time to teach how to like critically analyze a sort like the sources of a

paper, you know, not just who wrote it, but like, when what was when was it written? You know, what, what's the context around that that period of time, what was going on globally, like, and it wasn't until then that I had any idea that there was these, you know, left wing, right, ring, wing, you know, media sources, and that, you know, it wasn't until then that I realized every single time you read something, you should be checking, you know, you know, what school did this, you know, person go to? Like what school school of thought are they coming from? Are they libertarian, blah, blah, blah, up until that point in my life. And that was the last semester of my education. So that was 2014. I was I was 24 at the time,

I'd never learned that. And that came from taking a course that was outside of the courses. And so my dad would always say, Oh, yeah, that's for a well-rounded education. I'd be like garbage. Like it's not going to help me make, you know, it's not going to help me get employed or make more money in the future. Um, but I think there is some merit to trying to encourage that kind of, uh, well-roundedness. And I say that reluctantly because like, I, I kind of, I'm not entirely opposed to that, but my, my, my point is more point is more that your options are often very limited. I could be fine with a school system that required you to have a broad education, but did not prescribe it to the same degree that, uh, uh, that, you know, some schools do, um, like, uh, um, so I, I get really, um, squeamish around anything like medical

related, like really squeamish, like, you know, like I get panic attacks if I go to get a needle. And LSU required us to take like two biology courses. And I'm pretty sure it's because... Okay, that's silly. Yeah, but I'll tell you the reason why. Because it definitely came up in one of the courses where one of the courses has an evolution section to it. And it's Louisiana where there are many religious people in the state. And so I'm pretty sure that LSU just didn't want to graduate anybody who had not

been educated about the theory of evolution. And in and in, and in fact, I think there was like a certain test where like to pass the test, you had to, um, you had to like essentially like, like show your understanding and acceptance of the theory of evolution. But like, I just like, I, I was absolutely miserable in that class. Um, uh, uh you know there were like sections of it that just like would make me like queasy like being in the classroom and it's like i just had no desire to be there um you know if you told me like take some some science class that's you know outside of your main area like i'm sure you know i really like geology i probably would have gone taking like a geology class or like something else but you, a lot of these college degree plans are like very, very prescriptive. And I don't know

that really helps anyone. Yeah, I think at SFU, Simon Fraser, I went like the breadth requirements is what they called them. It was very, very small. So I think you had to take at least two q courses which stood for quantitative and like some philosophy courses that focused on logic like those qualified so you didn't even really need to take math or anything like that and you needed to take uh like two w uh or or yeah w requirements which were like the writing one so i think i said qualitative before but um and and so like as a math student it was the w ones that I had to get and then like the the art students had to take the cue um and I I don't I don't I think that's acceptable as like you know it's not it's it's probably would have been fine with that

but but you know LSU was much more prescriptive yeah that's uh and I just thought of an example of the like monitoring software that they have to use when they're in virtual classrooms? I have not personally read or had to do that myself. I do know people, though, that when they were taking licensing exams in like the last couple of years that, yeah, they've had to have their webcam on and like they've got it's and it's it's just i've the stories that i've heard are absolutely horrifying yeah it's like it's absolutely draconian and and you know it's not always the professor's like choice to do that but in some cases the professor is doing that because they don't want because

they're worried about the student you know cheating or scamming them or doing something. And, and that's sort of what I'm getting at is that like, because of, because classes are graded, there's always this confrontational and transactional relationship between students and teachers. And how can you, you know, how do they expect people to learn from somebody when it's set up like that? Yeah. The space that I've heard about it in is for medical students. And on top of what medical students are going through, like the stress that it was like causing the people that I knew, like it was just, yeah. Draconian is an amazing word for it.

And it was just, it was so unnecessary. And the scheduling, because usually the tests are taken in person. And just the whole thing was just a nightmare. I, one time, the first year of C++ Now, we had a, was he a high schooler? No, it was the second year of C++ Now. The first year of C++ Now, we had this high school student who came to the student volunteer program. In the second year, he had graduated high school and he was in college. And C++ Now is scheduled in an unfortunate time for American college students because it's in May.

And for a lot of students, it ends up being the week of their finals or like the week right before their finals. And so this kid managed to get all of his, he scheduled to take all of his exams early with all of his professors, except for his Calculus 1 professor. And his Calculus 1 professor did not want to allow him to take the exam early. Again, not late. He was volunteering to take his final exam early. And his calculus professor didn't want him to do that because there was a possibility that he might then share

what was on the test with other students and then cheat. So no, the professor insisted that he had to take the test at the same time as everybody else. And so we finally worked out a settlement where the student volunteer came to the conference, but then during the prescribed time when everybody else was taking the test, he would take the test in my hotel room. and I somehow got volunteered to be the person to proctor the test. I had never met this professor before, but for whatever reason, this professor who had never met me just trusted that I would be, you know, that I somehow would be a more trustworthy person than this very bright, intelligent and trustworthy student of his that just wanted to go, you know, go to this excellent career opportunity. Um, but no, he couldn't be trusted to, to, uh, take the test early or to take the test himself. Um, no, there had to be somebody there to supervise, to make sure that he was not cheating. Um, and that was just, you know, that particular professor, I think was a

little bit, was a little bit much, but I think the system made him that way. Yeah. Oh boy. I sound like a conspiracy theorist. Well, no. So, so I'll just, I'll go back to just trying to give my summary of my take on, on university. So I, you know, I had good profs. I wasn't a, um, I wasn't a huge fan of the system. That being said, um, I absolutely loved the end. Like I really feel like I'm, I'm, you know, it's hard to be aware of the opportunity that you have when you're in university. I think it's different for you cause you were working 50, 60 hours a week. I worked during the summers and when I was on co-op and internship, and that's how I paid my way through school. But like while I was in school, if I did have a job, it was only ever taking up

like 10 hours a week. Like I worked in residence for a while sort of helping out, but it was a very low overhead job and actually ended up like you did that job and then you would get free residence for the semester while you were working. But basically the thing that I would say is like the friends and the community that you are exposed to there. Like I just finished reading a book called Together by Vivek Murthy who is the 19th Surgeon General of America. And it's about loneliness and like the increasing rise of loneliness in like the world, partially due to social media. And at one point they-

Partially due to this whole pandemic thing. Well, actually, so he wrote the book and was publishing it right as we were going into the pandemic. Oh, wow. And he has a little bit like in the foreword, yeah, that talks about like, you know, I didn't even had no idea this was coming. But yeah, it's makes it even more as you just said. You said he was a doctor. He's part of that.

I will not be a part of promoting whatever conspiracy Bryce is trying to shill right now. But at one point, my favorite part of the book is when he, there's these three studies that identify that there's like three different types of loneliness. And the first one is intimate. And that's like wanting someone to confide in whether that's in the form of a partner or a really good friend. Then there's relationship slash friendship. And that's like your group of, you know, close 15 friends. And then there's what they call collective loneliness is like not being a part of a community of sort of like a larger purpose. And I think that like, university is like the best opportunity, it was the best period of my life to find like all three of those at the same time. Because like, you're, you're a part of these classes, and that's the collective,

you end up making great friends, that's the relationship. And then for many people, they end up, you know, whether it's ends up being long term and permanent or, you know, intramurals and activities that you get to do. And it was, um, that part of university, like I absolutely loved. And, uh, yeah, I, I never, I never really had that. I mean, when I was at LSU, um, I, you know, I never lived in student housing. I was working all the time. Um, and like the, really the major, though, was that I was at a different phase in my life than than other students. Like we were I was maybe one or one year older than or two years older than some of my classmates. But, you know, I was working full time, you know, like sort of I was I was an adult. But I think like if I had gone to take a class at a

community college, I probably would have had more like with people, you know, who had full time jobs, who, you know, like in my class at a community college, I probably would have had more in common with those students than with, you know, students, you know, undergrads at a large party school who just had very different interests and priorities than mine. But even when I, you know, the college I dropped out of was a school called Union College in upstate New York. And even when I was like there, like, and I was living in student housing and I was not working full time, I just never really had that connection. You know, my, my community was always some collection of people that I knew online before it was programming folks. It was, you know, various gaming communities, but by that time it had started to be programming folks. So I always sort of like had that community, but it was just never, it was just never that college community. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. It depends where you're coming from. Like I, I came from a smaller city and was always like, uh, I never fit in, in high school. And, you know, I liked going to math clubs and doing a math contest and stuff. And, uh, there was very few people that I clicked with. Um, Benjamin Chung was one of them. He was my math rival. Uh, he ended up going to University of Alberta and getting a biomedical engineering degree. But then when I showed up at university, like

the first day of orientation, which was like the week before university, it was all students that wanted to be either statistics or actuarial science majors. And I was just like, wow, I've never met so many people similar to myself. And yeah, to this day, like I'm one of my best friends is Steven, who I met on that first day. And, you know, when we that's the thing is we we do virtual board games every once in a while. And like we were playing Catan the other day. And that's like, these are the kind of people that are like working through the statistical odds of like, okay, what should I do? What's statistically like the best outcome, you know, in there? They take board games like, I can play for fun, but I like playing board games more like, you know, really taking it seriously.

And actuaries and statisticians, most of the ones that I've come across all sort of bring the same rigor to the calculations that are done while playing board games. Anyways, this is going to be a long winded episode of, wait, so have we answered one, should you go to university and two, should you drop out? So I think the answer is drop out, probably not, especially if you're two, three years in, just finish it. Or maybe we should have a whole other episode on should you go to university um yeah although if we if we do that we're gonna get letters from parents you're gonna get letters from parents i think especially in canada our education system is doing a lot better than america's no offense um yeah and uh but before we go there you know it's um you know i i didn't i didn't i was i was one of

the like you know i wasn't a popular kid in high school but i went to like a science and engineering high school and uh yeah yeah we we've told it's a it's pretty epic high school yeah that's the middle school the middle school middle school was great that was the weird funky private middle school but i went to the science and engineering high school after it which was a magnet school and um there was you know there was a a group of people that were more you know sort of my type people who were interested in science and um you know i i had plenty of friends there um uh you know i had some of them who had been um people who had we'd gone to elementary who had, we'd gone to elementary school together, then we'd gone to middle school together at the private middle school.

And then we'd gone to this magnet, this science magnet school together. So like, I definitely had some friends. I wasn't, you know, the loneliest kid in the world. But I was raised as an only child, you know, with a single mother. So I sort of was always, always pretty comfortable, you know, being a single mother. So I sort of was always, always pretty comfortable, you know, being on my own. But I'm not really, I'm not really in touch with, with any of those folks anymore. Once I went to college, I just sort of fell out of touch with, with all of them. And I made some friends when I was at Union College before I dropped out. But I have not been in touch with any of them since I dropped out.

When I was at LSU, I made like, I think maybe one at most friend, but maybe there was like one or two people that I- Was that your biking buddy? No, no, no. I'm just talking about other students that I ran into in classes. I had plenty of friends who were coworkers at the research center. And I had, there were plenty of friends who were co-workers at the research center and i had there were plenty of you know undergrads or graduate students who were also who were my co-workers who i was friendly with but not really anybody who i ever had classes with um and yeah i mean it's my oldest friend is somebody that i know from a gaming community

that i've never actually met in person who I've known since like I was 12. Yeah. And like, you know, yeah, it's, it's, it was funny. Cause like I realized a while back, like he's the person I've probably known and had continuous conversations with the longest. Um, but yeah, it's just, I never, I never really had good connections with the community until I, uh, until I found my way into programming and met the, you know, made all my friends that I now have in the programming community. So, yeah. Yeah. Different stages, different stages or phases of your life.

You're going to sync more with people. I guess I got to mention Chris Gieske too. I mentioned Ben, but yeah, Chris, Chris was my science fair. We went to, maybe that, that should be an episode one day. Not that people care. Maybe not. I went to three national science fairs. Yeah. That to maybe that should be an episode one day not that people care maybe not I went to three national science fairs yeah that's definitely going to be an episode

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