This has been bugging me for a while now. I’ve talked to Jonathan Kay, Dominic Hopton, Galan Bridgman, Kyle Mulligan, my gramps, myself and who knows how many others asking for advice about what I should do?

First a little background about me for those who don’t really know me or those who haven’t poured over AuroraVisions (my CV type site). To begin with I never went to high school. Heck I barely went to a third of the 8th grade which ended up being my last year of K12 schooling. I won’t get into the reasons now but basically I just wasn’t happy at school and was extremely unimpressed by the quality of what my school district had to offer at the high school level (at the time the only computer class was typing, which iirc was on 286/386′s).

In addition to my great distaste for the lower bowels of the American school system at 13 I was working my ass off doing web design and server administration. I did this in addition to keeping up my regular school type skills and at 16 I took my GED. I was really happy about that at the time, especially since I only missed two questions. Looking back now I wish I had taken my SAT’s and started an AA degree right after that but I didn’t. I kept working and working and working.

So jump forward to September 2001 and I end up at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (a mouthful or UMIST for short). It’s a really good uni in Manchester, England it has also recently merged with the University of Manchester to become, from what I’m told, the largest uni in Europe. It’s also supposed to be in the top five for all of the UK. So I did a full year there, my results left a lot to be desired. Of course if I had left and come back right after the first semester ended I would’ve been at a 2:1 level (I think that’s like a 3 or 3.5GPA). Instead I grew increasingly frustrated with the course but I continued on till the end of the year. I really didn’t like the way things were taught there and was really unhappy with the lack of communication and the quality of material from my supposed mentors at the university. They liked using this really big moral speech at random about plagiarism and how we shouldn’t even help others with their code for we might be accused of plagiarism and would be caught. Forget the fact that the entire first year of the Java module was taken directly from a single book; slides, code, examples, everything. Why in the world am I paying £10,000 a year in tuition to learn Java and the purpose of object oriented programming when I could’ve bought a book off Amazon for £30 and taught myself? Ergo, the course and uni wasn’t for me.

The second semester was worthwhile I suppose. I wouldn’t have ever been apart of Project Hurricane if I had come back early. So far that’s one of the coolest things I’ve gotten out of going to England for a year. Plus I made some good friends, closer than friends , and got to do loads of cool things through Microsoft UK. Having baguettes and crepes in Paris wasn’t bad either . The only downside to staying was that because I was so annoyed with the course and got thrown around by the exam and coursework tutor in the end my 2:1 turned into something I’m not very proud of. But since when are INNER JOIN’s not valid SQL? And why in the world would I only get a 38.5% on a piece of course that was checked over by my other tutor to confirm that I should’ve had a 76%? Anyway that’s all history and hindsight.

Where am I at now? Well I’m stuck in that big fork in the road called life. I’ve really got very little time to procrastinate and decide what I want to do though which makes things all the more difficult. The worst part about this is that the more and more I think about going back to uni the more and more I’m unsure of whether or not I really really want to do a BSc. Computing Science. But then I ask myself why? Is it because I don’t like the fact the most of the CS courses are mostly theoretical and not enough practical? Is it because most only teach Java or something even worse? Or maybe it’s because I just don’t think I’m up to the math involved in the course. I’ve always had a major gripe about how at uni math and computers go hand in hand. For what I want in my future they never will. So all that thinking as almost got me wanting to do another degree, maybe in photography, I’ve been really keen to get into that medium a whole lot more.

I’m still looking at other courses but the only thing that keeps me peddling back to the Computer Science is the lonesome fact that most employers I’m looking to work for want a BSc. in Computer Science or equivalent. This includes Microsoft. I’ve been told from various people I know there that this isn’t always the case and that plenty of people are hired who have another degree, I’m just still not sure. What’s the deal with this?

Overall I tend to think of myself as a pretty well rounded guy in terms of my interests and what I actually can and love doing with technology and computers. I do just about everything, hardware, networking, server admin, ASP.NET, GUI, user experience, graphics work in Photoshop, support, you name it – I do it. I’m still learning to be a super hard core programmer like Dom but for the moment I’m teaching myself to be a better programmer in C# as well as all the ins and outs of SQL. Hopefully redoing all my sites and packaging it up into something that can actually be used by others might move things along .

So finally, what it all boils down to is that I’ve got to decide what university is right for me and figure out the best way to apply when my background isn’t that of the stereotypical high school grad.

I’ve been thinking about UCSD for the main part because my cousin is going to be stationed on Coronado Island. Most likely we’ll be able to share an apartment to save cash and from what I can see there are some pretty good jobs down in the San Diego area to get me through college till I hopefully move up to Redmond . The only concern with UCSD is that I’ve been told that their CS department isn’t all that great in terms of practical application of knowledge and from what I can see of the course it’s pretty heavy in the math/theoretical basis of computers. Plus I think it’s also a bit more difficult for me to get into considering my background, sigh.

Next I was thinking about SJSU, I don’t know too much about it other than it’s location close to Silicon Valley (talk about any number of jobs) and also it looks as if they’ve got a computer science course that has a little more practicality to it. There’s also plenty of modules to do in photography as well that are also apart of their BA in Photography. I’ve also just noticed that they’ve got a program in Digital Media as well. That’s pretty darn cool.

Not too far away I’ve also got Cal Poly (SLO). From everything I’ve seen about this uni so far I like. It’s highly practical and they say that they really have you doing real world things right from the start. The CS course looks as if it has plenty to offer with not *too* much math. Generally I guess I just seem to be okay with the way the uni comes across. Like SJSU they’ve also got what looks like a pretty good arts program as well.

And of course any Microsoft wannabe would have to include UW. Main reasoning here is to just get up to Washington. Plus I would think that the close proximity to Microsoft would mean that they might cater more towards courses with a stronger emphasis on Microsoft technologies. But then again it could just be like all the rest? That’s what I’m not sure about.

So the more and more I think about everything the more and more confusing things become. In the mean time I can at least complete converting my web resume at AuroraVisions.com to Word and PDF form and start working on a portfolio but I really have to make sure I send in my application online by November 30th. That’s the deadline for most of the Cal State Universities.

If anyone reading has gone or is going to, teaches or has taught at, or just as something to say about any of these universities or just would like to help me along the right, or left path in the road please please comment, IM, or email me. I sure as hell am not turning around and walking back where I started . As soon as I come upon some revelation I’ll be sure to travel back in time, tell my younger self about it along with the lucky lotto numbers for yesterday. Till then live long and prosper.