Difficulties with a future studying path

Hello there,

I've come here to ask for some advice and information about some college or university courses involving the IT or programming business, I need to choose soon, however I still have me some time to weigh all the options. As of late it pretty much hit me straight in the face that the years in high school passed me by like a flash. And it's getting me terribly nervous and anxious.


Here in Belgium we don't really get to choose our courses, we have more streamlined compilations of certain lessons that work together towards a certain career path or field. And because of unfortunate events when I was younger, I slacked hard in middle school. Which caused me to end up in a somewhat more unfortunate position during high school. Good thing I discovered that I really liked programming, and it started to motivate me to study well, causing me to have really high grades. Eventually this left me time to do more self-studied programming. The downside was that now that I ended up in a simplified field that only really leaves you one option in college, which was to do webdesign, and only that. And frankly, I really really hate drawing, I don't see myself as a designer. It also means that I get a lesser amount of math and science hours than a typical high school student, causing me to lag behind on the requirements needed for higher education.


The part that has gotten me worried tough is that most, if not all of the college IT fields here in Belgium involve some sort of language course, causing you to learn French because it's an official language. I'm really really bad at it and after 6 years of jamming it down your throat in high school and middle school, I'm absolutely trough with it. However that's not the only issue, They also require you to have had a basic electricity course as well as enough math knowledge. The latter of which I already started working on through math self-study, cause I do actually like math a lot. As with all things that you self-study tough, there's the probability of holes in things that you happened to miss. 


There is an alternative however, but it seems like too great of a gamble to make. There's this school focused around digital art, and 3D programming. They don't require any previous background in math or science as they teach the essential knowledge needed for programming 3D applications from the ground up. However, they require that you're not only an outstanding programmer, but also an outstanding artist. I can only really draw enough to express my ideas for someone else to build on top off, but actually spending my time drawing seems pretty daunting for me, as I don't really enjoy it.


Do you perhaps think there are other courses that don't require some of these things? Or should I keep at it and bite through the sour apple?


Thanks for reading and/or helping, I felt the need to provide some background story, I excuse myself. I've also noticed that there are a lot of such posts on this forum, and I hope that I didn't annoy anyone by posting yet another.


 Have a nice day!

It sounds like you have to choose the lesser of several evils: drawing, design, and language.  You could just pick the one you hate the least and go with it.  If you're willing to leave the country you might be able to get into a college in some other country which would give you more options, but that is a pretty big choice to make, and a major undertaking.

If I had to choose one, oddly enough I think I'd go with drawing. It's the one I have the most experience with out of the three, and after all It's a good skill to have if you're handling 3D objecs. As for going to a college abroad, it's bound to cost buckets of money. I guess I'll just have to take my chances here at home.

If you know what you're doing I'd rather go to tech/IT school get in your area right away. College is more like an extension of high school nowadays, more of a 'rite of passage' than say higher learning. Sure it could point you in the right path but what you mostly realize is after college you know so little.

Most state universities doesn't even have final exams or thesis to get your degree, which is really unheard of 10-20 years ago. Yea requiring 2nd language and electronics or filler courses in Colleges are really dumb. Reminds me of the middle school days of taking FCE or cooking classes. I don't think the example you set is not that bad. I've seen worst. It's like learning Calculus in high school and if you're good enough you can pick all your courses right you will never need to learn any math in college. I mean when's the last time you use algebra to calculate market equilibrium. 

What I've seen is unless you take a really good area in College, most people who get down are still 10+ years later still in entry level jobs, even with accounting or computer science jobs. It's all about luck and opportunity. 

Yeah, I have noticed that lately. Most of the times, they're professional bachelors degrees. So they give you 5 semesters of lessons and 1 semester of internships. With a final project attached to it most of the times. I would really like to work with C and C++ and the 3D course gives both of them a lot of attention, which I like. And as you were saying It's indeed highly dependent on what job opportunities you can actually take. With the first language you develop in probably being your only one you're ever going to work with sadly enough. 
However, I'm totally fine with that as long as I even have a job in the field to begin with. The same can't be said for a lot of other fields over here. There's loads and loads of highly schooled academic people here, and there are a very little amount of people that actually get a job in their line of work. Sour sight to see really.

Don't some countries in that area have free higher education?  I haven't researched it but I thought that was the case.

Yes, I believe the most countries that are part of the EU actually provide cheaper higher education, but by no means completely free, unfortunately. However, in most cases you have to speak the native language. And I'm only really capable of Dutch and English, leaving me with 2 other countries to choose from, being the UK and The Netherlands. They have extensive amounts of good computer related courses, and it seems like they have some viable options, especially in the UK actually. Going to do some further digging.