Ask HN: Am I choosing the right career?
I’m 18 years old. Started programming at 13. After high school, i went to what is essentially trade school in the netherlands (MBO). i studied software development. I finished the course in a little over a year, very fast as it’s normally a 4 year course. The plan was always to go to uni after trade school.

I finished trade school a few months ago, i couldn’t enroll for any uni’s in 2024 because i didn’t meet the admission requirements and the deadline for enrollments had already by the time i finished trade school. Thats why im starting next year september.

i’ve had several jobs in the software world. I’ve worked as an parttime app developer for a while. And while at trade school, i worked for a fairly large international bank as a software engineer doing mostly cloud infrastructure with azure (full time). I’ve had several offers from companies like asml and philips, but declined because my time at the bank made me miserable and didn’t want to work at a large company.

Some people at the bank were awesome, but the scale of the software we were building and the amount of people that were building it was, in a way, very demotivating. I also quite often felt like what i did didn’t matter. I think part was because of my age. working amongst folks pushing 40 as a 17 year can be horrible. There were even some weeks where i did absolutely nothing and nobody even noticed. I quit(or rather didn’t extend the contract) after a year because i wanted to do something more fulfilling.

I now work fulltime at a robotics company and work mostly on vision AI for robots (basically fancy object recognition). This job also makes me miserable (they did give me a car. im very happy with the car!!).

Besides all that corporate nonsense, i also have my own projects and i’m planning on releasing one soon (it’s gonna be big im telling yall!!). My personal projects are the only thing that keep my love for programming alive.

Now I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never been an “easy guy” in school, and often made it hard for my teachers. I once failed my a very important exam and the teachers reasoning was that “i was being annoying”. And to be fair, i was an annoying kid. In my second year of highschool i got transferred to a special class for kids that were either severely underperforming or unbearably annoying (or both), this made my hate for school grow even more. But i want to do better in uni. I want to actually go for the thing i eventually choose to study.

Sorry for the very long introduction. I could go on for hours about why i want to stop with software engineering (as in full time/part time work not as hobby). I love programming i just hate to do it for a living. My question is,
Is it worth my time to do computer science (or something related) in uni? Most of the people around me tell me that its the best choice for me. I on the other hand, strongly disagree. I’ve always wanted to make documentaries, so i thought journalism might be right for me. After looking into it tho, i find most journalism degrees to be rather useless. I considered neuroscience for a while, but neuroscience isn’t as widely offered. ultimately, I landed on biomedical science and technology. i applied just a few days ago but i’d be lying if i said i wasn’t scared to pursue something new. I’d like to hear yalls opinion. Thanks in advance!!!!

Unimportant note:
You may be wondering what i’m going to do from now to september. In februari i’ll start an international business course at a hbo(uni of applied science). I’ll do this until september. and who knows, If i like it i might actually get my bachelors in international business but i doubt it. My contract at the company i’m currently working at ends in January. Untill then ill just be working.

*Sorry if this post was too long or if i did something wrong with the title. It’s my first time.*