Hi there,

I was in the same place as yours 4 years back. I am out of college now with a full-time job and almost out of debt. Here's what had worked for me. It might not work for you.

You have real world skills like building a web app and have a part time job. I had none.

I was down with 6 courses with F grades and no idea what to do with my life. I was about to quit college. I knew I was going somewhere wrong with the notion of world I had.

I took a Vipassana course. The courses are of 10 days duration, independent of religious stuff and free of charge to all those who wish to do so. Here the link : http://www.dhamma.org/. It is like a gym for the mind. The more you do it, the more you increase your focus, willpower and awareness. It becomes easier to deal with problems in life with a strong mind. It also forces you to look at life directly rather than deluding yourself with self pity or fantasies.

It was hard for me to realize that :
1) I am dissatisfied only when I am not getting something that I want.
2) There is a price to pay for everything I want.

For me at that moment, the most important thing was to pass out of college since I had taken a loan to study there. I was really interested to know, what I was doing different than the guys who were the toppers with all 'A's.

One of the toppers told me, he really did 3 things :
1) Attended every class and took notes of almost everything.
2) Tried to understand everything told by the Professor during the lecture or the same day itself, paraphrashing the notes if required.
3) Teach other students the stuff before the exams.
(Most important since we retain 90% of the stuff we teach or apply straight away in case of programming)

I almost remember the day he told me this stuff. But did I implement it straight away? No I just could not. I could not come out of my old habits straight away. That semester I flunked in almost all of the courses.

But the next semester I decided to implement all the three from Day One. The first two were quite easy. I was really concerned about the last part.

I had reservations who would try to understand stuff from me. But I think I was repeating "Theory of Computation", just before the exams some student asked me to help with something. I asked him to come sometime in the night. I explained concepts to an audience of nine students who were taking the course. I passed that course easily.

The last two semesters were very easy after forming those habits and I easily passed all the previously flunked courses as well. I even had time to be a part of a band and teach Java programming to a group of fellow students.

I would not say the whole journey was easy. Forming new habits are difficult and it needs a lot of motivation. Regular Vipassana meditation helped. My mom helped me with all kinds of support - financial as well as emotional. Sometimes when I was really down, I reminded myself that she believed in me and no matter what happened I was going to be brave enough to survive college.

Again this is my story but it is you who has to try new stuff and habits to yourself to go from "where you are" to "where you want to be". It is your habits who make you are. You can change those habits. Other people have done so. So can you.

All the best from my side. Would really like to see you stuff making HN frontpage.

Shoot me an email about anything.

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Fellow HNer