I’ve never was the kind of student who would come home from school with good grades to impress his parents, ever.  I never felt like the actual subjects were hard, I simply lacked any motivation to do my homework or exercises in class and when you’re sitting in a computer class filled with computers and a 16gig USB stick loaded with a copy of World of Warcraft, you get distracted.

Two years passed by with me barely doing anything at all and skipping most of the classes with no computer in them, there seems to be fat-chance of the grades being actually worthy of being even classified as ‘grades’ at all. I simply had wasted two full years in school playing a video game, in class! At the time I did not really feel the consequences, until I took a glimpse at my term progression and compared it to other students in my class, who actually did what they were supposed to do; study. Suddenly I got this empty and useless feeling of a piece of human trash, just one thought started to loop in my head : “The fuck am I doing?” .  That was the moment my feet finally touched the ground.

I quit Wow, started to attend the last year at college normally and also finished every project and assignment I did not do during the first two years. Full out overloading of the brain and dedicating every second of my free time on schoolwork, but this was not enough to save all my grades. Since I failed to successfully get graded on the subjects I skipped on the first two years in college when I was supposed to do them, I only managed to get the minimal grade due to the fact I did them late, very late. This did allow me to graduate from college tough.

Now, with the insane levels of motivation to continue my studies somwhere, I was dumped into the bucket of freshly graduated college students, opting to get into university. Of course I did (and still do) want to get into university, but with what grades? The ones I ruined at the age of 16? Heh, hell no. I’m left in the bottom of the bucket with the rest of the low lives, while the ‘worthy ones’ get scooped up and get to move on with their education, where as I’m left with low paid oddjobs(don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful for my job in a small financing company) and months of waiting for the next entrance exams to the universities. The entrance exams are basically a joke, all they test is your logical problem solving capabilities and calculate ‘points’ from your college degree. If you fail to reach a certain point cap, you simply don’t get selected as a student. The thing is, while I nearly max out all of my actual tests, my college degree comes along and just Gandalfs (you shall not pass!) the whole point cap system, even tough my logical problem solving test result was near perfect. I’ve taken the same test nearly 5 times now (lost count), participating in the exams twice a year.

During this time I’ve been trying to think of a alternative for the stupid finnish university system, mostly thinking if I possibly should go study abroad instead and pay the insanely high tuition fees(education in Finland is free)? After about one year of sitting at home, clueless, back to playing World of Warcraft, no job, no decent education; I come up with a temporary solution to feed the need of education – Sweden. I apply as a student to a college in mid Sweden, small town called Mora. Study networking (Cisco Certificate) and Swedish, just for the heck of it, for about one year. One of the best experiences I’ve ever had. Nothing else major happens during this time, except me flying back to Finland to try my luck with the university entrance exams (again).

Another year passes with no luck in getting into the university I applied, for like the 5th time already. I start spreading the whole idea of paying university tuition fees aboard for actual education, instead of wasting my youth waiting for my luck with the finnish universities.

One of the people whom I present my ideas of course is my dad, and this is what I call ‘motivation‘.

“Do you expect the schools to to present everything to you on a silver tray? Have you sacrificed your own time lately on educating yourself, or are you waiting for the school to do that? You have books, the internet and me to ask if you ever have a question.”

“When I first studied in university, the amount of relevant things I learnt in class was minimal, almost everything I need in daily life were self-taught from programming books.”

Thank you, dad.