GO TO COLLEGE

I wrote those three words on a piece of paper at 24 years old, drunk, probably high, definitely not okay. Taped it to the wall so I'd see it if I woke up the next morning.

I need to back up.

At 18 I had a scholarship. Full ride or close to it... I don't even remember the details anymore because it didn't matter. My parents didn't get their tax information to me in time for the FAFSA. Deadline passed. Scholarship gone. Not because of my grades. Not because of my ability. Paperwork.

So I went to work.

I don't know how to talk about the next five years without making it sound like a pity story, and that's not what this is. I was depressed. I drank a lot. I took a lot of pills. I wasn't building anything. I wasn't planning anything. I was just... existing. Grinding the same day on repeat with no XP and no save point. If you've been there you know what it feels like. If you haven't... I don't know, good for you I guess.

Then I watched Larry Crowne.

Yeah. The Tom Hanks movie. The one where this guy is a great worker but the company gets bought and the new owners require managers to have a degree, so they fire him. That's it. That's the scene that did it. Not a TED talk. Not a self-help book. Not some mentor pulling me aside and believing in me. A Tom Hanks movie I watched in bed at 2am.

I got up. Wrote "GO TO COLLEGE" on a piece of paper. Taped it to the wall where I'd see it if I opened my eyes tomorrow. Went back to sleep.

I woke up. The note was still there. So I went.

Started at UNM — the University of New Mexico. Tried to make it work. Took the bus. Tried finding parking. Parking on campus was something like $400... per semester? Per month? Either way, tough shit for someone working while going to school. Bus pass was free for students though, so I made that work.

Then I did the math.

One semester at UNM cost roughly the same as an entire associate's degree at CNM — Central New Mexico Community College. Same credits. Same transfer value. A fraction of the price. The math was so obvious I couldn't believe anyone was choosing UNM for their first two years. But people don't do the math. They do the prestige. They do what they're told.

I transferred to CNM.

And then I min/maxed the entire degree system.

I realized that if I skipped the electives I wanted and took specific required classes instead, I could stack two specialized degrees — Computer Programming and Database Technologies — instead of just one general degree. Same number of semesters. Same tuition. Two credentials instead of one. Then they gave me a third — a General degree — just because I had enough credits. Three degrees for the price of what most people pay for one.

That's not intelligence. That's just reading the course catalog like it's a skill tree.

While I was there I started the CNM-NASA Swarmathon team. Autonomous robotics competition. We got second place. I also started the first CNM-ACM ICPC team — the international competitive programming competition. We didn't get last lol.

I don't know... I think the point is that this is the same brain. The same pattern. At 18, the system failed me with a paperwork deadline. At 24, I found an exploit in the pricing model. At 32, I'm building an escape plan because my employer values 9 roles at $92k and I know the open market rate.

Every time, it's the same move: do the math everyone else ignores, find the gap, and walk through it.

Freedom has always been a math problem for me. I just didn't have the vocabulary for it until now.