I got my roommate assignment. I found out that we had a lot in common. We grew up in the same city and share a lot of the same interests. We both get an email saying there wasn't enough space for us to live in a traditional dorm and instead we would be living in motels-turned-suites.
We didn't really mind until we saw our suite configuration:
By the way, this was a motel, so that door lead outside. No floormates. A homeless guy could have been sleeping next to the door outside. And we were paying ~$1,000/mo for this.
So we move in, and I decided that I would walk around the motel and find an open door (to meet people), and I found one. I went inside and met some pretty cool people. We quickly became good friends. I invite my roommate over occasionally as well. One of the people there was the same major as me and we would collaborate on homework. I was on top of my classes. I was starting to love college.
My new friends from the other suite ask me to stop inviting my roommate over. "He's fucking annoying", "he's an asshole", "he's weird". etc. etc. I find out that he is literally infamous throughout the entire apartment complex, apparently everyone hated him for some reason. Sure, he was kind of annoying/rude but once you got to know him he was a cool dude. The problem was nobody gave him a chance.
Then, it all started falling down.
Anyway, the tension between me and my new "friends" builds up and I finally say fuck it and stop being friends with them. I basically spend the entire rest of the year with my roommate (who gave up on making friends, was depressed and played League of Legends all day). I don't really blame him, cause I gave up on making friends too.
The layout of the motel made "cliques" the dominant social group type. Which is kind of the exact opposite of what a dorm is supposed to do. Since everyone was already in their own clique (coupled with the fact that I was known as "that weird kid's roommate"), I pretty much gave up on making friends in the "dorms".
I really started to hate my room. Whenever either one of us wanted privacy, the other would have to go outside. There was no hallway to hang out in nor any sort of lounge in the traditional sense. At the point I decided to reach out to some of my old high school friends to see how they were doing.
I decided to go visit one of my friends that went to Cal. I probably had the most fun i ever had the entire year for that one weekend at Berkeley. All of the people were like me and there was so much to do compared to my other school. I went to a Hackers@Berkeley meeting on regular expressions and absolutely loved it. The dorm experience was incredible as well.
After that I'd frequently visit Berkeley as much as possible on the weekends. When I stayed at my school I would start to become depressed. At my school there wasn't much to do, barely any on campus clubs that interested me. At Berkeley, there were tons of clubs that I would go to and tons of people like me that I would hang out with. Because of this disconnect to my school, my grades started to suffer.
Over winter break I got an idea for an mobile application that I wanted to make for fun. I decided to start working on an iPhone application in my free time (since I didn't have anyone to hang out with anyway). Eventually the iPhone app started to take up a lot of my time and my grades started to suffer even more. The side project started to gradually turn into a main focus. There were times where I would literally spend 80 hours a week on it. The app now has more than 60,000 lines of code now, has a full scripting engine, and many of my friends frequently use the beta version daily.
Anyway, the school year ended and I have made one friend at my school and got a 2.0. I got on Academic Probation because of my poor performance. I decided to take a semester off and am living with my parents now taking some community college courses to get my thoughts together. Ironically, I am acing all of my classes.
I don't want to go back to my college. I would like to transfer to a college, but I have a 2.0. There's no way.
I would also like to note that I don't want to go back to college not because "it's too hard" or "I miss my family". The classes were fun. I especially enjoyed learning assembly and complex data structures. The reason why I got bad grades is because I was so depressed at my university that I couldn't find the motivation to go to class. For some context, at the community college I'm enrolled in, I'm getting straight A's. The location and the stigma I got from my first year social experience makes me not want to go back.
Honestly, if I even remotely liked the school I'm enrolled in, I would go back next semester. I really like college, but I hate the school. I literally cried of joy when I was driving away from the campus. I can't do it.
Anyway, with this in mind, I'm thinking about dropping out and just living in Berkeley instead to work on my app and hope it makes me money somehow. I personally know a few people my age that have also dropped out of school (more prestigious ones I admit) to work on their startups and they seem to be doing well. I really think this thing can take off; there isn't anything on the app store like it.
I just realized how cliché that sounded.
Who am I kidding? I'm screwed.