@Cool Hand Luke I pulled an O'Malley when I was young and made sure I'd try every drug I could get my hands on, dropped out and took my GED at 15. I dropped out of community college after a bad skateboard accident and realized I couldn't pursue an automotive career anymore. I didn't get my shit together until I was like 23-24 and even now I still don't but I managed to get like 95% of my tuition covered at a 45k a year private university. That was with an gpa of like 3.0-3.1 cumulative. Now I'm in my last semester, currently perusing grad schools and sitting at a 3.74 cumulative. I'm also 27 and probably the 2nd or May 3rd oldest student on campus and I often find that knowledge daunting to say the least.
One of my professors got her Ph.D at 67, runs her own private practice in Menlo Park, runs and owns ac clothing store, all while teaching at 3 different uni's , one of which is grad school. She's a bad ass Indian lady though, but still, it gives me the motivation and the inspiration to achieve.
Also, I will never stop telling people to go back to school but man right now is the best and most viable time to go. I had my entire tuition last year covered and then some, I think I had like 3-4k extra then I spent because they got a government bailout. Then I got emergency aid that ended up with me spending 150$ out of pocket for a pretty much ball to the wall laptop. Also almost all community college classes right now are asynchronous so there are no scheduled class meetings and on top of that ever damn test I've had at all these community colleges during these times have had all the answers online. I took 3 business course to pique my interest and found that they cover the same exact shit regardess if its MGT 101, BUS 101, or a class about entreneupheruship in small business, all of them use cookie cutter tests. Also no one gives a shit about cheating, just that you get the work done. Even in my psych program ,all the classes taught by the head of the program are open book open notes, but they are all essay based tests so you can't really cheat if you don't understand the material. TLDR: I think I've put in maybe 1/10th of the work I've been putting in before COVID to get the same grades, all A's with a A- or B+ every other semester.
If you do choose to get an undergrad I recommend going to a small school, I don't think I'd be anywhere near as successful at a large uni where there's a couple 50- couple hundred people per class. It also helps a lot having class sizes under <20 people because it allows you to really build a good rapport with the professors and you also get a higher quality learning experience. Oh and private universities, at least the one I go to, allow for professors to create their own curriculum. Like I'm taking all upper-division classes, 3xx, 4xx yet half of them don't have quizzes or test just because its irrelevant to the learning outcome the professor is going for.
I also probably have a similar drive to a heroin addict, so I figure if I can get this far that you can as well if you put in the work.
