Formal V.S. Informal Education

arithma wroteWould you give us more details. I am sorry you regret your choices but perhaps you can give us a little advice. I am personally concerned since I have as well left the usual track of picking up employment at a company and starting up my own before I complete the age of 23.

I think it's safe to say that this is mostly under the computer science field. Is starting up your own better than being employed? Is taking the safe road as rolf said fruitful ?

It's a big dilemma.

Scenario A: You get employed you jump from job to job satisfied.

The most common scenario. It guarantees that you are able to pay your bills on time. Your life is stable, you are saving money, you are getting a diverse experience. The problem is, you get sucked in and as years go by, Scenario B would sway further and further away from you. You'd reach a point where you are terribly annoyed with the field that you chose and loved given that orders are always coming from the top and you're bound by what you are told. And given that you are now handed a bundle of bills at the end of the month you are *forced* to stay in Scenario A or take a leap of faith, quit and hope for the best in Scenario B

Scenario B: You start your own company or fish for a project or idea that would make you, yes, rich.

People that choose this scenario are people that either (1) Came from Scenario A (2) *just* don't like to get employed (3) are already rich, or rich enough (4) do not have much responsibilities aka bills, mouths to feed.

Each case as well as the outcome is different and i cannot provide any insight about whether or not its a good choice. Then again, maybe i can.

(1) Don't do it unless you have a backup plan.
(2) If you fall into (3) and (4) as well, do it.
(3) Might as well, it won't matter anyways.
(4) If you don't fall into (3), you're taking a big risk. If you fail to achieve what you started out to, your experience is close to none and going to Scenario A is difficult and will make your life miserable.

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My advice is, from my current perspective (Married, bills, oh dear lots and lots of bills) living in lebanon, people should stick with Scenario A *AND* try to do Scenario B outside work. You guarantee your income and your stability and you try with the little time you have (Yes, it's very little) outside work, to get yourself into Scenario B with lots of experience, perhaps some capital to fund your own project/company.

There is also a gotcha in all of this. If you get a *chance* at something good, never seize to take it, no matter the scenario. This is my greatest regret.

Thanks ayman for this nice topic.

well personally i think formal education is essential at a young age just to give you basics as Ayman said but wen you are like 15 you should have a clear idea about what you like and what you don't , at this point informal/self education will become the most important and it's curiosity/your dream that will keep you on reading and reading and reading.
But self education isn't safe because driven by your passion you can skip basic stuff. I mean if someone is obsessed in tech stuff well he will try starting with the hard stuff while he should start learning form point 0 (you can't for example program a game without starting with the easy useless boring stuff) so you should be very determined and very patient to be successful at it or it will destroy you.
But all this doesn't mean that we should leave and dump the formal one because you always needs the diploma to work (I agree with Xsever about the scenarios and his advise) or to leave Lebanon and go to another UNI outside leb where I believe they have better evaluation and respect and opportunities when it come to personal work.
Not only informal education is important but what is far more important is : DREAMING because dreaming create for us goal that we become obsessed with so we do everything to achieve it, that where informal edu come. But studying for studying well i don't think it will keep you focused on something

Personally , I found myself very curious this why I read a lot of books (scientific mainly) and before uni I had some programing experience but not that big actually very basic. Now as we are taking them in UNI, I am always hungry for more, doing stuff at my own, trying to create new exercises/challenges for myself, reading and learning more advanced stuff cause we have covered the basic stuff in class.
And there is something, I don't do that because I want to start a business or get rich, its just for FUN and to feed my CURIOSITY and achieving my childhood dream, I believe that money should be the last thing we should think of when we want to start something because without knowing it will come when you are successful no matter where or what you did/study.

And for this topic there are several quotes for Einstein that I'd like to say:

Einstein wroteEducation is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere

@GN90: what you said is so damn true. You earned my respect man :)

Best source for informal education for those looking to learn web development: DevelopPHP.com. I learned ALOT from this place. The admin of that site is an American guy called Adam Khoury whose grandparents were Lebanese. He is a great tutor and he keeps on doing tutorials at an incredible frequency! His tutorials are straight to the point and cover almost everything concerning Flash, PHP/MySQL, some Illustrator, Fireworks... etc. It's definitely worth checking out...