I always hated school. I named it the place where fun dies. Getting up at 6:50 AM, skipping breakfast (guess I did intermittent fasting for 12 years), walking the road to school, sitting in the courtyard until it’s 8:00 AM and classes start only to sit there for hours was certainly not my choice to spend my days.

Primary School

I don’t remember anything about my first four years in school except what was happening in recess. During classes I was completely out. The only time I remember is one autumn day when our teacher asked me to go out and pick some fallen leaves to use for our drawing classes. And while I was getting up and heading toward the door she continued: And go with somebody else too. My heart rushed. I didn’t know why, I had a hope, a feeling. The secret was I liked a girl in my class with whom I had no interaction whatsoever and because I liked her I couldn’t even imagine a way to approach her. But at that moment, when the teacher said I should bring someone with me, a thought struck me: Cristina (or Christina). I was hoping, I wasn’t even sure, it was like the entire Universe was created, evolved and arrived at this very conclusion, it was a cosmic purpose that now was fulfilling. My heart raced, every piece of me knew. And not even a second later the teacher uttered that name. I was in heaven.

Now, nothing happened, we went out, picked some leaves and got back in class and we all did our drawings in autumn browns, oranges and reds. That girl never brought it up but for me it was the Universe talking: I had my escapade with my crush. And nothing like that happened ever again. That was the only time the teacher asked two of us to go out and do something, she and I were chosen for that and only that. Cool stuff.

Other than that I remember one morning when most of us were wearing red and if you looked at the ceiling the whole atmosphere was glowing red (half the walls and ceiling were white). But other than spending time with my friends, I have no memories from my classes. I have no idea how I got my grades, which were good, or when I did my homework.

Secondary school

I have few memories from my fifth grade and starting from my sixth grade I moved to a different school. Didn’t like it there as it was more of a working-class neighbourhood with rough-around-the-edges colleagues. They were aggressive, got into fights and some of them started liking girls, something I wasn’t seeing myself doing. I was into computers and stayed away with my few friends who had computers and could keep a conversation about them.

High-school and University

Life in high-school was something that I consider I kind of missed. It was time I was more into girls and put a lot of effort chasing one. And, as I was saying in the previous chapter, whenever you have to work for something, it doesn’t pan out, so did this “chasing”. Nothing came of it and I wasted my time instead of doing other various things (out of which I planned a movie/theater play).

During my University classes, now that’s when things picked up for me. A girl I was chatting with decided she loves me and that’s how I got my first relationship - didn’t do a thing to get her. I didn’t go to classes for 2 years and a half, didn’t study yet still passed my exams, I made a Linux server so colleagues who didn’t want to install it on their machine could do their work (and nobody knew it was me), I got a job by sending a close-to-empty CV and did all this while being completely alone. I loved every moment of it and because of that time really flew. Four years were done way faster than any of the previous 4-year education stages.

As you can see reading this, I didn’t study much. I was the kid that understood everything right after getting my mark - which was mostly an average one. I picked up things exactly when a new topic was on the agenda. I didn’t see a point in wasting my time studying something that’s badly explained and even after all these years, I can’t name this as being something bad. Nobody cared about my studies and the only company that cared, I didn't want to work with it.

With that said I can’t dismiss it entirely, but the right path for me was the one I took during University. Not putting a lot of effort into it brought me a lot of good things. In my last semester of high-school I decommissioned my computer so I could study, not touching the thing for six months. In the long run that was a wasted decision. A colleague got into the same class as me with half my admittance exam grade. There really wasn’t a lot of competition to study computer science.

I never got back into academia so there’s little advice I can give here. Stay away from school and chase your own dreams. Well, I wasn’t cutting classes to play football or drink in bars as some of my colleagues did, I would just be at my computer. Which is something I do to this day, 25 or more years later.