Where do I go from here?
iigs: Hello. A lot of your early years sound very similar to mine: Liked computers, grew up in a place where nobody knew/cared about them, was smart but never worked very hard, got by in school but never excelled. I lucked out and knew a professor that knew someone and when I dropped out of college I left for industry and have been able to keep inertia up to where I am. My advice:1) Keep Moving. If I only had two words to tell you it would be those. You're behind the eight-ball as far as education, math in particular, goes but you can fix that... but it's not going to fix itself. Take any other classes you can in parallel but Just. Don't. Stop. What you're looking at as an crushing, insurmountable mountain of work is really only a few years.2) Get a degree in a field you care about and can find work in. The school doesn't really matter. The old "just get the piece of paper" advice is generally considered deprecated, but you do need to have the skills. Unless you go somewhere that is actively known for its bad program (and even then that's only likely to be known locally) it will be a net positive.3) Attempt to seek out people that are smarter and more curious than you are. I can relate to your high school experience, and I don't have a lot of hopeful to say about the people that stayed in the town I grew up in. Always keep your eyes open, though; you may find people that seem smart at first that don't seem like it after you see their weaknesses.4) The "cities full of intelligence and ambition" thing is romantic but won't pay the bills. Be on the lookout for cities that have a solid economy and job opportunities for people with your skills and education. I suspect you'll do better more toward the west than the (north-)east, but I don't know much about the south-east. You may be better off right now than you know.5) Use your desire to learn about geek stuff (SICP, Python, et. al.) to feed your general sense of curiosity, and your "technical taste" but don't bank on it for preparation for entrepreneur-hood. {major dissenting opinion ahead} I believe that people searching for the next big thing in the fields of the last big thing are generally wasting their time. Too bad for me (and possibly you) this industry is what I love. Tech is a great industry to be working in, but every big thing started with an itch to scratch.Good luck!