I went to ITT Tech yesterday for a guided tour.
For those of you who are not in the know, ITT Tech is a private college devoted to very technical subjects — game design, 3D modeling, architecture, web design, system administration, and programming, among other things.
It’s kind of funny how I ended up on that tour. I’d been sitting at my computer, writing my High School And Beyond essay (short essay about what I planned on doing after high school) when I thought of checking out the ITT website. So I did. Then I noticed the “send me a brochure” link, so I clicked that. Half an hour later the phone rings, and it’s someone from ITT Tech asking me when she should schedule my guided tour! Mentally I was screaming “I just want a damn brochure!” but I made an appointment anyway. And I’m glad I did — it was rather… enlightening.
Long story short: if I were rich, and $11,000 a year was no big deal, I’d sign up in a heartbeat. There’s a lot of cool classes (plus a gaming group! 
) and ITT offers some neat advantages. For example, after completing a course, you can come back at any time — even twenty years later — and retake the course for free. If you move to a different city in the middle of a course, your tuition carries over to any other ITT school in the nation. Another thing is that textbooks and equipment/software are included in the tuition, and they’re yours to keep forever.
Of course, there is one slight problem: I’m not rich, and 11 grand makes my brain bleed thinking about trying to pay off a loan like that. I know I can get financial aid, and I know I can get scholarships, but I’d be looking at 22 grand minimum for an associates degree. I’m going to have to pay some of that.
Then we get to the real bummer: they don’t actually offer the course I want. I want a comprehensive course in C++, geared toward game development — from beginner, moving quickly into intermediate, then advanced. By the end of two years I’d be able to program the Matrix.
But with ITT — well, you know that game design course mentioned above? It’s just that — game design. The reason my tour guide gave does actually make sense — companies don’t want really advanced programmers, they want well rounded individuals. This meshes with what I remember reading in some magazine; that there are way more designers and artists in a video game company then programmers.
My problem? I don’t want to work for a company, I want to start my own indie company and make my own games! There’s a lot of people who would undoubtedly tell me to start small, work your way up, etc. To all those people: fuck you!
I haven’t yet been beaten down by the man. I still have dreams, and the ability to realize them. I’m not a sheeple, content to work for a faceless conglomerate programming the next Barbie’s Adventures game, while around me society crumbles, North Korea starts World War III, and Britain turns into Oceania.
Even if we dodge WW3 and a host of other problems, there’s the fact that college degrees — along with a lot of other stuff — is going to become pretty much useless after the Humanity 2.0 revolution in ~2030, whenever they invent multi-purpose molecular assemblers (nanobots). Don’t even get me started on the singularity.
Well, this post got a bit off topic. Long story short: dunno if I’ll go to ITT. Still gotta think about it some more, and see if I can’t teach myself C++ well enough to start on my indie game dev idea.
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