a rant about education, building and motivation

multicolored illustration

niels jaspers • june 11, 2025

i need to get something off my chest before i lose my mind completely.

i'm a computer science student in the netherlands. i'm in my second year, about to start my third, and these years have been the biggest regrets of my life.

this is not because i hate learning or anything. i fucking love learning. but what i'm paying thousands for each year isn't education, it's institutional theater performed by people who seem as confused as I am.

let me paint you a picture

our years get divided into 4 project. these project are supposed to last for 10 weeks. the following was quite literally how my latest project went.

week 1: opening of the project. we hear a rough outline of what we will have to build in the coming weeks. "a predictive ai/ml model for a real client". cool, but what are the requirements?

week 2: no classes, no info. just... nothing. i'm paying tuition to sit at home, waiting and refreshing my email for updates that never come.

week 3: i head to the campus, sit in a classroom for exactly 5 minutes while our instructor tells us the project requirements aren't ready yet, then drive home. five. minutes. i spent more time in traffic than in class.

week 4-6: we were told that we would get data from the client, on which we could build the model. we didn't get the data, and we just kept being redirected to other people once we asked where the data was so that we could start with the project.

week 7: we finally got the data... or so we thought. it was not useful at all, so they pivoted and said; 'build an api scraper instead to get the data'

seven weeks, and the only hard requirement we got was 'build a scraper.'

and do you want to know the best part? we had to make it with chatgpt. not alongside chatgpt as a tool. we were literally required to have ai write our code. if you don't comply, you fail the project.

i wish i was making this up.

in a computer science program, i'm being mandated to watch ai write code instead of learning to write it myself. the instructor actually said, "why would you waste time coding when chatgpt can do it for you?"

because maybe, just maybe, i want to understand what the fuck i'm doing?

the beautiful trap

here's why i can't just leave: i'm locked into this system because dropping out means paying back 10-20k in student debt immediately. the dutch system is set up so that if you don't complete your degree, you owe the government every cent they've given you for living expenses and tuition support. right now, immediately.

so i'm trapped, paying money i don't have for an education i'm not getting, watching semesters of my life drain away while i learn absolutely nothing.

the worst part? i genuinely love this stuff. i love the satisfaction of solving problems, the thrill of finally understanding how something works, the magic of building something from nothing. but this system is designed to crush exactly that curiosity.

everything i know, i taught myself

every useful skill i have came from late nights at my desk, not lecture halls. every project i'm proud of was built in my spare time, not for a grade. while my professors were figuring out their own curriculum, i was:

these aren't revolutionary projects, but they're mine. i built them because i wanted to understand how things work, not because someone with tenure told me i had to. each one taught me more in a weekend than i've learned in entire semesters of classes.

the difference is stark: when i build something myself, i actually care about whether it works. when it breaks, i want to fix it. when it succeeds, i understand why. at school, none of that matters because the goal isn't learning. it's just getting through.

when everything feels fake

this institutional failure has started bleeding into everything else. when you're constantly told that your time doesn't matter, when you're forced to go through the motions of learning without actually learning anything, it becomes hard to care about anything.

the gym feels pointless. why work out when nothing else in your life feels like it's moving forward? social plans feel empty. why go out when you're already exhausted from fighting a system that's supposed to be helping you? even personal projects feel overwhelming when you're already running on fumes.

i feel detached from everything, like i'm watching my own life through glass. and i know i'm not alone in this. i see it in my classmates' faces, that same glazed-over look of people who've given up fighting.

it's this weird psychological thing where being trapped in fake productivity makes you doubt your ability to do real work. when your days are filled with meaningless busy work that's dressed up as education, you start questioning whether anything you do actually matters. the line between "this is bullshit" and "maybe i'm just not cut out for this" gets blurry.

some days i catch myself scrolling social media for hours, not because i'm enjoying it, but because it feels like the same level of emptiness as everything else. at least doom scrolling doesn't pretend to be helping me grow.

the truth about where i am

i wish i could be the guy who tells you i've figured it all out, that i've defeated the system and that 'x, y and z' are the three simple steps you need to take to fix your life too.

but that would be complete bullshit.

the truth is: i feel stuck and drained. some days it's hard to care about anything at all. the education system is broken, and being trapped in it doesn't make you stronger. it just makes you tired.

most days i'm just trying to get through without falling further behind on the things that actually matter to me.

something that is really helping me stay sane is building things. small projects i find interesting, or random tools that solve tiny problems i have. they're not changing the world, but they're keeping me tethered to the reason i wanted to learn programming in the first place.

why i'm building anyway

when everything else feels like performance art - the classes, the assignments, the whole academic theater - building something with my own hands is the only time i remember why i wanted to learn programming in the first place.

that file sharing app? the gradient generator? the startup i'm secretly working on? they weren't born from some grand strategy or unshakeable motivation. they were built during 2 AM sessions when i couldn't sleep because i was too frustrated with my day, and i needed to prove to myself that i could still make something work.

building in public isn't my solution to anything. it's just my way of documenting that i'm still trying, even when everything feels pointless. it's me saying: "look, i'm still here. i'm still building things. maybe that counts for something."

i'm not doing this because i have some master plan or because i think it'll lead to fame and fortune. i'm doing it because creating something from nothing is the only activity that still feels real to me. when i write a function that works, when i solve a problem that's been bugging me, when i build something that does exactly what i wanted it to do: those moments remind me that i'm not broken, the system is.

to anyone else who's drowning

if you're reading this and you're in a similar place, trapped in a system that's crushing the thing you love, watching your motivation drain away, feeling detached from everything that used to matter, i can't offer you a magic solution because i don't have one.

what i can tell you is that you're not broken for feeling demotivated when you're stuck in something designed to crush curiosity instead of nurture it. you're not alone in feeling like the systems that are supposed to help you are actually making everything worse.

i don't know if building things in public will fix anything for me. i don't know if sharing these projects will lead anywhere meaningful. hell, i don't even know if i'll still care about any of this in six months, or if i'll just burn out completely.

but right now, it's the only honest thing i know how to do. so i'm going to keep building small things, sharing them, and hoping that the act of creating something, anything, will help me remember who i am underneath all this institutional exhaustion.

maybe that's enough for now. maybe it has to be.