I thought upon graduating, I would be free to basically do what I want. What a rude awakening starting at my first programming job was. The reality is the world is full of red tape, bloat, and processes that may appear inefficient to you. A lot of the world will just appear plain "dumb".

You can and should try to change the world for the better, but, maybe on things of bigger scope than the gui of your sql assignment. Some things you should just follow the instructions on.

It's just part of the world. Pick your battles. For a SQL homework assignment, just do what the professor asks.

Here's a random anecdote from Jeff Bezos I like that kind of feels relevant, why it's better to be kind than clever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmGN4Tn_d5Y

I can sympathize that bad assignments are tedious and you might know a better way to do them, but you can’t expect to get credit when you don’t follow the instructions.

Try to see opportunities in what is in front and around you, and not as blockers.

You are privileged to attend that university - endulge your professor one time and rather ask him afterwards for possible different methods going forward.

I guarantee you most professors and academics don't go out of their way to be "difficult" but rather want to streamline their processes, for whatever reason.

You are 22 and you are still pretty green - keep that in mind and be humble.

All students are measured on whether they achieve the correct outcome - you get marked down for each incomplete or inaccurate outcome of the assignment.

Marking is therefore made easier for the professors etc if everyone turns in roughly the same thing with the desired outcome

If you go and get too creative, you make it far harder for the professors to mark your assignment because you end up masking the desired outcome in superfluous fluff that they resent having to wade through.

Your thesis is the time to be a pioneer and demonstrate your ability.

All assignments should be completed with as little effort as possible that achives the desired outcome.

Easy to mark, and easy to gain the maximum grade. Anything extra is a complete waste of time and effort for all involved.

I learnt that the hard way initially, until I worked it out.

You will have plenty of opportunity to be excellent after you get your grades - do it the easy way, then test yourself after in the real world. Although, even the real world usually has a pretty simple brief

If you want to do it your way, the only guaranteed way to do so is to ceate your own project on your own time.

The professor who failed you may have never seen SQL Server before teaching the course. If they are an adjunct, they have very little control over what is offered to them, and many will take teaching jobs without knowing much because there are no consequences (to them) for doing silly things like you saw.

Choose courses with professors that have something useful to say. Look for older professors that worked in industry first and then came back to academia recently; then look for professors whose lectures other students have enjoyed.

Your degree may have some "core units" that you have to take, where you will encounter incompetent professors. The secret is: no, you don't have to. You can get just about anything waived. If you talk to the course convenor and map out a curriculum for yourself that is filled with weird random topics, and you can say why this is the right sequence for you, they will almost definitely say yes.

Look really far afield, and find something else at the university that interests you: philosophy? Esperanto? Demography? Paleobiology? You have the advantage that with your tech skills, you don't need the degree to gain a foothold into industry and get a job: you need the degree to demonstrate that you can complete things, are smart, can learn new things, and are willing to signal delayed rewards. So it doesn't matter what the degree is in for you. There are an endless number of interesting topics out there. Find something interesting and run with it.

Learning when it's not worth your time, money or effort to fight a fight, even if it's a GOOD fight (your example with your prof, etc.), will serve you well in life.

So take the uni as an oportunity to learn to work the system. If you are not affraid about the basics (roof over your head, food, e.t.c.) it should not be as high stakes. You can figure out how to pass, where to put in effort, where to avoid, make friends, teach each other, work for each other, e.t.c. ... there might be exchange program to get yourself to more interesting university. There could be payd internship that can count towards credits to finish your program (no idea how your coursework works) There could be a way how to continue studying through the military service? My country used to have civil service alternative, where you'd work as a helper-to-nurse/janitor in hospital while being able to live at home, but thank god for professional army.

If you are affraid bout the basics, I can't help you there. My grandpa emigrated his second country in 50's, thought he'd find job in Austria through friend, but then found out some ostblock countries have stipends for farmacologists, so he finished his studies east of iron curtain. Maybe weirder adventure awaits you. Good luck.

Regardless of "working in US" is in OP's future (or 'dreams'): NOT finishing uni will close a # of doors for you. Which ones? You'll only find out when it's too late to do anything about it.

Many young people won't even have a chance to attend uni. Or succeed - because eg. their previous education was subpar.

That puts you in a privileged position. Be thankful for what (opportunities) you have. So if at all possible: graduate. Decide whether it was worth it afterwards.

The idiosyncracies of grading systems etc: just another case of RTFM. Deal with it & move on.

And she had extremely valid reasons for not finishing that degree, but it still is brick wall from time to time.

I agree with your sentiment. I'm never good with authorities for the whole life. But I have learned that it is sometimes useful to just cope with them to get what you want.

You don't have to worry about the degree if you are really good, so good that people are showing you with offers. If that's not the case, just fake your attitude and get it done. You don't need a straight A for a good living but you should get as many A as possible if you want to apply for masters/PhDs in good foreign universities.

Another piece of advice: "faking it" is an essential skill for all human interactions, be it with professors, girlfriends, wives or colleagues. If you are like me, you don't like it, I'd advise you to drill so deep into the technicals that people are going to hire you even if you are an asshole. You should aim for low level system programming, preferably something you can work as a lone wolf. Malware reverse engineer, malware researchers, exploitation authors, security researchers, these titles come into mind but in general all low level programming requires less interactions with humans.

Depending on where you're immigrating to, it will be much harder to immigrate without a degree as well. Maybe look at what it would take to earn a degree where you want to live, as that can give points for immigration. But, like others said, you still need to jump through hoops if you want a degree, and having a certificate of hoop jumping is helpful for job hunting.

Re: mandatory military service. This is pretty common around the world, if your country is not in an active conflict (and even if it is), maybe you can use your degree/experience to get more technical work, but you'll likely need to show you can jump through hoops and follow instructions or you'll get selected for less desirable jobs.

The professor wanted you to use a set of tools, and you chose to ignore them, of course you're going to get dinged on your grade, you didn't follow instructions.

Take the class over, and do it right this time, and you'll likely get a much better grade. College (Uni?) is all about seeing if you can fit in, and be a useful cog in the system. If you aren't easy to work with, nobody is going to hire you, and your life will suffer as a consequence.

Everybody is just trying to get along, and you don't seem to want to recipricate.

Same thing I'm doing when I am me.

Stay in my country precisely because it is going downhill faster than I have ever seen in decades.

Somebody needs to stick around and do something worthwhile other than just give up and admit defeat.

Just think long-run, strategic, and let the silly people win the small silly fights, while you go for the gold.

So since you're stuck there for the moment, you could choose to just go along with what's expected of you and leave the first chance you get.

Intolerable is a strong word and if the examples you've given are your biggest issues, then you don't actually have it that bad. It's not necessarily intolerable, it's infuriating or annoying, but it is manageable. Understand that this won't be the first time in life you encounter this kind of a scenario will occur at many more times in your life. It won't magically stop when you leave to greener pastures.

How many years until graduation? If it's 2ish I would grind my teeth and get the paper.

Don't let this stop your pet projects and try to realise you have multiple paths you're fulfilling at the same time. Bills need paying. You're beginning (and will be advancing) in your job and future prospects. Your love of software needs nurturing so you don't become jaded by a 9-5.

Play the game. Get where you need to be. Don't close doors.

id follow the script...some employers look for people that think out of the box, not that act out of the box...two very different concepts but id say usually come together in the same package (ie. person)

Solve problems in the standard way.

Be humble and tell your professors that you ‘think’ you may have an alternative solution as well.

Get your degree.

Then get out of there.

Good luck!

When I was in Uni, I had a hard time accepting the same things, and ultimately didn't, and dropped out. I then accepted what is rarely formally told to you, which is that learning something in Uni is an ancillary artifact of the process of being measured and reduced to a series of numbers on a paper; it's not that it doesn't happen, but most courses in the first two years won't be that inherently challenging, just challenging to accept and keep pushing through. It helps—but is hard—to accept that you only know what you've taught yourself, don't know what you don't know from the assignments and material you're given. So my recommendation is to accept that for a while your preferences don't matter at all, and you're there to be measured, with the positive outcome being that if you can do that, your internal perception of your abilities won't be at odds with what you thought you were capable of convincing yourself to do.

After I dropped out, I returned after accepting this, and ended up doing quite well on some courses and poorly on some CS courses, ultimately not finishing because the ostensibly high pressure situation of being in an exam to test whether I can remember Java syntax well-enough to write data structures in it by hand was something I just couldn't validate or convince myself to do well on, despite getting nearly 100% on every assignment.

Sometimes you don't get to make choices about how to do something and that's what Uni can help prepare you for. In the military you don't get to pick your own gun, vehicle, wardrobe, or hairstyle, and in a company you might not get to pick your IDE, computer, place of work, coworkers, tasks, programming language, command line tools, runtime, clothing, customers, CRM, or database interface.

It's worth noting however that the boomer mentality of "just try harder" is laughably toxic, ineffective, and stupid in many areas of life, and you need to find a way to move through the system like butter on a pan, not like a car through traffic. Sometimes, trial and error and a change in perception work, sometimes they don't and you fail, but it's a personal failure to accept a system that will present it's inadequacies many more times, and figuring out the simple game is often more productive than pushing a boulder uphill and hoping you have enough strength to prevent it from crushing you.

There are plenty of other stupid systems people work through willingly, and if they are, it's because they've realized that it's an extremely rare occurrence to be in a position where you can contribute more than just a little at a time to whatever it is you're working on, and often you have to work your way through a lot of shit to get there.

So my advice would be to take some samples of the advice I've provided, and others, and recognize that it's good to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses, where you might have a (valid or not) problem with authority, and when you can change your perception of what the task is for great gains.