Though it may not feel like it right now, you can do all of these things and more, you can do none of these things.... the truth is it actually doesn't matter what it is that you've done.
What is more important is the attitude you bring towards living! Though grunt work is soul crushing to the average person, it does pay the bills when you are just starting out.
Don't sweat the small stuff, don't let your mind think it is doomed to an unworkable situation. Conduct thought experiments often at work and in your spare time, and keep the friends you meet that are truly interesting people in consistent contact.
Thanks a lot for the great advice! I'm so glad I have the opportunity to learn so much from such kind people on this community.
However I've always had trouble with meeting other people that like to code. Striking up a conversation with people in my CS classes usually ends up in a "don't bother me" sort of situation, and many people I do meet are less into coding and more into video games.
Finding a job in my school's understaffed IT department (help desk) has been a good start to the workforce, but is soul crushing. I'm never rewarded for anything that goes well, and people only remember the times I made customers angry. The job might give me some experience and a nice blip on my resume, but I feel it's setting me up for a soul-crushing sysadmin job at some major corporation around my city.
From the perspective of somebody not even two decades old hopefully you understand that without much social or business experience a lot of these actions are difficult, especially meeting people eager to collaborate on technical projects. You can look back on your life and wish you prepared yourself for your adult life better, but in the moment as a youth there's so much stimuli on campus and paths that I could choose that it really weighs down on me. Do I keep working hard at a boring IT job to make a comfortable, stable living as a sysadmin, settle down with a nice midwestern wife and some kids, and join a Protestant church? Do I work for the Peace Corps for a couple years in China to improve my Chinese language proficiency and risk having rusty tech skills? Do I try moving to some high-rent city with a lot of startups and risk crashing and burning? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
Thanks for reading my rambling slice of life, and thanks for writing this article. It got me thinking more about my future than I typically do on a Friday night in the dorms and helped me get some stuff out of my head. I'll be keeping a lot of these points in mind as ways to improve my chances for success.