How to deal with the loss of magic as a student?

Not everything is about passion projects, actually most of life is not about passion projects unless you want to be extremely poor (starving artists), you manage to be independently wealthy, or you stumble in to a job that can be it. If your passions align with most peoples passions then those jobs are rare and you're waiting for the people ahead of you to die so you get a chance at that job.

Really what you're describing is simple fear of change. You've spent your whole life studying and now you see the end where the bulk of your time is not studying any more. You can go on to make a career out of studying but again that is an extremely competitive field and if you didn't plan for that before now it can be difficult to get in to.

It sounds like you've fallen for the marketing trick to keep people unhappy. The idea that you have passionate about something in order to do it and to do it well. That kind of marketing is great to keep you unhappy and continuing to throw money in various directions to pretend that a passion project is what you need in your life. It's a lie. What you need is probably something you've never been taught, you need grit. Grit is what keeps your grades high even when you're unsure about what's next. Grit will make you the best intern that a company has ever seen. Grit means that you don't have to like the task in front of you but you'll damn will do the better than anyone else. Grit is the difference between someone who achieves while others whine it can't be done.

When you've developed grit you've found true passion. Passion for thing means that thing controls you and if that thing changes (which it always does) you're plunged in to depression. When you can redirect that so your passion is about personal achievement regardless of the task you've found the grit to continue and passion you want.

It's funny to read your post because I was pretty much in the same spot as you a "few" years ago. So you know what I did ? I dropped out ... I didn't do the 6 months internship ... And I'm still paying the consequences of that choice.

Finding a first job was a nightmare and I've been stuck in helpdesk for more than 5 years now. My advice to you would be to finish your darn Master degree no matter what. Whether you decide to complete it this year, or next, finish your degree. I'll add that the professional environment might be a welcomed change of pace and you might enjoy it more than studying, so go into the internship with a positive outlook.

I am there right now. I enjoy building things. Recently I wrote a paper about loading a page in a browser that displays an OS GUI with full state restoration as fast as 80ms. The magic, for me, is only in personal projects and that magic is fading into nothing.

In the real world most software, at least in JavaScript, is sloppy complex shit written by people looking for easy. Web technologies have been around for about 30 years (JavaScript is 27 years old) and yet the job is still about which super monster unnecessary framework to use to put text on screen. The APIs of these frameworks are more complex than the things they seek to replace. That is so depressing.

My suggestion is do something different for a year. This is based off a Harvard study. Don’t drop your studies. Else you can push through to complete studies if you are close and reward yourself with something special.

https://www.inc.com/kelly-main/harvard-researchers-show-best...

First, I felt similar to you, but working felt much different because work was accomplishing something while class felt like it wasn't doing anything. The context and the meaning was everything.

Doing new hire interviews, I promise you that many candidates interview worse than you. I started work with very low confidence, but interviewing other candidates vastly boosted my confidence. If you can conjure up BFS/DFS on demand, you are already in the top 50% of new grads. If you can do recursive backtracking easily, you're probably in the top 10%. Dynamic programming? Probably the top 1%.

If you feel your anxiety is too much, I would try to find a therapist. Forcing yourself to do something you hate will burn you out and potentially cripple your life. Maybe your problem is simple, like poor sleep, poor diet, or not enough exercise. Maybe your problem is complex like feeling nobody would love you, which definitely puts a damper on work that isn't very gratifying in the near term, since what's the point in investing in yourself if you're unlovable anyway?

Procrastinating work -> high stress deadlines -> poor sleep -> less ability to focus -> more procrastination -> more stress is an absolutely damaging cycle, and certainly the type of thing that is worth getting external help with.

If you game or scroll reddit for hours, you are almost certainly giving yourself a dopamine based dysfunction of some sort and probably need to think about how to curb that behavior.

My general opinion is that if negative emotions are strong enough to ask a public forum for help managing them, it's probably wise to see if a therapist can help.

If the idea of seeking mental help is off putting, I think it's important to think about physical therapy.

There is a movement called a hip hinge, it means bending with your glutes. Some people when told to bend over, will instinctively bend their back, not hinge with their glutes. A therapist can show you how to move with your hips rather than with your back. Before seeing a therapist, you don't even know your body is moving incorrectly, much less how to fix it. Would you judge yourself for the physical therapist teaching you how to bend over properly?

> All the magic and passion I had entering my degree has all but disappeared.

Good. Let it die. Magic won't put food on the table, a roof over your head, or build you a family (which you might want to start thinking about, the good ones are quickly being taken).

What you want is discipline, grit. Nothing else will help prevent unnecessary suffering in your life.

Just pick something. It doesn't really matter. At 23 your youth is nearly over and your potential is nearly wasted. Don't let it evaporate completely.

Whomever sold you that passion is the number one reason to get out of bed was an a-hole and means you harm.

Have you worked in industry at all? or just classes? The experience of programming for work is very different.

Regardless— there’s a lot of good work that doesn’t involve programming that is easy to get into with a CS degree. Design, Management, Security, DevOps, IT, and many many more.

Identify which parts of the field you really enjoy and are good at and go from there. I also recommend cal newports talks / book “so good they can’t ignore you” for anyone making early career decisions

hmm, well everything is just something to do. This helps me because it's great discovering magic, but it's sad when it goes.

the magic is not specific to the thing like programming. so you lost the magic, it no longer compels you. i suggest thinking about the why behind the why. why did you get into programming? for me my why behind the why is "i like to make things". it's more nuanced, i learned html and css cuz i wanted to make a website for a t-shirt company i was also "making". HN is big on entrepreneurship; it's because a business is just something to make with a lot of upside. most technical people are "makers".

i'm intentionally riffing, no direct advice. Ask yourself more questions about why you see magic.

btw: after 12 years doing software, much magic is also gone. another commenter mentioned what a shit show js frontend is. What you're feeling doesn't get better lol. Rather, we can reframe our perspective and appreciation. I still code and still want to make a business. but hell no i'm not the 23yr old i once was. and can only do a few hours a day. The world has lots of magic in it!

For me, it was about expectations. I.e. I never expected a career to be a great, grand thing. So, when I was bored and tired of my CS studies (not to mention actual jobs that came after it), I just took it as a natural state of things, and plodded on regardless. 20 years later, I'm 41, financially independent and basically retired.