Balancing university & entrepreneuring is actually harder than I thought

It's finals season for me, and as I sit in my classes or work on my homework assignments, all I can think of is building and launching products.

Yes, I've thought about dropping out. Let me tell you why I haven't.

• I pay relatively nothing. I have almost a full scholarship @ NYU. I've had to take $2500-$4000 loans once a year to cover Manhattan housing costs but for the value I've gotten so far (people, opportunities, exposure) $4000 a year is a small price to pay.

• I wouldn't be here, Indie Hacking. Before NYU, I was consuming lots of Garyvee content because I knew I wanted to do this stuff but didn't know where to put that energy. During my first year at NYU, I think I had just moved on from the gateway drug of Garyvee onto the more potent stuff, Naval. Then I followed a crap ton of startup, VC, and crypto people and formed my own little collective knowledge base of successful entrepreneurs. I joined an entrepreneurship club, The InnoVention Society, and found like-minded people irl. Then during a meeting at the club's president's home, I met his best friend @matthenderson. Matt introduced me to all of this: Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, turning an idea into a product in less than a week, etc. For the past year, I've gone down a rabbit-hole, met more cool people (online & irl), and learned so much from them. I even launched a #1 Product Hunt product on my own.

• What's my alternative? I currently don't have the money to just go travel. Before this year, my only alternative was to move back to the Bronx with my family. Luckily now, I have a few friends that live in Manhattan that would let me crash on their couches for a few months (Something I plan to do once I graduate so that I can continue building things that will eventually make me money). And I'm in my 3rd year of 4 years so I may as well finish it out, right? For the past 3 years, the upside to staying has been much greater than the upside to dropping out.

Nonetheless, It's been pretty hard balancing classes with building businesses. The hardest part is making time to work on my businesses. I very much don't care about my grades. I see it as "If I'm not getting an A++ then anything below that and above the passing grade is completely fine". But I still have to put in enough effort time to learn the materials so I can take the exams. It's a constant tug-of-war between, "school is a waste of time" and "okay, let me NOT completely fail this class because I still need a C to graduate". I even have a backup plan for if I need to get a job, I'll just apply as an operator or product manager using the experience I learn from working on my own businesses.

I think I mostly wrote this post to vent. A bit of self-therapy. I think this might be a case of just needing to "tough it out."

I very much dislike the bloatedness of the university academic system. Alot of what is taught is terribly useless. But, the access to incredible, like-minded people, the exposure to things I wouldn't have discovered on my own, and the experiences allotted due to living on Manhattan Island are the strings keeping me attached.

(lol thanks for reading my rant. It's 2am in NYC, a standard time to get a little vulnerable)