A Message to My Younger Self: Build the Habit of Studying While You're Still in School

Introduction

Back when I was a student, I basically thought "studying ends once you become a working adult." In reality, it's the opposite. About 10 years into working life, I find myself constantly studying — certifications, work, IT, AI. Here's what I most want to tell my younger self right now.

I thought studying ended once you became an adult

If I could say something to my younger self, there's one thing I'd want to say pretty forcefully.

Build the habit of studying.

How about you, reading this? I imagine there are things you wish your younger self had studied more.

Back when I was a student, I basically thought, "once you graduate school, studying is over."

If I said that to someone genuinely smart, they'd probably laugh at me. 😅

Once you're a working adult, you get paid. You have more money than you did as a student. You can stay out late. You can buy the things you want. You have more free time to use however you like.

That's roughly the future I'd imagined. And it's true that, financially, I did become freer than I was as a student.

But I got one big thing wrong. My free time actually decreased.

As a student, I didn't realize it. Once class ends, you have time. There's summer break. There's spring break. There are long holidays.

Looking back now, I think, "wow, I had a ridiculous amount of time as a student..."

Once you become an ordinary office worker, a huge chunk of your day goes to work. You commute, work, come home, eat, take a bath. By the time you'd even think about studying, it's already night.

As a student, I thought becoming an adult would give me more freedom with both time and money.

In reality, my money increased, but my time disappeared. That was the reality I discovered once I became a working adult.

Studying was necessary just to keep earning a paycheck

There was another thing I got wrong. I thought that once I learned the ropes at work as a working adult, that knowledge would carry me for the rest of my career.

It's not nearly that forgiving. Once you're actually working, new knowledge keeps becoming necessary, one thing after another.

Job-specific knowledge. Certifications. New technology. New tools. Studying to step up into a different field.

Once you move up into a higher position, you need knowledge beyond just technical skills too.

I work in the IT industry, and I feel like this industry changes especially fast.

As a student, there was a period when I thought something like, "if I just learn programming, I could probably make a living off it for the rest of my life."

Now, I'd tell my past self, "no, that alone isn't going to cut it." Of course, programming ability still matters a lot today.

But I no longer think that just being able to write code is enough to keep you secure for decades on end.

Gathering requirements. Designing. Writing code. Testing. Finding problems. Explaining things to people. Managing schedules. Coordinating with clients.

Expanding what you can do, from the upstream stages all the way to the downstream ones.

I used to find all of that tedious, but looking back now, I think what I really needed was a mindset closer to "I'm going to experience all of it."

Copilot wrote VBA for me, and it genuinely unsettled me

Something happened recently that made me feel this sense of urgency really strongly.

It was when I decided to touch VBA again after a long time — something I'd studied a while back.

Since I hadn't used it in a while, I asked Copilot to help me remember "how do I even write this again?"

At my current company, we can barely use AI for work at all, so I don't really get to touch it in my day-to-day job.

Even so, when I tried it personally, Copilot put together working code far faster than I could, even now.

Whoa, hold on a second (laughs). This is VBA I spent real time back then actually learning.

And here, all I had to do was say "I want to do this kind of processing," and the AI just turned it into working code. Of course, you still need to check whether that code is correct. It'll probably need fixing too.

Even so, I felt like the value of "writing code, in and of itself" has shifted quite a lot from what it used to be.

These days, there are also AIs like Claude Code that can carry a huge amount of actual program and application development forward on their own.

Seeing companies that are genuinely leveraging tools like that, I find myself thinking, "where is development speed even headed from here?"

It's probably not the kind of era anymore where you can feel secure just saying "I can write code," the way you might have before.

In the age of AI, the ability to read and explain matters more than ever

So does that mean programmers become unnecessary? I don't think it's that simple.

If anything, what I think will matter going forward is people who can understand what the AI has built.

The AI wrote the code. But is it correct? Are there any security issues? Does it meet the requirements? When something breaks, where do you even check?

You can't just hand whatever answer the AI produces straight to a client.

Reading the code, understanding its content, pointing out problems if there are any, and finally explaining it in your own words — I think that's the kind of systems engineer who'll be needed.

On top of that, there's also project management work — organizing client requests, coordinating people and schedules.

Looking at actual freelance IT job listings, I often see demand for experience as a systems engineer, a project manager, a project management office role, requirements definition, and client negotiation.

The stronger AI gets, the less it may be about "writing code faster than the AI," and the more it may matter whether you can move into the role of the person making judgment calls while using AI as a tool.

That's exactly why studying is necessary.

I wish I'd taken the Fundamental Information Technology Engineer Exam earlier

One thing I regret now is certifications.

The Fundamental Information Technology Engineer Exam, in particular.

I really wish I'd studied for this back when I was a student, or at least early on as a working adult.

Just from the name, you might get the impression it's "a certification confirming basic IT knowledge."

But looking at the actual content, it covers computers, networks, databases, security, algorithms, systems development, project management, and even management and strategy.

It covers a very wide range.

Working as a systems engineer or a project manager, there are moments where you realize, "oh, this is being treated as something everyone's already supposed to know."

I've had embarrassing moments myself, from lacking that foundational knowledge.

Meanwhile, I've also seen people younger than me pass the Applied Information Technology Engineer Exam, or even higher-level advanced exams.

Seeing people like that makes me realize, "it's really not about age."

Even young people who study keep moving further and further ahead.

Conversely, just piling up years without learning anything doesn't grow your knowledge at all. Obvious, I know.

I only really felt that once I became a working adult. 😭

In the IT industry, if you don't seek out information yourself, you get left behind

Working in this industry for about 10 years, what I've come to feel is that just waiting around is genuinely rough.

New technology. New services. New ways of working. Cloud. AI. Security. Development methodologies.

Things really do keep changing, one after another. I don't think you need to chase every single one of them — you'd never have enough time to do that.

Even so, you need to actively go look for at least a rough sense of "what's happening in my industry right now."

Back then, I was clearly not doing enough research.

I'd only look things up once I needed them for work. I'd only study whatever fell within the scope of what I was told to do. That was about the extent of it.

I wish I'd started thinking earlier — "how is my job going to change going forward?" "what am I going to need next?"

Only now am I finally starting to have things I actually want to study

Even so, lately my resistance to studying itself has gone down compared to before. For English, I keep up with Duolingo. I want to know more about AI. I'm interested in becoming a financial planner. I want to try studying bookkeeping too.

I also want to genuinely understand investing properly.

If my student self heard all this, they'd probably say "what happened to you?" (laughs)

But studying as an adult has a different kind of interest than it did as a student. It's not "when am I ever going to use this?" —

it's "how would knowing this change my life or my work?"

Because I can actually see the purpose now, I'm able to study. There's just one thing I regret.

I wish I'd built the habit of studying itself, back when I was a student.

The content itself could have been anything. Even 30 minutes a day would have been enough. Reading books. Certifications. English. As long as it counts as "studying" in some form, even just researching something you're curious about would have worked. Learning something new, little by little, every single day.

If I'd just had that habit, I think life as a working adult would have been a lot easier.

Conclusion: To my younger self, studying doesn't end once you graduate

To the student I used to be: I have some unfortunate news.

Studying doesn't end once you graduate school.

If anything, you have to start deciding for yourself what to study. And you have even less time than you did as a student. Working a job while getting certifications. Learning new technology. Building up job knowledge. Thinking about your own future. It's genuinely tough.

That's exactly why I wish I'd built a habit of studying back when I was a student. I'm not saying you need to score 100 on every test. I'm not saying you need to be top of your class.

I just wish I could have become someone who could naturally learn one new thing today that I didn't know yesterday.

About 10 years into working life now.

There's still plenty of life ahead of me. I can't go back to the past. So all I can do is start now.

English. AI. IT. Financial planning. Bookkeeping. Investing.

I plan to study these things, one at a time, starting from whatever interests me. I couldn't make it in time for my past self.

But it's not too late for the me of today.

And if there's anyone reading this who's currently a student, or in their twenties, thinking "studying's basically over once you become a working adult" —

that's exactly what I used to think too. To make things at least a little easier for the working-adult version of yourself.

If there are young people reading this, I'd genuinely recommend building the habit of studying now, while you still have time. It doesn't matter what form the "studying" takes. Studying that's basically just another form of fun is a slightly different thing, though.

What matters is building something closer to stress tolerance — the ability to learn things you find at least somewhat unpleasant.

And if people around my own age, or older, are reading this — you can't go back to the past either way, which means right now is the youngest you'll ever be again. If you have a goal, now's the time to go for it.

There's a line often attributed to "the Major": "If you're not satisfied with the world, change yourself. If you don't want to do that, close your eyes and ears, shut your mouth, and live in solitude..." — the rest of it gets a bit harsh, so I'll leave it there. 😅

I think that's a genuinely important thing to keep in mind.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end.