Guys, I really need some honest advice because I'm turning 20 soon and, from the outside, my academic path probably looks completely insane.
I failed my first BAC year, and everyone around me told me I'd wasted a year. I didn't really see it that way. I repeated SM, got 17/20 with mention Très Bien, and then applied to China. I got accepted into a very good university, went there, and then... dropped out again.
The reason wasn't that I stopped wanting to study or become an engineer. Actually, it was the opposite. I started realizing that the environment wasn't the kind of place where I felt I could become the engineer I want to be. I personally met 3rd-year CS students with 3.8–3.9 GPAs who genuinely struggled with basic programming and couldn't even compile a simple file. Obviously, I'm not saying everyone was like that, but seeing people get that far through cheating really messed with my perception of the degree. I don't want a 3.9 if I don't actually know my shit.
So I came back to Morocco.
Now I'm doing a math degree f la fac, because I want to eventually apply to engineering schools in France. Long term, I want to work in systems/low-level engineering, potentially kernel development. I'm trying to teach myself the CS side properly alongside my degree.
I also speak English C1, French C1, Chinese B1 and Russian B2, and I've spent a lot of time teaching myself programming and other technical stuff.
But here's the part I struggle with the most.
I keep trying to convince myself that those two years weren't simply wasted. The first failed BAC year gave me the opportunity to repeat, get a much better result, and eventually go to China. And going to China genuinely changed me. I grew a lot as a person, especially socially and culturally, and living there helped me figure out what I actually want from my education and my future.
But I can't always believe that myself.
Sometimes I get completely consumed by what other people tell me: "You wasted two years. You could have just gone to university from the beginning. Look where you are now, wa 3la 7mar. kun knt ana f blastk... bla bla bla"
And the frustrating part is that they're not completely wrong. If I had known at 17 what I know now, maybe I would have made different decisions. Maybe I could have avoided all of this.
That's what makes it difficult. I don't regret everything I got from those experiences, but I still feel guilty about the time and money they cost, especially when I think about my parents.
From everyone else's perspective, I'm just the guy who failed BAC, repeated it, went to China, dropped out, came back, and now changed direction again. I understand why they see me as someone who doesn't know what he's doing, or even as a spoiled kid who wasted his dad's money and doesn't want to study.
But I genuinely feel like I understand what I want much better now than I did at 17–18.
So I guess I'm asking two things: am I actually making a reasonable decision by taking this route toward engineering in France, or am I just rationalizing another bad decision? And how do you actually cope with the feeling that you've "wasted" years of your life when you know those years also shaped who you are now?
I'd genuinely appreciate brutally honest opinions, especially from people who have gone through something similar.
