College in two years: now what? (opens in new tab)

TLDR @ bottom

So you seem to have a really solid plan for your life, but in my humble opinion, college isn't even about learning, for the most part. It's really about social interaction. You will pretty much never get the same chance at unbridled continuous social interaction as college provides. Putting a bunch of post-pubescent "young-adults" in the same central location for 4 or so years allows for a lot of crazy things, but more importantly, a lot of bonds, experiences, etc.

That said, you will also never get the same opportunities in college as you're going to get abroad. You'll meet really awesome, interesting people (hopefully), and have a ton of great times. However, the context in which you meet those people and explore those countries is completely different.

Let me illustrate (and hopefully make my point more believable) with an example. I have studied abroad in Japan -- it is by far the easiest, most carefree way to get there, and stay there (if only for a while). I speak pretty good japanese, but what stuck with me most is that the country can be VERY lonely if you don't have some way to make friends (this applies to any country), and the social skills you learn in college go a LONG way in making that easier, and if you had gone in college, that same young-people-in-an-enclosed-area dynamic would have done wonders in gathering people around you that were similar, and you could easily befriend. When I studied abroad, I met people from ALL over (london,ireland,germany,vietnam,china,korea,americans,spanish), and many of them I actually still like and maintain contact with. My fear is that you won't have such a good chance of that experience by getting out of college so early /quickly.

At this point, there's not really much you can do about that, though I would suggest that somehow you utilize the school to travel. It will be much cheaper, and much more manageable, you'll have more resources, etc.

Also, on a less touchy-feely note, you should have stuck it out for that CS degree. UT Austin is a pretty highly ranked CS school, and the curriculum really isn't even impossible. It's super doable, and if you can stick out (and learn) the theory, the degree is worth alot (trust me, I'm very very comfortably employed now, and it wasn't very hard).

Also, to accomplish your goal, there are a lot of people who do the whole work-x-months, travel-x-months. If you are up front with this, you might be able to find some companies who really need help, and they will hire you. Of course, this would be easier with a CS degree.

In general -- you know what you want, which is good (I've never not known what I wanted either, all I ever wanted was to program computers) -- but be careful not to miss out on the stuff that you didn't know you wanted. My parents are the ones that pushed me to go abroad (literally, they wanted me to just "go somewhere", while I was in school because they know the school would help subsidize and stabilize everything), and they were so right in their decision, as parents often are. On paper, the decision looks like a bad one: delay my graduation, stop me from getting on with my life for a whole year, disable me from doing any CS (there weren't any CS courses I could take while abroad). But, the experience was one I would redo every single time.

tl;dr College isn't about learning as much as it was about social interaction. The CS degree would have been a good idea. Using the university to travel would have also been a good idea. Going forward, finding a company that embraces your desire to travel (or finding a company in the country you want to travel to, and getting hired there) might not be as hard as you think -- but you will really have to show them your skill, since you don't have a CS degree.