Your post got killed by a spam filter. Sorry. They are tuned more strictly for new accounts. We&#x27;ve marked your account legit so this won&#x27;t happen again, and you&#x27;re welcome to repost your question. The convention is to put &quot;Ask HN&quot; in front of the title.<p>Plenty of people have no mentors or family members who can advise them about college and career. I didn&#x27;t. It makes some things harder, but it&#x27;s definitely possible to find a way, so don&#x27;t be too sad—you&#x27;re blazing a path for your family in the future. Don&#x27;t neglect to appreciate the advantages they <i>have</i> given you—if you look for those, you&#x27;ll find them.<p>Also, if you do a good job of phrasing your questions and following community conventions (which you did in this case), you&#x27;ll get tons of advice from HN, and then you&#x27;ll have the opposite problem of figuring out which of it to follow.