Poker now, education... later

[Noose]

My status: single, still living at home (so no expenses), 21 year-old guy still enjoying his honeymoon with the game

Couple of months ago I found myself in a surprising situation. I have been playing poker online for few years now - mostly pretty passively just freerolling to tournaments etc, but then I got myself involved in the online cash games and found out that I can be a winning player by pretty good margin. I realized late 2004 that I could make living playing poker, even though then I still was playing like .25/.5 NL. But of course I realized then that there's no way you could make a reliable income of that kind of game, so I thought that let's play few months and see if I can move up limits and still be clearly winning player.

I had my entry exams scheduled June 3rd and I had in mind to pursue a career as a journalist. I had applied last year too, but I couldn't get in because the University accepts just 5% of the applicants. So I had in mind to study hard (which really never has been one of my strong points) and to force my way in.

Well, when the time to study came, I had no motivation for it at all, because I had moved up to 1/2 NL and was practically crushing the game. Making good money fairly easily and by a good margin destroyed my motivation for studying completely. And as a result for this summer, I thought that what the hell, just poker then because it seems to be "my thing".

I had few doubts whether I could get that through to my parents, but that was surprisingly painless. I explained them that this is what I want, and can really make the cut. Of course they weren't too happy about me not studying, but they realized that I've got much more dreams in poker than I have as a journalist... and that's what this life is all about, making dreams come true. By that I don't mean that I'm thinking poker as something glamourous - by playing three to four tables 40h/week online I've noticed that it's far from limelight - but still I want to get myself involved in big tournaments with the big boys, and face the challenge of the world top pros. And hopefully to become one someday.

We practically made a deal that I'm gonna see this year if it works out or not. I've shown them my books and my dad has watched me play quite much, so I think I've made them feel as comfortable as you can when dealing with poker. I strongly believe that I can make my living playing poker and I've got couple months of tracking to prove it, but of course couple of months is just couple of months. But you can make something out of it, because playing 40h/week three-four tabling you get a lot of hands and table hours.

I realize that the ideal situation for a poker player would be to have that some kind of plan B, which in my case would be to have a journalist degree. But why go study if you really aren't interested of studying at the moment? I can't force myself into studying, I've seen that way too many times by now. Some people can, some don't. I'm the ones who don't have either the discipline or educational maturity to do that.

Now at the summertime I'm having a well earned (ha-ha) holiday of poker and there's time to enjoy the summer. Being a poker player doesn't seem to be all that brutal, since you can take a two month holiday after working just couple of months. Good, eh? Okay, so I live at home so it's a little different that way too. But gotta be really happy at this point - I've got the money to do whatever I want (festivals etc) for the summer and enjoy the summer without a dayjob. In June and July I'm just playing when I feel like it, which has so far been about 20 hours or so.

So, this threads meaning is mostly to find out if there's others too who have skipped their entry exams to make a living by playing poker. If not, it would be nice to get opinions if I'm totally nuts or making the right move.