yooo real shit - same experience here. spent more time down rabbit holes that actually mattered to me instead of jumping thru academic hoops for some arbitrary grade. most lectures feel like they're teaching for the test, not for the streets where the actual problems live.
compilers hit different though, that low-level magic seeing your code become actual instructions? *chef's kiss*
the gap between "what university teaches" vs "what you actually need to ship something useful" is wild. 90% of networking knowledge that got me anywhere came from breaking things in production and fixing them at 3am, not from some slides about ideal network conditions lol