Frustration at my future options

[winkio]

I have one more year left on my undergraduate degree.  It should be alright between senior design, technical electives, and freetime for game design.  However, as I've begun looking at my options after graduation, I have realized that if I take either standard pathway, I am going to be bored out of my mind for 4-5 years after I graduate. 

The main problem is that there is no way to get hired for my dream job (robotics researcher) right out of college, without years of work experience in the field or a graduate degree.  If I go for some work experience, I will get paid well, but the work won't be interesting, I won't have much free time, and I may not even end up getting the job I want.  If I go to grad school, I will take classes and do research, both of which will be interesting the first few weeks, but end up grinding me down even more, and I still won't have much free time.  The upside of getting a graduate degree is that it is much more powerful than work experience.

The thing is, I'm really itching to DO something, whether it is researching a robot, designing for a mechanical engineering firm, or even making a commercial game.  I'm not looking forward to being forced through another two years of coursework that I don't care about, year-long research projects that get stale after the first few weeks, or stuck in a job that doesn't get me closer to my goals.  I've talked with grad students at my lab, and I even remember some of the engineers I worked with at a wind power firm two years ago, and I know what will end up happening if I get stuck in either situation: burnout, or quit halfway through, leaving me with nothing gained since graduation.

There are a few unlikely possibilities that I'm going to try to look at:
1)  Get recruited into an industrial research lab or think tank.  This is very difficult to do, especially because it relies on connections, and Houston, Texas isn't very well connected with the robotics community (it's mostly east coast and west coast).
2)  Start a kickstarter and make a commercial game.  I have plenty of legitimate ideas, but kickstarter is not exactly guaranteed funding.  I would probably also need to rely on someone else for art, which may or may not pan out.
3)  Entering and winning a math or engineering competition.  This is by far the most difficult option, but it would be interesting, net both funds and recognition, and would definitely get me closer to my goals.

Anyways, I wanted to ask the older members on this site, especially Blizzard, what their experience was with their first job or grad school, to see if I can decide between them more easily.

[Blizzard]

In my country it's kind similar how the graduate degree is far more worth than 2 years of work experience. I did get my master and I'd do it again if I was in the same position. Our graduate program was somewhat different from the undergraduate one. We basically had to do a lot of work without learning too much new or interesting stuff. After one semester I was pretty pissed that it wasn't close to what I imagined to. I especially remember one course where that bitch was always claiming how this was a researcher degree and blablabla while we still had exams and everything else as if it wasn't a researcher degree. I had thought about quitting seriously two times. But my friends told me that I already finished one semester and I had only 2 left (and obviously one more semester for my master thesis). They were right. I was already through with this for one third. I could take on two more semesters. But I changed my strategy. Instead of taking mostly courses that interest me (and end up not being what I imagined and being boring as fuck), I mostly picked easy courses and courses that others recommended were easy (e.g. in my 3rd semester the only course I picked that I really wanted to learn was Neuron Networks). Funny enough lots of the easy courses ended up being actually interesting.

One month after I started with grad school, I started working at Cateia through a honorary contract and everything worked out fine for me. I have a friend who was working for a year here at Cateia as graphics designer while he was in his last year of graduate school as well (automatics, it's basically robotics here). After I graduated, I was simply employed by Cateia right away. Since it was (and kinda still is) a young company, I was the first official employee. xD

My recommendation is that you should go for the degree. You will still have some free time on the side to do your own stuff. You surely won't spend 8 hours per day for grad school, while for every normal job you will have to put at least 8 hours aside. Also, I recommend you move close to your college. I had an apartment right across the street from my college while I was in grad school. Before that, in my 3rd year, I had to travel for about an hour so I basically lost 2 hours each days. At first it was crazy how much more time (which are those two hours) I had for my own stuff. So in my 4th and 5th year I was in school, I was working for Cateia 2-3 days a week (usually 6-7 hours per day) and I still had time for hobbies and other stuff. So you may be a bit bored and frustrated from grad school, but the extra free time is more than worth it, especially if you pick easy courses. Not to mention how much more a master degree is worth than 2 years of working experience.

EDIT: As for your additional options for your free time, I recommend one of two things. Either make a somewhat bigger non-commercial game (like I did with CP) or make smaller commercial games. Having a good portfolio can help you get a job and a bigger game is really something. But the size of the game doesn't matter too much in today's market and you have a higher chance of getting some commercial success with several games than with just one. I would have recommended the mobile market 2-3 years ago, but things on iOS have changed quite a bit. The market is crowded with developers and it's already become so intense that there are already publishers. On Android is a similar situation and additionally to that a lot less apps are actually being sold. Even though Android has a 4 times bigger share on the mobile market than iOS, iOS still makes much more money. Though Windows Phone 8 is a new market and being among the first to release a game on a new platform like this has huge advantages. So my recommendation is that you make a few mobile games for Windows Phone 8. You should code them in C++ so you can port them to iOS and Android later. If they become popular on WP8, people will ask you for ports. Plus, if they are popular, people will know what they are looking for so finding your games on iOS and Android won't be so much of a lucky shot in a sea of games, people will actually search for your games.

[winkio]

Hm, that might actually be the best option.  Most of the grad students that I've talked to say they don't have much free time, but they each live 20-30 minutes away and take some of the harder classes.

I actually have a really good idea for a smaller game (probably 2-5 hours of gameplay, along the lines of Super Metroid) that I could work on while in grad school, with simple 2D art that I could do myself.  I also have a few longer ideas, both 2D and 3D in case the first one doesn't work out.

I appreciate the advice.  It helped me realize that instead of looking for more options, I should look for more strategies on the standard options.