Welcome to IE. I have actually thought about the same education. Whould you mind telling me where you are from? For the last part i have the same question as morph.
i first got interested when i watched movies as a child, i admired the hype in the movie... then i remembered my aunty who is a school teacher owned a win95 machine with dial-up.. asked her if i could buy it for 120 hours of slave labour... then i fell in love, exploring the machine..
I dont mind at all... I am from sydney australia.. born and raised here.
Well we cant get past that it takes a lot of time to be a programmer or hacker. Sure you will loose some friends, but i haven't actually lost any good friends in the time i have been on the scene, plus i have a wonderful girlfriend which i uses a lot of time with, so it can be possible to have a social live besides hacking. And you will surely meet some cool "guys" in the mean time.