Don't do the mistake of trying to set aside your classes for cryptocurrency or any single niche.
You say you worked as an consultant? A 17 year old consultant? You might have been exposed to crypto for a long time but what gives you any business credibility that you'd go out and consult people on what to do with their business money?
If it seems like I am being harsh with you then there is reason behind that. For a long time in my early career I was doing the wrong thing and that made me habituated to just one way of working. In cryptocurrency space there is abundance of hype marketing and jobs that in other industries have no relevance. Say for example if you spend you days managing a discord group or a telegram group, what experience do you take away from that as a professional? a kid could do that kind of job, and that is exactly what you are.
Give more importance in skill development at this time of your life rather than going to conferences. Without proper skill you will be nothing. And I wish you listen to what I say and make something of yourself someday.
I was not consulting anyone on crypto when working at the consultant firm, rather, I was just helping out in everyday operations and seeing how it was ran. This taught me a lot about what I did not like about the industry, such as what you mentioned on the hype marketing and just bad business practices in general. Thanks for being honest though, there is definitely a lot that is wrong with how things are ran and the philosophy of many of these companies right now.
When I ask in this group for new opportunities that I can help with, I was mainly looking for open sourced projects (right now I am looking at grin and bitcoin core) or projects focused on crypto adoption and would never take a role in some random coin in a discord group or telegram group.
Also, I'm fairly confident in the fact that my time would be much more valuable working in good projects and my current job at the said Bitcoin ATM company. I was fortunate enough to have experience in college classes at a young age and while in high school, at a prestigious university, and that never appealed to me after the first couple of months, the crypto industry drawn me and I was focusing on that no matter what classes or project I was working on. Though I do plan on going back if this does not work out but the thought of rather my work was in the middle of school or school in the middle of my work was always on my mind and I wanted to see.