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Advice You Would Give to Your 12 Year-Old Self?
urbazewski asks: "If you could send a message back to your nerdy
unpopular 12 year old self, what would you say? I've been asking this one for several years, and the replies sound suspiciously like the lame advice I got from adults at that age ('just be yourself, dear'). The most creative answer was from an American-born Buddhist monk, who didn't think his 12 year old self would
listen to a message along the lines of 'Hey, what you're doing is kind of making things suck for me right now' --- he would send
a message to himself by adding extra lyrics to a song he really liked when he was in junior high school. I got the best replies from a large class at
UC Santa Cruz. The modal answer was 'Buy Microsoft.' About 7% of the class said 'Enjoy yourself in high school because college is really hard.' Another 7% said "Study harder in high school because college is really hard.' (The
best variant on that theme: 'Try to figure out what "studying" is'). In the hindsight-is-20/20 dept. there was a girl who said 'Do not date the
following people...' and then listed six names and a guy who said 'You know how you're thinking about trying to drive your dad's car? Don't!.' My personal favorite: 'You're a dork now, but don't worry, you'll be cool when
you're in college.'"
Then I would say the people who were popular at high school weren't actually investing in a skill... And that it didn't matter if I sucked at something when I was 12, the fact that I would start that early would make me phenomenal by the time I was 18 (I distincly remember thinking I couldn't start playing guitar at 15 because I thought I was too old -- WHATEVER).
Apart from that, any advice I'd have to give would be useless (regarding work and girls) because I really think I needed to go through all of that shit for myself - in any case, my father already told me what I would say now.
Because all adults will tell you is what they wished _they_ had done.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Screw microsoft stock... I'd just tell my 12yr old self who won the major sporting events for the following few years... Money would compound exponentially... Oh.. possibly throw out the idea of patenting anything and everything related to "one click"...
Learn kung fu early..
Have more sex.. girls are not as easy after highschool..
Drop out of highschool..
ignore college..
start a dot com..
sell all your stock in 1999..
never listen to your parents.. what the fsck do they know..
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
What would your future self (10 years from now) want to tell you? I'd wager that it boils down to what you would tell your 12 year-old self.
Have more fun be Happy! Be positive!
Be proactive and make things happen.
Make lots of Friends.
Go on adventures so you can tell cool stories.
Do what you love! It's not worth it to do anything else.
Take care of your body.
People expect to much of a year and not enough from a decade. - Neil Armstrong
If you could travel forward by 1 minute, what would you say to your future self? Do you think he'll listen to well-considered advice from a smarter past self?
Nah, the universe is fractal in nature, every choice branching off into multiple realities, ad infinitum.
The you at age 12 would still exist, as one single event of a miltiple of you before you contacted yourself, none of which would be contacted.
If you did take your own advice (and...would you? I mean I'd tell myself to go fuck myself, personally) then, the you after the point just before you contacted yourself would be wiped out, quite possibly, but the you before you were contacted would still exist, and without the you from the future of that line in time, to pass the fututre message, you wouldn't do it.
In other words, you'd wipe out everything in one possible universe from the point of contact if you did commit suicide, but not before it, and it would still continue from the point where your message fails to appear as if nothing had happened, which of course is true unless you make the same decisions exactly as you did the first time round from that point onward, in that timeline, leading to you contacting yourself in the past, which is not guaranteed not least of which because of a universal cognisance of the event which took place leaving a dissonance in it's wake, spreading backward and outward, so that at least at some point you'd not comply, realising the stupidity of your behaviour and eventually boring yourself/ves of the repetition of the fundementally self-destructive non-beneficial act and get on with doing something more positive instead, tike putting the telly on or something.
Possibly.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
and: "Next Thursdays winning lotto numbers are:..."
I read a study recently (I tried googling for it and couldn't find it) that basically tracked lottery winners over a five year period following their wins. It said that when they first recieved their money their overall happiness jumped a great deal, as described here. It then tracked their happiness for the remaining five years.
The interesting part is that almost uniformally every single winner's happiness receded back to what it was before they won. It seems that everyone has a "base happiness" that cannot be altered by material things in the long term. I believe that everyone needs enough money for sustenance and comfort, and after that it's all vanity.
In 10 years you're going to graduate from college. Assuming that you still pretty much refuse to practice the oboe, you're gonna be a CS Engineer.
Do yourself a favor. It's 1997. Put off grad school, and move to California for two years. Maybe three.
Then go to grad school, but skip the Ph.D, and get your Masters. You're going to wind up bailing anyway.
EVERYTHING your parents ever tell you to do or not do is dead on the money.
My mother told me computers were a passing fad, and refused to help pay for college when I wanted to study them, 10th grade in 1981. Said it was a waste of time. She would only help if I became a Geologist, to enter the oil industry.
There is joke in Texas after 1983: How do you get a Geologists attention? Yell "Hey waiter!"
So obviously, I is not a collage gradiate. But I don't wait tables either.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Not to my 12 yr old self, but to my 17 yr old self I'd say: "you know that slutty girl who is trying to get on you but who you keep turning down because you think she might have something...well, she does in the future, but not now, so get it while the gettin's good!
... at least I managed to hand down my Sega Nomad to my little brother and I still have my N64 (Goldeneye).
"and if "if" was a fifth, we'd all be drunk" - ?
Yep, same thing, but in my case it would be my 15 year old self, because I am still friends with her and her husband and son now, and I still can't believe she didn't have anything.
On the other hand, I'd tell myself to save all the boxes and documentation for all the toys I had as a kid. Collectibles are worth a fortune now. Transformers, Go-Bots, Centurions, M.A.S.K., Sky Commanders, Star Wars, Intellivision, Atari 2600, Odyssey II, Nintendo, Sega Master System, Turbo Grafx-16, SNES, Gameboy, Saturn....
sigh
"You're going to be lonely for a long time. But by understanding this condition that makes everyone else behave so inexplicably, it may be a shorter time than I have suffered."
Harlan Ellison wrote a really marvelous speculative fiction tale about just this topic, so for his response to this, hunt up a copy of the short story "One Life, Furnished In Early Poverty."
1) your mother is in a cult, don't let her brainwash you and destroy your sense of self/ego
2) at age 16, avoid that odd girl in your summer school class but not for reasons you suspect
3) go to art school even if the parents refuse to pay, computers will lead to a lifetime of unsatisfying wageslavery
4) don't worry so damn much
5) you don't need to be normal
Zero tolerance equals zero intelligence
Tall and skinny now is an ASSET.
Your mother's dying will make you stronger. But cry now & get the grieving over with BEFORE college.
Do not let your stepmonster bother you. She's little and petty; she will change after a house fire in 1999.
GET SOME SELF-CONFIDENCE! Go for it! Don't be afraid of engineering! You're smarter than everyone says you are!
Pierce stuff in college before marrying someone who hates it. Trust me on this one.
You look GOOD with black hair--goth is you!
Oh, and so much more...
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult. -Whitton
(1) don't stay in a relationship that's anything less than euphoric for at least the first 3 months and
(2) don't stay with anyone you (majorly) fight with more than twice a year. (yes it is possible).
i'm thinking that the reason there's so little advice to give is that by 25 there's a good chance that you have learned not to have regrets. and once you have no regrets, its difficult to say that you would have changed anything.
the real evil is not what people think - its how people think
The logic as I see it...
A = Your self now
B = Your self at age 12
C = Girl you knew at age 12
D = Same girl in C but as she now is
A tells B to get with C before she turns into D (which she will - you have prior (fore?) knowledge.
If B does as you say, then B might be the cause of C moving to D. Which makes B (and therefore A) to be kinda creepy.
That was my logic. However, since B didn't "get it" then, then either B must not have heeded A's advice, or A never sent the message. Since A doesn't remember receiving a message as B, then obviously the message was not sent. As you (B) stated in your response, but this time explained differently by E.
Time paradoxes are fun, no?
ADVENTUR>You are in a maze of twisty little passages.
The preceding comment has been reviewed and declared to be compliant with HIPPA Phase II regulations.
Hey asshead, this guy was 12 in 1982. The only people who had computers in 82 were rich geeky college kids and big companies. Just because you were 12 in 1998 doesn't mean everyone was.
No need to call someone an asshead. There are many instances of folks who owned computers back then and they were not rich or part of a big company. I mowed lawns for two years and purchased my first computer, an Apple ][+ in 1981. At the time, we were definately not well to do. That computer got me my first job ( at age 12 in 1982) at our local school of medicine as the tech support guy (before that was a title) for all the MD's and PhD's running Visicalc and such on their Apples and TRS-80's.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
1. Hug your mom and tell her you love her. Now. Go do it now. (I would not tell me that it's my last chance).
2. Learn what studying means. Learn to do it, but don't let it take over your life.
3. Your first year in college you are going to meet a hot red head that shares the suite of the girl you are dating. _DO NOT DATE HER_. fnord She's a bitch. Everyone will know it but you. Prozac is not a _choice_. Do not pay for the sins of the father. fnord. You have been warned.
... and don't get married because in the end, you'll end up losing more chances to get laid than you get. Or at least you'll have less variety and later you'll have someone take half your stuff, make your life hell, and try to character assassinate you in a miserable custody battle.
I dunno what I'd tell myself about computers. I got my first computer (a Commodore 64) when I was 13. I'm not sure if I'd tell my young self to go ahead and spend lots of time learning how to use, or if I'd tell myself to forget the computer, get a drum set and learn how to play that instead. Hmmm... richer or happier? So hard to decide.
Acronyms Obfuscate
Is "I didn't have enough random, pointless sex!" really the biggest regret you all have? Seriously, everyone's all "go fuck some fine ass bitches, yo!" I don't regret not picking up nasty diseases in high school at all, but hey, whatever sinks your canoe.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
On September 11, 2001, rise early and phone
in a bomb threat in the early a.m. Set fire
to some trash cans. Create a disturbance.
You'll be arrested, and have a different life,
but Dad will still be alive and can visit
you in jail.
(I saw the smiley, too bad the moderators didn't.)
Nope. Didn't see a computer until a couple of years later. TRS-80 I believe, then we got a used C64 at home. When I got to high school, started taking computer classes, programming BASIC on the TRS-80s. Then we got in the new 286s. Sweet.
I don't proclaim to be some uber-geek, I can swap "my first computer" stories, but they aren't that impressive. I didn't actually buy a computer myself until 1990 (3rd year of college), and that was a 386dx-33 for about $2200. My next computer was a P266. The one after that was an Athlon900. I was around the damn things all day, I didn't want to go home and mess with them. I had no desire to use them at home, until Linux came along. :-) Before that, anything I needed to do could be done at work.
Yeah, I know, there are people around here who probably built PDP-11s from spare parts around the house when they were 12, but not me. I didn't get into computers until high-school. I played a lot of Atari2600 and ColecoVision and visited one or both of the arcades that managed to stay in business in my home town. Computers were fringe, man. Why sit at home in front of a tiny screen when you could be at an arcade pumping in quarters, sneaking cigarettes, swearing at the games, and hanging out? I had Pac-Man fever. If you didn't grow up during that time, you just don't understand.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Above poster is correct. The thought doesn't have to be your own; it just has to come from someone you identify with. That rules out your parents at that age. IMO, I think this is how stuff in Eastern philosophy like the I Ching (it's a big, ancient book of proverbs) worked so well. Proverbs are basically riddles: you have to figure it out the meaning for yourself.
Dear 12 year-old self,
Your life is about to be forever changed. You don't know it now, but in three years, you're going to be in millions of households world-wide.
Everywhere you go, people are going to scream at you that they hate you. Listen to this advice, 12 year-old self, because I know that nobody else is going to give it to you: whatever you do,don't listen to them, and let them define your sense of self-worth. It's going to hurt, a lot. You won't understand it, and you'll try really hard to convince them otherwise, but they will not listen . . . because they're just as insecure and confused as you are right now. You're going to want to quit the show, but if you do, you'll be 30 before you stop regretting it. Trust me on this one.
Stay on that show until it's over, and when you're older, you'll realize that for every person who screamed "I hate you," there is another who was quietly inspired by something you did. It all balances out, kid.
You are never going to be cool, no matter how hard you try, so save yourself the agony of trying to fit in. You end up marrying a real hottie who loves your inner geek.
And register wilwheaton.com before someone else picks it up.
OH! And when you're 22, and you're in a bar in New York, just say, "No, thank you." You'll understand why when the time comes.
Well, since you asked....
There's a popular myth that heaven will be like a philadelphia cream cheese commercial - pretty people with wings on their backs sittng on clouds doing absolutely nothing.
Heaven will not be like that. Not at all.
Think of the experience in life that gives you the greatest satisfaction.
Heaven will be better than that. The God who designed you knows what you need and what will satisfy your deepest longings. Once you are in His presence, they will be fulfilled.
We all worship something. We were created to worship God. Some of us do and others find substitutes. The substitute never satisfies, but still we tell ourselves that it will. Sugar-free soft-serve yogurt is nowhere near the same thing as real honest-to-goodness ice cream.
Sex, money, power, fame, hacking....
All promise to fill the ache inside, and they can distract you from the discomfort and uneasiness of life, but the ache returns as quickly as hunger pangs briefly quieted by a glass of water.
Why would I want to go to heaven? I was made to worship God and enjoy His presence. Here in this life I'm limited by my humanness. There I won't be. I will be unencumbered to relate to God the way that my heart desires.
The alternative to heaven is to be separated from everything that even promises to salve that ache. In terms of eternity, outside of heaven there will be nothing comparable to love, peace, joy, or even music. I guess the question is - why would you not want to go to heaven?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I'd prefer to talk to the me in year 2 or year 3, so aged about 7 or 8. I'd like to say, "Okay, you're clever, don't stop being clever, but you know fuck all about the world. Don't learn it the hard way. Sure, in eight years you'll be able to stand up to the bullies, but now they're twice your size, and you'll never really fight them off. Don't be too different from everyone else, and don't be too blind or trusting."
But would this actually make a difference? Sure, it'd have made year 4 a whole lot less painful, but that was eight years ago. Would I be a better person if I hadn't gone through that?
I mean, I'd like the me from a week from now to pop back and tell me if I'll be successful with this chick on Monday. But, hey, is missing out on some wholesome rejection going to hurt me?
I'd like the me from six years from now to advise me on career choices, to tell me if I end up failing the rest of my GCSE's through laziness and working as a meat packer for the rest of my life. But if I knew I was going to do well, would I put in enough effort? Without going into a bunch of theories on time travel, would I fail because I was too sure I would succeed?
In my case, being picked on in primary school has made just enjoy taking the piss out of the even geekier kids (you know, the D table) - rejection never fails to get me moping around uselessly, and I've so far proved myself excellent at judging how much laziness I can get away with without actually getting low grades. So I guess, it probably would be good if I could travel back in time and tell myself all these things. Curse this stupid non-time travel age!
Stop them.
Don't worry about yourself: You turn out fine, and your mistakes are ones you can learn from; if I tell you how to avoid them, you'll be less prepared for what comes next.
Not literally, though... it was an article about children with Asperger's Syndrome. In that article I saw my entire life. I found more information online here:
http://www.asperger.org/asperger/asperger_as.htm
Considering what I've learned about it, it seems likely that a large percentage of Slashdot readers have it also.
What would I tell 12-year-old me?
You see, two people with Asperger's are much more likely to have an autistic child. Microsoft (you know, the evil empire) has enough autistic children among their employees to have special programs to help with their care.
It's always been hard. At least now I know what's different about me... if I had known all along I could have avoided at least some of the pain in my life.
Hopefully, with the wealth of a couple of Bill Gates, I will be able to find the generosity to do something interesting with it as David Brin suggests.