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What You'll Wish You'd Known
sheck writes "Eminent computer scientist, author, painter, and dot-com millionaire, Paul Graham has written down the things he wishes somebody had told him when he was in high school in What You'll Wish You'd Known, suggesting, among other things, that students treat school like a day job, working on interesting projects to avoid what he has found to be the most common regret among adults of their high school days: wasting time."
What I wished I had known:
People
Most of the people you graduate with, no matter how popular/smart/wonderful they were in high-school will probably be completely worthless in college. Some will likely come home to be with their group of friends from high-school again and may not even finish college. They will be happy in their small group of friends forever, which is fine, but certainly don't believe that you need to limit yourself to that.
Class
That the reason I did reasonably well in high-school with very little outside work was because I went to class. Even if I slept through some of it I was taking it all in. You cannot succeed unless you attend class. Don't think that when you get to college or the real world you can succeed by not showing up just because you don't have to. It doesn't work like that.
College
Going to a four-year college and getting a degree really isn't all that important anymore. Yeah, you get a job, yeah you get money, and yeah you have fun but honestly the pay off in the end really isn't all that worth it.
I have seen plenty of people with high-school diplomas or two year degrees from a community college/tech school do just as well (if not better) than me and my more expensive four-year degree.
Don't give in to the pressures put on you by your social group, family, and school when there are plenty of opportunities out there for those of you that aren't interested in jumping straight into four-year degrees.
LPNs, construction, HVAC, general laborers under Union guidance all make great money and may even make twice as much as a four-year graduate starting... If you aren't interested in school for the next four or five years explore some other options. They are open and ready to make you into something that you may not have had the chance to know about.
Wasting time
Honestly, you aren't going to have much of a chance to "waste time" once you are done with school. People graduate and either jump right into working or go to college. After these small steps they start families and their chance to "waste time" is over for the next 25 years.
I hear all the time that "thirty is the new twenty". Take advantage of your age, your freedoms, and your time. Use it however you want. Right now I'm more interested in doing things that I know I won't be able to do 10 years from now. Responsibility sucks use your time however you see fit.
What I learned was that I needed to decide for myself what I wanted. Anyone who might read his article (or mine) might want to as well.
I think that when the *very first word* in your story is misspelled, you should probably hand in your "Lil' Editors' Fun Club" membership card.
I say Boo friggin' hoo. There is always time if you have the inclination. Rodney Dangerfield started doing comedy when he was in his 40s.
Free XBox, PS2
I could have known where the parties were happening...
Seriously. If you crunch the numbers and look at how much you'll make in interest by investing early, you will see that a Roth in high school will go a long way to paying for retirement. A Roth in your 30s doesn't do much.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Maybe we should read this as :
Emminent computer scientist, author, painter, and dot-com millionaire, Paul Graham has written down the things he wishes somebody had told him when he was in high school in What You'll Wish You'd Known, suggesting, among other things, that students treat school like a day job, working on interesting projects to avoid what he has found to be the most common regret among adults of their high school days: reading Slashdot."
You know, I kind of doubt it would really be possible to convice a highschooler that they really will wish they studied harder once they're an adult.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Not that partying and getting wasted are inherently bad things, but I will say that all the people I know who kept telling me "school is a waste of time" are working in grocery stores and casinos, so one can draw their own conclusions.
This seems more like another one of those bits of advice tainted by the rosy hue of nostalgia, and which better applies to adults. I definitely agree that, as an adult, it is imperative that you find something to do in your spare time that interests you. Otherwise the dull drudgery of the daily grind would begin to wear.
It sounds funny, but it isn't. I wish I'd known that my math teachers through High School were PE majors and math minors. Going to a small private school in the mid-south, they were all coach/teachers (sometimes in that order).
After I got an A in College Algebra my senior year, I was sure I was ready for the CS curriculum in college. That first week of Calculus proved me wrong. What I learned later was that, despite my grades, I really didn't know math all that well.
That was 22 years ago. I've since picked up higher-level math on my own, but it would have been a lot easier if I'd been given the groundwork ahead of time.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
I wish I'd known that when I started dating my first wife in college that she would turn out to be such a f****g b***h and gone running the other way.
From TFA:
In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive
I remember reading that Einstein was considered a "slow learner" back in school, so he wouldn't have been terribly impressive. Of course, that just goes to show that it doesn't really matter how "slow" people say you are, only you can realize your own true potential (as corny as it sounds...).
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
From his couldn't-give-it-because-he-got-uninvited-to-the-h igh-school speech:
"There is some variation in natural ability"
No wonder his visit got the veto! That's public school sacriledge! Actually, it's bad news at Harvard now, too, apparently.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The things I'd say I wish I'd been told in school, they actually told me, but I didn't believe them, because they sounded silly.
~~Every few years or so I'm accidentally fashionable!
I wish someone had told me to go to a real library, a college library. I wish someone had told me this in grade school. I remember checking out every Byte magazine at my local library and still wanting to know more. I didn't even bother to check out there books that say "a computer has a cpu, monitor, and keyboard". I wish someone had told me to go to computer groups when I was a lot younger. I wish someone had told me to go to colleges and hang out until I met smart people.
"brxref
The author writes:
What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do.
Why do our lives have to center around friggin' work? I would rather not work at all. And most people feel the same way, if they would just admit it. If we had the adequate resources, wouldn't we choose NOT to work at all, or just work a little bit?
So what is wrong with just admitting the truth?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It's only those obsessed with status & material wealth who get wrapped up in the notion that every worthwhile waking hour should be spent working on advancing careers and whatnot.
Power to the Peaceful
Wear sunscreen!
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't...what about the other 8?
I see now why they vetoed this guy. Their eyes must have glazed over reading that thing. Imagine someone giving it as a speech to a young crowd that usually can't stand still for more than two minutes. Sheesh. This guy forgot who his audience was. If it were college grads, it might have been more appropriate, but still, it's a bit windy. Chop it down, bud.
Paul Graham is a very highly-driven individual, and his advice would work well for a younger version of himself. But I have plenty of friends who are happy taking a fairly laid-back attitude towards life. They earn enough to have a roof over their heads, plus a bit more. They'll never be Einstein. And they don't really care. Are they necessarily wrong? So - if you have lots of free time, you don't necessarily have to put it into worthwhile pursuits. Hang out while you still can. Do crosswords. Slack off. Some people really, really like slacking off, for hours on end. That's OK. Not everyone wants to become a dot-com millionaire. Explore your inner slacker as well as your inner Einstein. There'll be plenty of time to get angst about how much you're achieving later on.
"The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector."
If a high school student actually understands that statement it's pretty doubtful that they need to read that piece or need much academic direction at all.
By the time you are old enough to want to make a list of things to tell young people they need to do to be happy, you are too old to relate to any young person in a meaningful or influential way. But inevitably, generation after generation, the old people are compelled to spew advice which the young will absorb, but ignore, until they themselves are old and ready to acknowledge its correctness (and then to futilely victimize that generation with advice).
I think the biggest cause of regret in young people is mixed messages being sent from all directions from know-it-all nannys who all regret their own youth and so want to live vicariously through others still in possession of it. Laissez faire.
I wish... I would have known that some people really do get addicted to teh drugs and alcohol.
I wish I would have been strong enough to say no to them and focus on more constructive things.
and I wish I could have warned my friend, not to drive home from that one party....... sorry I would have fucking told ya'll to chill if I had seen you trying to drive
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
He may be eminent and he may be a painter, but he's not an eminent painter.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I was lucky in that I did manage to get my homework out of the way and participate in the fun parts of running around with friends. Taking a gut check while hanging out by asking "what do you want to DO" does not have to be a buzz killer.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
I was a little bit taller
I wish I was a baller
I wish I knew a girl who looked good and I'd call her
Paul Graham has written down the things he wishes somebody had told him when he was in high school
How about Brevity?
(4324 words for chrissakes, and that excludes his footnotes!)
There's also an important corollary to this: The opinion of high-school classmates doesn't really matter. Knowing this would have done me a lot of good. Don't bother trying to impress your peers in high school. In fact, go ahead and embarrass yourself. It won't be the end of the world. A year after graduation, no one will remember or care. If anyone does remember and care, those are the weirdos whose entire life will be spent obsessing on high school, the people who never move on with their lives, and so their opinion isn't worth much worry.
don't worry, you'll have plenty of adult life where you have to act like an adult. Waste your time now while you still can.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Wasting time was the best thing I ever did in high school!
No rent, no bills, no responsibilities. Work 20hours a week to pay for a junker car and just tool around and waste time. Those were the days! Now if I want to waste time it needs to be on a weekend or vacation day...
To tell you the truth, College sucks as much as High school, nothing ever changes. Their will always be immature people, and stuck up pricks, and jerks. It is as simple as that.
My wife and I talk about this a lot, because we were both smart and geeky in high school (she was also an athlete, though, so she had a much easier time of it).
... since in high school I was most interested in my female classmates.
Our primary advice to our kids will be: "It gets better."
High school will not be, and shouldn't be, "the best years of your life." People will be petty, people won't understand you. You've got to take it, and still treat other people with respect. (Even if you're smarter, you're not necessarily better -- if you're excluded, don't retreat to elitism.)
All that said, I'm not sure if "wasting time" is so bad. Young children should be encouraged to play freely, not subjected 100% to a rigorous schedule of pre-planned activities. Not sure how much that can or should carry over into teenage years.
Graham is advocating exploration of that which interests you -- in my mind, I should've been spending more time practicing social skills
i have come to the conclusion that the self-taught are the people you want to work with and for.
the self-taught have a better skillset at picking up new skillsets when the pressure is on, they're more willing to and capable of learning by experimentation, they tend to be far more flexible and diverse in their abilities and they're are often more motivated to try out new solutions.
three cheers for the autodidacts
2 1337 4 u!
not wasted so much money on an expensive college, when a cheaper one with the same education would do.
My comment relates to succeeding in life because I came very close to ending up with a criminal record - some of my friends did. Had I *discovered* girls earlier, this could have all been avoided.
So young geeks/nerds/tools - Talk to girls, ask them out, you have nothing to lose, but your virginity.
Going to a four-year college and getting a degree really isn't all that important anymore. Yeah, you get a job, yeah you get money, and yeah you have fun but honestly the pay off in the end really isn't all that worth it.
Very good point, and I totally agree, seriously. As the great Judge Smails has stated, "the world needs ditch diggers to".
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
But see, it's all about how those dollars are administered. In DC, the average amount spent per public school student is roughly $10,000 per year. That's a lot, and they have some of the worst performing students in the country. Horrible reading/writing/math skills, and a very high dropout rate. Point is, it's not about the money (though it certainly takes plenty to do it right), but people who see quality educations elsewhere being funded at, say, $5000 per student, have every right to complain about their taxes when twice that amount performs only half as well.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Going to a four-year college and getting a degree really isnt all that important anymore. Yeah, you get a job, yeah you get money, and yeah you have fun but honestly the pay off in the end really isnt all that worth it." I believe i heard a statistic on NPR a few months back (please correct me if i'm wrong) that on average people who go to college end up making 1 million dollars more over thier life time than those who do not go to college. sure there are a few exception. http://www.forbes.com/2003/07/28/cx_dd_0728mondaym atch.html but those people had a clear goal. most who drop out of highschool don't have a clear gaol
This guy loves to hear himself write.
The observation that he's forgotten who his audience is, is right on.
Score -15 points if I was grading the paper, right off. Way too wordy.
I worked pretty hard throughout High School and College I always took a full class load of the most advanced subjects they would let me take. Meanwhile my friends were out partying and generally having a much better time than I. In the end after bustin ass through High School and college I really don't see what the purpose of any of it was. I could have skated by with average grades and still be making the same amount of money I make today. In fact after 12 years of being in the job market no even one employer has ever asked for me to even prove I went to college.
Not a bad speech. Certainly better than the platitudes I got.
I'd argue two points:
1) I think goals are just as important as options. It's like a dialogue, really - find a goal you want that also gives you options. Options are nice, but goals are a good way to focus and plot progress.
2) Graduation speeches and such are all well and good. This is a nice one. But I'd argue our culture and our school system need to change, not just the speeches. Guidance counsellors have proven useless for me and my friends and I'd say our culture discourages a lot of what he suggests here.
The part about having projects is something that I am very glad he said. I've always been making projects for myself since I can remember, from making lego structures to maintaining my web page. Some were stupid or ineffectual, but I always kept moving forward and always had something to do. Indeed among people I know, the ability to "make a project" seems to be a large definer of success. I've seen late bloomers who came into their own, and almost inevitably they had the same "do-a-project" approach, they just had to channel what they gained.
It's similar to an argument I've heard over parents forcing children to take art classes, sports, music classes, etc. - the kids, despite some regrets, at least get to develop a skill or ability and have some success. I personally prefer his gentle approach, but there's some similarities.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
The reason I did well in college was because I didn't go. It took a class full of people 3 weeks to understand an iteration. To me that was a given. Granted, in my second year I went more often, not because of the intresting programming classes, but the difficulty of non-computer classes.
Even now when there's certification courses, I'd rather take the time to study them on my own than go to classes filled with people that don't understand netmasks or recursion. I just find it a waste of time to sit through something I can teach myself quicker.
Arthur: You know, it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young.
Ford: Why, what did she tell you?
Arthur: I don't know, I didn't listen.
You again? When are you gonna get your ass outside dude?
Oh and can we please stop talking about regrets? I regret regretting the past, move on, it's over.
About 90% of my graduating class would be lost after the first few paragraphs...
Very insightful. I indeed wish I hadn't wasted time on writing stupid programs when I was a kid, but the problem is that at that time I wouldn't understand how I could possibly waste time learning predicate calculus and set theory to better understand relational algebra behind databases instead of foolishly trying to hack something in SQL despite my utter ignorance about its very fundamentals. I was young and stupid, now I understand it. But when I was young and stupid, I didn't want to be old and boring. Now I do, because I finally understand what is more important, but that very process of understanding is something that one needs to experience by oneself while growing up. I can write countless books about it post factum and explain how I should have been born adult when I was a child, but it would be at least quite pointless, would it not? Unless I was a dot-com yuppie millionaire, now then people would buy it.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
No, I don't regret that so-called "wasted" time. That sense of having all the time in the world and feeling no real pressure to do much more than simply enjoy being alive and young and foolish is what makes my fondly remember those years. The moment you realize your lifetime is a finite resource is the moment you're really an adult.
This is absolutely, 100% incorrect. He is assuming that a graduate economics program would take a math student without any prior economics training (false). In addition, in order to be an econ major, you often have to take advanced math courses (for me it was Calc 3 so that I could take Econometrics). This part of his speech pretty much ruined the rest of it for me.
BTW - I know a lot of slashdot are "hard scientists", so save your "social sciences suck" arguments for later.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
Get the hell off my lawn.
How about a car instead. Being able to experience a whole new world of freedom is a lot more interesting than investing so you can be a rich geezer.
Life isn't only about making the largest possible amount of money before you die.
You are sure well programmed to work hard so you can buy as much store-bought crap as possible. You are a good little mercantilist sheeple!
You wrote:
Doing something constructive is better than sitting on your ass all day.
I disagree! There is NOTHING better than "sitting on your ass all day." Period.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I don't know about that! The workplace, at times, seems to be a lot like high school. Pretty ladies/handsome men always get the promotions. Geeks will always be geeks. And don't ever associate with anyone outside of your sphere.
Wish I'd known that when people told me that I couldn't or shouldn't do things, that they were FUCKING RETARDS. Seriously. High-school is adolescent storage, nothing more.
I didn't learn a goddam thing in any of the high schools I went to -- didn't even learn how to roll a joint, fix a car, write a poem, measure the volume of a cone, program, take pictures, or even spell in high school. All of these things I taught myself, because they needed to be done (especially the joint part).
If I had graduated 6th grade, and went straight to college, I would have done quite well accademically.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Man --
Look at the statistics. People who get college degrees do much better financially in life. There are plenty of exceptions, sure. But they are still only a fraction of the population. Suggestions like yours don't do anything but give people excuses not to advance themselves.
If they are self-motivated enough to learn what they have to learn without college then they don't need to hear it from you.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
I don't necessarily agree with this. On the one hand, yeah, no one cares about the opinion of a bunch of high-schoolers ten years down the road. But on the other hand, it's important to develop the skills which will allow you to fit in and otherwise excel. Social skills, in other words.
High school is a broken system, but if people are stuck there, they might as well take advantage of the situation and polish their people skills. And in the end, it's social skills that really help in adult life.
I agree self-taught is great, however you should be carefull not to fall in the 'I don't need school' trap.
Self teaching works best for those subjects you are really interested in, use school to bring the rest up to 'standard'.
Even if you teach yourself a subject its great to hear it again in school, the teacher will most likely teach it from another viewpoint and I have found that this can help you from knowing about it to totally understanding it.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Very good point, and I totally agree, seriously. As the great Judge Smails has stated, "the world needs ditch diggers to".
If you weren't trolling I'd be pissed off... I just wanted to state that from what I have seen most people start in the 30k to 40k range a year after attending a four-year college. An LPN around here starts at 36k. They went to two years (or less) of a technical college. Generally they are spending about 10k for those two years.
A typical four-year degree (from a similar state school) will run you closer to 32k. So you start in the same range, but as a two year degree holder it cost you less, and now you have the bankroll to continue on to possibly RN or higher instead of digging yourself deeper into debt.
Personally, I'd go the route of the two-year degree if I had to do it all over again.
Paul G has a companion essay to this new one you've got to check out:
Why Nerds Are Unpopular
His old essay explains why high school sucks. This new one explains what you can do about it.
Jocks
You don't have to take them seriously. Trust me on this one.
Chicks
Are just as terrified of you as you are of them. If you can manage to stop being terrified of them, they will become so confused that they will have no choice but to sleep with you. Trust me on this one.
I wish somebody had told me that once one stops growing, he becomes fatter.
I accumulated 25kgs between 25 and 30 and I took me 16 months to rid of these but now I can wear my tight clothes again.
Really young people : don't mess with yourbody, learn to like sport, practise art because these are thing that should become the healthiest part of your life : "mens sana ni corpore sano".
Otherwise, have fun and avoid engaging yourself too deeply until life actually requires it.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
If you had started investing heavily in high school and college and your first n years of work, what are the chances that you could have a big enough nest egg to not do wage slavery in a corporation and work on something you like (for money, but only enough to buy food or other basic necessities -- a vanity job, if you will)?
Even if its not enough for early retirement (and it probably would be by age 40 or 45), it might be a nice nest egg useful for starting a business, buying a home (outright, or nearly so) or even some other luxury-type purchase (presumably with an investment value, like a summer home or ski condo).
The problem with investing in an IRA is the money's locked in until your're old. Yes, there's tax deferrals, but that's primarily of value to wage slaves with medium/high incomes who will (a) invest over a long time and (b) don't need the money for a long time and (c) want/need a tax deduction.
If you started investing early enough you might have enough money built up that waiting until traditional retirement age to get at it was a big disadvantage.
From his essay:
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work--and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs--they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The Virtue of Idleness
> What I wished I had known:
Sex
Girls want it as bad as guys do.
Time spent on the clit has a great ROI.
17yo's are best, but you've got to collect it before you're 18.
The guys that brag the most aren't really getting any.
If a man catches you bonking his daughter you might as well keep on humping, 'cause he's going to be madder than hell anyway.
Santa Claus is gay.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And they are the same ones who will leave you horrible code, because they learned from web examples instead of a solid base. (real life case: mantain legacy app created by self-taught genius: a few thousands of lines of java, in ONE CLASS, with scores of static fields and static methods)
My point? The skills you say are the property of the self-taught can be taught. At my school, we get battered with two solid years of advanced math and physics (it's an engineering school, after a common base of math-physics-and-spices you go to your area of interest, be it CS or structural engineering or pure math or chemical engineering or whatever) that teach you how to approach problems. In this market, the alumni of my school are known for just the traits you describe (pick up things easily, not afraid of unorthodox solutions, etc.)
Sorry, my experience with self-taught people isn't as good as yours :)
Eminem computer scientist?
All your Sybase are belong to us.
During HS, I worked really hard at a couple of part time jobs and saved most of that money, rather than spending it on silly things. At the age of 16, I was already saving for my first house down payment, and at 18, began funding IRA contributions. I went from living with the folks to owning a home (never a renter) because I managed that money well. I was also lucky enough to benefit from a top-notch public school education - people still compliment my vocabulary.
It really depends on what you want to do.
If you want to be a writer, say, just about the only thing a formal education can give you is an understanding of grammar and spelling. (/.ers, take note.) You do need this. After that, though, the way to learn to be a writer is by writing; also by reading, because editors (and readers) can always spot a manuscript written by someone who hasn't read very much. They tend to be cliche-ridden, among other flaws, because if you haven't read a lot, you won't know what everyone else has done before you. Writing, in short, is learned by watching and by doing. I suspect that this generalizes to other arts.
On the other extreme, if you want to be a scientist, well, if you think you're going to learn enough about any scientific field to make a meaningful contribution to the human body of knowledge in that area without a formal education, you're insane. This has generally been the case throughout history (contrary to legend, both Newton and Einstein had rigorous formal educations) but it's even more true now, for the simple reason that most of the science that can be done by gifted amateurs has already been done. We know a lot about the way the universe works, and you have to know what we already know before you can add new knowledge into the mix. The romantic image of the lone amateur working away on some brilliant new conception of the universe that has so far eluded all those smart-ass PhD's with their books and fancy papers may be appealing, but the truth of the matter is, if that's the mold you try to fit, you're most likely to end up like these guys.
Most other fields are somewhere in between. There are a lot of successful businessmen with lots of formal education, and others without. Skilled trades, as mentioned by the GP poster, are largely learned on the job -- but they also have a rigorous and largely formalized system of education within the trade; "apprentice", "journeyman", and "master" are words with well-understood meanings, and if you want to make your living as a plumber or electrician or carpenter you'd best understand them. Programming (to bring the discussion home) is also in between. There are a few self-taught genius hackers out there, but there are a lot more self-taught people who think they're genius hackers but whose code is absolute garbage. Etc.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
directly out of high school. Get a job washing dishes, building houses, or some other hard manual labor. Work and party your ass off, and when you get sick of that and will take school seriously, enroll in college.
And pay for it yourself. You'll appreciate it much more.
"He hated Mexicans, and he was half Mexican. AND he hated irony!"
.. I wish I was as smart as him.
Oh, wait...
Kidding aside, this is powerful stuff. I prefer the sort of biographies James Burke does in ecxplaining history - you realize things aren't as cut and dried and holy as they seem.
I constantly tell my students and teachers that if they don't pay attention, when they get to college they'll realize what a piece of cake HS was, in grad school they'll realize how much easier undergrad was, when they get a job they'll long for the days of grad school, etc... but if they push and act like a demanding comsumer, each experience can be the best prep they can get for the next.
Demand. One of my former students who's now at CMU Robotics came back to present to current students - he showed off some of his work but then got to the heart of it - never let your teachers off the hook. If they give you a textbook answer, press them. If they say they don't know, the next thing out of their or your mouth should be 'let's find out how to find out'... Never take no for an answer from someone in charge of your future. The late Paul Brandwein used to talk about how ENcouraging students literally means increasing their courage, and DIScouraging students only serves to literally decrease their courage. You want courageous students (OK - hopefully just short of trying out for "Jackass" - but it's their skeletal system...) who truly believe they can make a difference.
I sat thru so many college courses taight by people who were a chapter ahead of us and considered themselves the World's Foremost Authority... During the 80s I could tell my computer students that the mass market software they were seeing was being done by people who had 6 months lead time and a stack of books that you too could buy. I referred them to ads asking for people with 5 years experience on technologies that were 5 years old.
The ones who saw thru the hype and had the courage and believed have done amazing things at all levels - from raising amazing kids to inventing things to changing a small corner of the world.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And in the end, it's social skills that really help in adult life.
I agree 100% but I also disagree 100% that high-school is the proper environment to learn these skills.
High-school is nothing more than a popularity contest/fashion show. If you are supposed to learn social skills please explain to me how you can apply those to the real world where no one worth a damn gives a flying rats ass what you wear and who you hang out with?
My suggestion is to just suffer through the shithole that is known as "high-school" and welcome your new-found freedoms in the real world.
The best high school convocation speech I know of was given by Guy Kawasaki at Palo Alto High School in 1995 (no I wasn't there). I dig it out occasionally to read it. http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=%22guy+kawasak i%22+palo+alto+high+school/
Live fast, die young, and leave a fucking beautiful corpse.
Look at the statistics. People who get college degrees do much better financially in life.
I've looked at the stats - people who go to college do better, but it doesn't matter much where they go, so long as it's at least decent.
The problem is that not everybody is suited to college, nor should they be - if it isn't for you (and that's your choice), then there's still quite a bit of opportunity. For instance, you could join a trade. The world needs ditch diggers, but it also needs plumbers.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I think there are two types of self-taught people.
Type one are the morons who think because they can code they are programmers. They don't know the theory. All they can do is code.
Type two are the truly dedicated self-taught people. They know how to code in more than one language, they know the theory, they know the answer to the question of "Why?".
Everyone know's its Football.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
you'll never learn in school.
How to work with people you don't like to accomplish a goal you both have to complete.
Once you've mastered that, the work place is easy.
Well you're obviously NOT A JEW.
You cannot succeed unless you attend class. Don't think that when you get to college or the real world you can succeed by not showing up just because you don't have to. It doesn't work like that.
That's true in a lot of cases, but not for Computer Science students. What teachers show us in some theory classes can be self taught at home, at the library or at a computer lab using the dozens of available textbooks.
What I do is ask the teacher what he'll be covering up in the following classes so I'll know if I have to attend or not. Then again, that's in the case that you have a cool teacher who got to know you and how you work best and luckily for me, I've had teachers like that in programming classes.
when you're 16 and you have no direction in life its easy to lose yourself in drug and alchohol abuse.
when you're in highschool it seems like that all that matters is being popular and getting laid.
people party, get drunk and get high but seem to forget that after those wonderfull highschool years there's an entire life ahead.
In around 35 years noone is gonna care that you had sex with julia, head of the cheerleading team, all theyre gonna care about is that you have a decent income a big SUV and a house a decent mortage rates
Eminent computer scientist, author, painter, and dot-com millionaire, Paul Graham...
Book recap:
Step 1: Develop rudimentary knowledge of programming.
Step 2: Travel back to 1994 in a time machine.
Step 3: Develop DOT-COM business
Step 4: Sell business in 1999.
Step 5: Fill millionaire lifestyle with useless hobbies like painting.
I wish somebody had told me the sad reality of how many morons have graduate degrees. I know a graduate of Harvard Law that is such a dunce that sometimes I wonder how he manages to continue breathing. When I was in High School, I was overly impressed with the educated--but it was years before I realized the (occasionally) stark contrast between an educated person and an intelligent person. I also wish that more critical thinking was taught in High School. My wife and I are trying to remedy that with our kids, but I think that the way public education (at least here in the U.S.) is going, we're going to be stuck with mindless cowboys in office for years to come. It seems like the 60s mentality of not trusting anyone over 30--or at least questioning what leaders and teachers tell us is dying out. Case in point: Why do so many people actually believe that the Iraq war was about bringing democracy to the people of Iraq?
i always love his essays. This one was quite inspiring.
Surely this applies to any school.
By sending your kid to any school rather than sitting them in front of junk TV you are improving their chances of getting into college. That doesn't prove that the system can be 'hacked', unless you class giving your child some form of education is 'hacking the system'.
Yeah, but that's part of what I had in mind. When I say, "don't worry about what people think of you, in fact, embarrass yourself," I guess I mean, "don't be shy". And I say this particularly because high school is a good time to be experimenting with your social skills in a low-risk environment. Worst case scenario: if you mess up and make a fool of yourself, it'll just be a funny story about a stupid thing you did in high school.
QUOTE : Advice is a way to make you feel better about yourself by pretending that other people care about your opinions. [Pop Song - Sunblok 1999] (Full lyrics follow)
When I was in high school I didn't particularly want to be told anything else by anybody. I didn't believe that everyone in class needed the same advice - and I still don't.
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a fo
What retarded bullshit. All the people who told me that school is useless are making $15-$20 an hour at menial jobs, whereas I can't even GET a job. A BSc in Computer Science is worthless now (unless you count the student loans I needed to pay for it, in which case the degree is $40000 disaster). I wish I'd listened to those people, and just dropped out of grade 11 and gone to work at a mill.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
1. Your teacher isn't supposed to tell you to stay after class, and lay naked on the desk while she spanks you with a yardstick as you recite the alphabet with an apple in your mouth.
2. Don't drop the soap in the shower after Gym.
3. If you don't get lucky by senior year: become a computer programmer.
4. Sex with the lunch lady doesn't count for #3.
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."
1) You don't get points for carrying a stick up your ass.
2) Girls don't give a sh*t if you're good at calculus.
3) Most of your friends, aren't. So stick by those who really are.
Not regret, it's useless. It only serves as a warning that it should be avoided in the future. It uses its' sidekick, embarrassment, to keep you from trying things you want to do, but are afraid to fail at. Embarrassment is overrated, it fades over time and can even become a source of humor, but regret stays forever.
Though maybe the only way to learn it is the hard way, what I wish I'd known is that you will never regret failing at something, you will only regret not having tried in the first place.
When posting in "Plain Old Text" mode, you don't have to include the entire URL in between the <a href=""> and </a> structures.. you can put whatever text you want in between the "> and </a>. That text will become the clickable text.
n drome/a/041003.htm">this</a>.
like <a href="http://rarediseases.about.com/cs/aspergersy
HTH
Become god.
I can't believe so many here are "achievers" or wannabe billionaires. Oh, that's right. You're Americans.
"Look at the statistics. People who get college degrees do much better financially in life."
The fact is that there are too many people with degrees to make any use of those statistics.
In any case, ask 50 of the people you know who have college degrees, are they doing anything related to their degree? I bet 5 might be, 10 is an outside chance.
"thirty is the new twenty"
I was just tought "fifty is the new thirty", now I wonder if this is substractive.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
1- Stay upwind
2- ???
3- Profit!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Wow, it's almost as if school is more accessible to wealthier demographics.
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
"High-school is nothing more than a popularity contest/fashion show. If you are supposed to learn social skills please explain to me how you can apply those to the real world where no one worth a damn gives a flying rats ass what you wear and who you hang out with?"
They don't? Really? Do you realize just how many assumptions people make based on your appearance (which includes clothing and the way in which you carry yourself), the group of people they may see you with at the time, etc? And all of this is before you ever get a chance to open your mouth.
That's not to mention dealing with people after you open your mouth (and a lot of people still have high school-like traits even into their advanced years).
Welcome to the real world. You don't have to wear Armani, but looking nice is usually a big plus as is being able to read your audiance.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
That's morbid.
And no, you're not going to Heaven. nobody is. When those neurons stop firing, it's over- quit hiding from it. How about you enjoy the brief few years between now and then? Instead of just accepting some Semitic goat-herder's doublethink (he's god! he's man! he's both!), and boring the rest of us with that particularly inane drivel that is quoting the bible.
So...uh...what you're telling me is, um, that...like...I shouldn't have done, you know...drugs? And stuff? In high school?
What a drag, dude. I thought I was, you know, going to a higher plane of, uh...existance. And stuff.
Yeah.
Congratulations on stating a useless generality. In my overly general opinion, self taught people are not team players, too self absorbed, and unable to accept useful criticism. They also don't have enough follow through to finish tedious, time consuming tasks, and can't succeed in a structured environment.
Now I could continue blathering on about the other things some self taught people do, or we could just admit that both of our statements are hogwash, and that self taught people run the gamut just like EVERYONE else.
I love to buttfuck Jesus every night - he screams like a little girl.
I actually did all the stuff Graham describes, and I did it without becoming a nerd. However, in hindsight, I would have spent my free time having more sex. Much, much more sex. I took college level math & science courses starting at 12yrs old. I got into Big Ivy League Schools (but couldn't afford to go). I'm now finishing my PhD. And the only thing I regret from high school and college is not nailing more chicks. The academic stuff turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. Academically, high school is completely worthless, but it does teach important lessons in how to get along with others. My advice to smart high school kids is to do well enough, keep yourself busy, and learn to pick up girls. High school girls are by far the easiest.
...that life is all about the NOW and not so much about the FUTURE - I would have soaked up more experiences and would have just plain "lived" more instead of dutifuly sacrificing the "now" for some idea of a better "tomorrow". Married with kids and a succesfull IT career - these were not my plans for "tomorrow" they happend because at the time it seemed the right thing to do. Life in general is a random sequence of events - learning to suck out the best of that randomness "now" is the best thing that's happened to me - too bad I had to wait till my 30s.
Who says you have to start a family when you get to a certain age, or ever? The world doesn't need more kids. If you see family as a responsibility that sucks, then please do yourself and everyone else a favor and don't start one. You can marry someone who feels the same way, think "childfree". Then you no longer have to limit all your fun time-wasting things to your youth. I am very very glad I did not buy into the must-breed mentality, I would go nuts with no free time to goof off.
Welcome to the real world. You don't have to wear Armani, but looking nice is usually a big plus as is being able to read your audiance.
I wear jeans and sweatshirts to work. I do my job. The work gets done. Its obvious that those before me did not get their work done.
If my superiors are concerned with how I dress and not how much I get done then they are the ones that need to go back and relearn their "social skills".
I was never aware that "social skills" had anything to do with fashion. Thanks for proving me wrong.
Who said I was trolling? You are trying to compare the salaries of those that do and not not go to college. Maybe you should try comparing the fact that without a college degree your more likely to be doing labour jobs where with a college degree you are going to be doing office jobs. Nothing like busting my back every day for a 30K/year salary without a degree compared to sitting in a nice office making 70k/year with a degree.
This arguement even use to work in the tech industry. "You don't need a college degree to become a programmer" was the old saying. Go try finding a tech job (in the US) without at least a bachelors in CS or MIS. You are thrown out the door.
I strongly recommend you reading Education Pays 2004 before you come on here telling the slashdot world that a college education is not worth it. What is funny is that you just look at the money made after, and not even the social experience of college.
Maybe we need to upgrade that slogan? "The world needs burger flippers too"
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Wouldn't matter if you were told anyway...because chances are on most things you WERE told. Maturity/wisdom is not "knowing stuff"...it's using what you know. This doesn't mean you have to experience things for yourself necessarily...you just have to have the maturity to understand the importance of knowing truth when people tell it to you and applying it.
I didn't like all of my professors, teachers, and classmates, but I learned to benefit from my relationships with them anyways.
"What you'll wish you had known when you were 37"
I can't even imagine having made it through high school without having interesting side projects of my own... that's just dumb. If you don't have projects or interests, and you don't enjoy life, then there's not much anyone can say to help you.
stuff |
There are some incredible talent among the self-taught to be sure, but I would not say that it is always the case that the self taught person is the best person at a given skill. It takes a certain kind of intelligence to be a good at something you've taught yourself. You have to have a natural ability in the subject and a mind open to possibilities. Not all people think the right way--some people need a direction to get started before they thrive. Furthermore, those who are good self-teachers are not always good at everything they do.
For example, I can teach myself to program in a new computer language or how to fix my car with relative ease, but when it comes to cooking I am competent enough but if I haven't cooked something before I need the help of a recipe book and advice/assistance from someone who is acutally good at cooking.
When you stop and think about it, however, the best of the self-taught aren't really self-taught at all--they are merely informally educated. If you merely learn the basics and guess at the rest, finding the optimal solution can only be done out of luck. I'd venture to say that what it takes 4 years to learn in university might take 8 or more to learn yourself were you to be short of mentors and lacked that thirst for information.
I'll use an example I've used numerous times before: Two of the most famous achievenents by self-taught electronics engineers are the Apple II and the original Apple Mac. Steve Wozniak was not formally educated in microprocessor systems design--indeed the field was in its infancy and few people really were. However, he had a passion for electronics and surrounded himself with experts and other passionate people, so it is difficult to say he was "self" taught in that case. He lived in the hotbed of activity, soaked up information from books, magazines and friends, attended homebrew meetings and so on. This passion and a competitive spirit amongst homebrewers in addition to Woz's natural abilities resulted in the very efficient, elegant and inexpensive design of the Apple I and II computers. In subsequent years, Burell Smith exhibited the same passion and thirst for knowledge--he started by repairing Apple II circuit boards and while doing that and soaking up everything he could from his mentor Woz, got to know the Apple II better than anyone else (I believe it was Smith who wrote the devinitive bible on Apple II hardware). Eventually, he ended heading up the degign of the Mac hardware. Again, Smith was also more "informally" taught than "Self" taught.
Overall, I'd say that quite often the best RESULTS are from self-taught people, but you get things done MORE EFFICIENTLY and quickly from a formally educated person.
Pretty much the same advice as "Everybody's Free to Use Sunscreen", except the former has a geekier feel. Understandable why it might be more appealing to the /. crowd...
The Idler magazine
The Idler's Companion
How To be Idle
Why work? Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery
What is a Wage Slave?
The Right To Be Lazy
In praise of Idleness
Historical Context of the Work Ethic
Anxiety Culture
Importance of Living
In the end advice belongs to someone else.
I was told years ago by some close family members that I shouldn't devote myself full time to writing even though that was what I dreamed of doing. It sounded supremely logical so I went into the IT industry.
One of my closest friends shared the dream to be a writer but he ignored all his detractors and sacrificed years to make his dream come true.
Now we're both in our mid thirties. He's now a much better writer than I and is on the staff of an A list sitcom doing what he loves and making a great living. I, on the other hand, have given up on a career that has done nothing but given me a paycheck and made my hair turn grey. Where to now? I don't know.
This is not to say that I would have been a successful tv writer. It's just that I'll probably never know.
In the end advice belongs to someone else.
Nothing like busting my back every day for a 30K/year salary without a degree compared to sitting in a nice office making 70k/year with a degree.
Hell, I'd rather sit in a nice office making 30k a year than busting my back for the same amount.
I wish I had known everything I know now so that I could have wasted even more time.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Friends
I wish I had made more friends while in highschool / college. Instead i spent too much time alone. Either studying, playing videogames or chatting on irc. And now that I want to make new friends, I CAN'T. I work fulltime.
So, make sure you make friends in college. It might be your last chance.
I disagree with the willingness to expiriment and self-motivate being teachable - they're something that people either have or don't have. Someone who's (effectively) self-taught will neccesarily have them, but being a graduate certainly doesn't preclude it, either. One problem with being self-taught is the gaps in knowledge where you've never run into anything - I have trouble with the higher math involved in 3d programming, for example, and have considered taking some online or night classes to remedy that. But, to be fair again, the longer you're out of school the rustier your skills in areas you don't exercise will be. My calc is lousy cause I never formally learned it, but it's not really much worse than the guy next to me who hasn't used his in 10 years.
2. Learn from your mistakes as well as your successes.
I think that these will cover most of what high-schoolers will encounter. But I am an old fart. We didn't have the internet or cell phones, and had to listen to music on cassettes.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Stay engaged, be interested and interesting, do things that you do well and other people don't.
And above all, wave your arms over your head and spend 20 minutes lecturing what could be covered in one sentence.
I like the story of a college professor that brings out a large glass jar in front of a lecutre hall filled with young minds.
./classic.
He places what is most important in life (represented by large rocks) into the jar, family, health, etc.
He then places what is of lesser importance, job, prestige, etc. with smaller rocks.
He then even places things of no importance into the jar represented as sand.
He then whips out a can of beer and pours it into the seeminly "filled" jar.
Then then states that "There is always room for beer!"
This essay strikes me as having a very Eastern (particularly Zen and Taoist) angle. Graham acknowledges that students should be concerned not with what might happen in the future, but what can be done now.
His ideas of staying upwind smacks of Taoism and the idea that we should "go with the flow" instead of trying to fight against the current.
And, in particular, his thoughts on how work and play can actually be alike if it weren't for the fact that certain institutions like to drive those thoughts out of our heads, is very close to what Alan Watts was teaching in the 50s and 60s.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
Fashion is a part of social skills.
People tend to be more at ease with those they think are like themselves (dress similarly, act similarly, etc).
Move that level up or down in relation to the person viewing it and see how that changes the way the person deals with you. We're not just talking about on the job here, but about in life. (Life is much greater than just work. This seems to be something you are failing to see either accidentally or deliberately)
It's a pack mentality sort of thing. We're basically hard wired to be social creatures and appearance is a part of that.
By the way - you're welcome.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
"brxref
I think there needs to be a balance... I slacked through high school, I was smart enough not to have to study to slide by on a B average, which was fine for me. So I only got 1 math scholarship to go to college - I'm a geek, so no free ride football deal for me. I wasted college time (and money) with parties, started a family, had to drop out to support the family and now have a hard time getting a well paying job. Yes, we need ditch diggers and construction workers, but I'm lazy, I like to use my brain instead of my back.
I think the most important thing (and least taught) young people need to know is how to manage money. Buy now and pay later credit cards can drive one into debt very quickly. I wish I would have learned that lesson sooner.
hack a day
One thing I've noticed in theese advices is that they are written by either relly smart or really successful guys. What are their advice worth for one that isn't very far above the average in intellegence and will probably not be successful. (face it, not any high percentage gets to be millionaries)
I'd need more advice on how to get a good life as a mediocrity person, because that's probably what I are going to be.
I think that the author had it right in his speech... take Math over Economics, as it is an easier transition FROM math than TO math. I like his "upwind" theory...
Clearly, I was a math major undergrad.
On a daily basis, it is not the case that I directly use the information received during my study. Rarely do people rush up to me saying: quick--find this integral! (Nervously, they bob, back and forth from foot to foot, awaiting the result... Foolishly, they offer advice... "I think that it is integration by parts," or "Do you have the limits right?"... Ok, I can dream, but it has yet to happen.)
What *has* happened is that in learning higher maths, I learned, well, how to learn. If you can wrap your head around limit theory, group theory, and complex variables, then the latest Programming Flavor of the Month(tm) will not throw you for a loop.
Having learned math gives you the perspective on learning new, complex things. On a side note, it also lets you make order-of-magnitude guesses at things people are trying to calculate that, if you are close, make you look like "boy genius."
But that's just my opinion.
--
wwjd? jwrtfm!
For the other 99% of us, work is something we have to do. I for one, am glad that I relatively enjoy my work, get ample time off, and a six digit salary. True, I'd rather do nothing at all, but those dollar signs (and the fact that I need to eat) make me look the other way.
Most of the people you graduate with, no matter how popular/smart/wonderful they were in high-school will probably be completely worthless in college.
My brother, a mechanical engineer, has observed that those with the most money in his neighborhood own "everyday" businesses, such as dry-cleaning and pool-sweaping businesses. They started out doing the labor themselves, but now manage others who do the actual labor.
Perhaps it is boring, at least to us, but this seems the better road to success than trying to be a cubicle genius.
Table-ized A.I.
you were told all this stuff..... you didn't listen
As someone who's been in the sceince field for about 10 years now...
I think science is a really interesting mix of formal training and being 'self taught'. You gain the basis of learning from school, but that generally doesn't cover the scope of what you'll be researching once you're out of school.
I know that my formal education mearly gave me the vocabulary and the beginnings of the methodologies neccesary to work in the field. After getting past the basics, you tend to learn by teaching yourself - reading papers, doing research, discourse with other scientists.
Perhaps this is what seperates the people who work at some level of what is essentially a lab tech (think: the hands) from the people that move on to being an investigator or manager (the brains.) Everyone gets the basics, but only certain people are driven enough to spend the rest of their lives extending their knowledge.
How can anyone treat prison as a "day job"? Forced attendance is the one lesson that government schooling teaches. Submission to arbitrary authority.
Funded at gun point, attended under threat of death, infested with ignorant toadies who know better how to kiss butt than teach, endless failures. The incentive for teachers isn't successful teaching, it's simple attendance just like the inmates. Colleges are in dire straights trying to teach "remedial" everything.
Why is anyone surprised when there is violence in a "school"? Violence is the very foundation of the "public school".
What few quality teachers exist would get hired at decent salaries in an instant if the government forced day-prisons were closed. Rather than having a hundred layers of pointless bureaucracy to pay for, from numerous secretaries and vice principals to a Federal Cabinet level department, all that vast money will be available to the people themselves to fund whatever schooling they prefer.
Unlike the forced prison camps, disruptive students will simply be dismissed. There is no reason to tollerate bullies, if there is nothing forcing someone to be there in the first place. Many, many problems which prevent actual teaching are eliminated in one simple step.
Separate school and state. Now.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Still doing that today, albeit with a far better income and a great family.
What would I want the teenage Me to know? That it'll all be just fine.
What else need be said?
-Tom
Return On Investment. i.e. You will be well rewarded for it.
I wish I'd spent more time getting laid and less time geeking out on the god damn computer.
Lots of people gave me lots of advice, lots of people told me things that "you'll wish you'd known this later".....and I listened to virtually none of it.
I wish I'd known that a lot of it actually *was* worth paying attention to.
http://instantbadger.blogspot.com
Edison contributed very little, his staff however contributed hugely and have never been given the credit.
Expensive colleges place too much emphasis on specialization, at least thats what I've seen. I went to a small state liberal arts college and got a BFA in photography and digital media. I feel that my education in art was lacking compared to folks who went to more expensive schools, however I feel I have a better grasp of the liberal arts in general than most of those I've me with expensive art degrees. Maybe it's just me, but I think the school makes a diference too.
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
Buddy, roll over and die already. If there's no purpose to life then why live in the first place? I certainly hope your nihilist beliefs aren't passed onto the next generation.
The whole purpose of this article wasn't to create robots (it actually says don't be a worker robot), but to motivate people into a direction that will eventually provide a fulfilling career, one where as an adult they can get up every day feeling life is fresh and new. The message is pretty simple: do stuff because you find it fun and challenging, not because you need to fit better into some existing mold.
Here's a neat truth: there's a very good chance neither you nor I will be remembered 1000 years from now. Should I be so overwhelmed by my own mortality that I can't enjoy myself past the time of realizing this? No way. Don't go chasing some childhood innocence either, time will move on with or without you.
Don't motivate squandering, you can work at something and enjoy it, even that guy from Office Space found his calling.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
It almost like going to college has more to do with "learning to learn" & maturing than getting a degree. Do you think, perhaps, most folks right out of high-school aren't ready for the responsibilities of life & couldn't teach themselves anything without external motivation?
I have TONS of things I wish I had done differently. But if someone (even myself) went back in a time machine and talked to me, I would have told you to screw off. After all, I was 18 years old, full of testosterone, and the smartest, hottest thing in the world. I wouldn't have listened, and even if I would have, it wouldn't have been the same.
I like what happened later. I learned from my mistakes. I learned a LOT. Freshman year of college was a huge learning experience for me, and even though I had my fair share of bumps in the road, had someone just handed me the book on how I like to be me, it wouldn't have developed me fully.
So learn from your own experiences - but learn quickly and don't waste too much time getting there. I could rant on and on about what you should and shouldn't do in college (actually there aren't many things you SHOULDN'T do :) -- but you will have to figure it out yourself for the best possible experience.
Berto
Happiness is the competent exercise of rational powers in a life affording them proper scope, according to Aristotle (and some others.)
As usual Graham produces an interesting and insightful essay. My question: has anyone written this for the soon-to-be college graduate, instead of the highschooler?
He had lots of good points, but overall it was a poorly organized and written article.
And what high school student would even understand terms like "orthogonal vector"??
Just to add to the list, I wish I'd known not to be afraid to be different. I spent way too much time trying to fit in and be someone I wasn't, and not being very good at it. I started to be a lot more happy (and financial successful) when I gave up trying to please my parents, etc. and worked on being the best possible me.
When my sons get to high school age there are two things I want to tell them:
1.) When you don't understand something that should bother you, and you should try to find out the answer.
2.) Being a geek is cool.
3.) Be true to yourself, don't try to be something you're not in order to impress people.
the "where do the little children come from" thingie. :)
Thus related, I suppose, are the problems of some of the people reading / posting there
If I may respond with my take on your notes
People
True, while most people may not go to or graduate from college, but they settle down in the locale where they grew up (and this trend depends largely if you live in an urban or rural area), it is good to know people and keep contacts. You never know when the high-school slacker who decided to work in his dad's garage fixing cars can save you a couple of grand by doing your transmission job for free!
Class
Go to class. If you have to choose between doing homework and going to class - go to class. Each person is different, but from my experience, you learn more in class (at the very least you will know what the teacher wants you to know which may vary from the book)
Depending what school a person went to, a person may have done reasonably well because HS is a joke compared to college. I know, I was awesome in HS (8th ranked) and when I got to college I was slammed.
College
College is very very important - it opens up doors. I interviewed at a bank for a job (while at college). I asked them if they had a tech position open, and they said the only position they had was the head of technology. I told them I was not qualified (at the very least i could not give them full time hours) but I had a friend who is amazing at computers. Their first question: did he graduate college (degree type didn't matter to them)...I said no, and they said that they required all higher level management to have degree's of some kind to even be considered. College is no waste of time.
You mention you get a job, you get money and you have fun - but in the end it is not worth it? If those three things combined are note worth it, what qualifies for being "worth it"? I think a combination of good job, good money, and fun are great for life. You say in the end it isn't really worth it...are you at the end? I have a good friend who is 43, making six digit salary in the tech field (VP at his company) but he would love to have a college degree for pride's sake.
I agree, a person should go to college because they want to - not because someone else wanted them to; though some parental pressure is needed to push an 18 year old who may not know what they want out of life...better to be at college then at home playing games all day in your parents basement.
Wasting Time
I highly disagree - I have plenty of time to waste, before and after done college. When I was at college - i had my web design company (15 hours a week), working part-time at a bank (30 hours a week), full time classes (15 credit hours + 10 hours studying) and still had time to waste on a girlfriend, going out to parties, going on trips, etc. Everyone has time if they choose to acknowledge it. I take it back, I know one person who rarely has time (my friend mentioned in the above post) because his company has him travelling 90% of the year. Now that I am finished college, I have a full-time salaried job (that sometimes requires nights and weekends if an emergency happens) and I have SOOOO much time.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I strongly disagree. While just having fun is fine, too much of it is a definite waste.
As an example, one of the young men in my church youth group graduated from high school last year and since has spent about 8 hours a day playing the Xbox.
That is a waste of time, and a waste of life. It's too much. It is completely unproductive and I have a hard time imagining the circumstance where he won't regret that later in life.
No, he doesn't have to spend that time developing wealth or a career, but I'm quite certain later in life he'll regret not spending that time developing himself and relationships with others.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
It depends who you talk to. A savvy real estate investor can easily earn returns of 16% to 35% regularly, with less risk than the stock market. This is becuase you are doing fewer large transactions than a bunch of relatively tiny stock transactions. This is based on data and experience in some of Richard Kyosaki's books. Alas I have not had the capital to begin any level of investing myself to see how it plays out in my own experience.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
You obviously don't care (or know) what college can offer. It can be a lot more than preparation for a career. Have you heard of intellectual curiosity?
This paper might be too long for some teenage attention spans :-) ... but good advice.
:-) is to go for lower paying careers that you really like. I sort of practice what I preach: for the last 30 years working as a software developer, I have averaged about 32 hours of work a week - I love what I do, but I have always needed lots of sailing time, beach time, hiking time, etc. Until the last 6 years when I have mostly worked as a consultant except I have for the most part worked at corporations in a "full time" job, but always made the deal to work just 32 hours and get 80% of my pay (but full fringe benefits). Always worked for me.
Whenever I talk to people of high school or college age, I always advise to *not* go into a field just to make money. There is nothing wrong with making money, but most successful (definition: happy people, people who help others and have a good social network, etc.) people dosomething that they have some passion for. My advice (which I love to give
In this new economy where workers in the US *must* compete globally for value given to employers for each dollar earned, I think that it is more important than ever to have work that you have some real passion for and to strive to be in the top 5% of what you do.
BTW, after programming professionally for more than 30 years, I still love it!
-Mark
So wrong on some points. If you have any hope of succeeding in highly educated fields where true high paying salaries exist, you must begin your plan in high school.
You have to study hard, learn what your taught and do well on standardized exams like the ACT/SAT. This enables you to enroll in highly selective colleges and receive grants. This makes college easier as you aren't worrying about money as much and whether you are actually getting a good education at a location with a good reputation. Which THEN allows you to get into postgraduate programs, which THEN allows you to get positions at the top of your field.
Waiting until you get to college to figure this out places you years behind those who have taken the course above.
ITs not important if you are viewed as a geek or a nerd in school. Who cares??? Stand up for your individuality, be proud that you like to study and get good grades. You won't be the one cleaning latrines, you will be the one designing them, managing the companies, treating illness etc.
But do they use ugly neologisms like "skillset"?
That the reason I did reasonably well in high-school with very little outside work was because I went to class. Even if I slept through some of it I was taking it all in. You cannot succeed unless you attend class. Don't think that when you get to college or the real world you can succeed by not showing up just because you don't have to. It doesn't work like that.
... go ... to ... every ... class' mantra.
:-) but I didn't sweat missing an occasional lecture because I wanted to study another subject, or sleep in, or have lunch with my wife.
Au contraire, it does work like that.
At some point, if you want to do anything worthwhile, you simply must acquire the ability to learn independently. And IMO, the sooner you cut the umbilical cord and make learn-by-yourself more important than learn-by-lecture, the better. The directed learning you get in a lecture is one way to grow, but I've found that the people who really, truly excel are the ones who aren't shackled by the silly 'must
As an undergrad, I found that good syllabi and note-taking services were better than most lectures. In my third year, I just paid for notes to all of my classes and quit going altogether. This pissed off a few of my professors, especially in the smaller classes, but so what? I would have dropped out completely if it weren't for the fact that I couldn't even apply to medical school without a degree.
All told, I attended perhaps 40% of the lectures at my university, though I never missed a lab session or small discussion group. I knew many people who did the same. In medical school, my attendance went up
Independent learning is a skill - perhaps the most important one anybody can ever acquire - and it isn't learned in lectures.
High-school is nothing more than a popularity contest/fashion show. If you are supposed to learn social skills please explain to me how you can apply those to the real world where no one worth a damn gives a flying rats ass what you wear and who you hang out with?
Heh, which world do you live in? I actually used to think in high school that it doesn't matter what people wear and to a lesser degree who they hang out with. In reality, it matters a whole lot. Would you hire a person who came in for an interview in flip-flops and had ketchup stains on their wrinkled shirt?
Why didn't somebody tell me all those bong hits. . .
What were we talking about again?
Which is why I like the subject of your post - learn it all yourself. What works for you certainly doesn't work for me.
Berto
I used to think that.... then I had to maintain their code.
While a formal education doesn't make you smart, a lack of formal education doesn't make you smart either.
obligatory Oh La La Lyrics:
Poor old granddad
I laughed at all his words
I thought he was a bitter man
He spoke of women's ways
They'll trap you, then they use you
Before you even know
For love is blind and you're far too kind
Don't ever let it show
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger.
The can can's such a pretty show
They'll steal your heart away
But backstage, back on earth again
The dressing rooms are grey
They come on strong and it ain't too long
Before they make you feel a man
But love is blind and you soon will find
You're just a boy again
When you want her lips, you get a cheek
Makes you wonder where you are
If you want some more and she's fast asleep
Then she's twinkling with the stars.
Poor young grandson, there's nothing I can say
You'll have to learn, just like me
And that's the hardest way
Ooh la la
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This essay is helpful for me, years after finishing high school, college, and law school. It's a good reminder of how I got through school, and what I can do about the fact that where I am right now is boring the hell out of me.
Time passes far too quickly, responsibilities appear all too unexpectedly.
I *prize* the time I "wasted" in my late teens/early twenties. I travelled, I developed life-long hobbies. I tinkered with technology and developed new skill sets. I learned a lot about what true friendship was (and wasn't).
I may have "buckled down" a bit later than many, but when I did I cinched that buckle tighter than I would have if I hadn't had a chance to mature at my own pace.Few people grow old and regret the fun they had as a kid.
Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
my biggest regret from high school is what i did after it - attending university.
i'm a third year CSC student at the University of Toronto, and im sick of it. im confident i have the ability to perform well in the labour market, and i just want to work, and learn whatever i want to learn in my spare time, and stop swallowing all the junk that the University shoves down my throat.
I mean it's great for some people, especially those who want to move onto grad. school, but its not for me, and I realize that just now. There are some important things I've picked up, that I could have easily picked up from reading some books that I'd have found interesting, but otherwise, I don't enjoy being a CSC student, namely because U of T is mostly a theoretical computer science school, and im really just not into that.
the only reason i'm still in school is cuz i only have one more year, and would rather not blow the investment i poured in to the first 3 years.
so my biggest regret in high school was giving in to pressure from my family to attend University, as they are still so narrow-minded to think it will be only way for me to land a good job. boy, were they wrong.
Enjoy an e-piphany
This might surprise you, but I agree with you. Not on the part about what happens after death, but on enjoying life.
I'm sorry that you don't like me quoting the Bible, but I would just like to point out what it says about enjoying life: "Go, eat your bread in joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart" (Ecclesiastes 9:7) and "Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he [God] has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 9:9).
Yes, I agree with you. Go and enjoy those few years that we have here on earth. Do things that have an impact on others and spend time with your loved ones. Enjoy this wonderful world that we live in.
But what is fundamentally important (in my point of view) is whether we're prepared to face God after this life on earth. Time on earth is just a flash of a second. Time after earth is eternity.
If you're right, that the neurons just stop firing, then there's nothing to lose for both of us.
However, if the Bible is right, then it would be wise for the both of us to carefully consider how and where to spend eternity.
Wow. I formally request that somebody smart follow that first link and report back here, 'cause I'm just too dumb (apparently) to understand what that guy is trying to say. I don't even know the answer to the rhetorical questions, such as:
The second link is easier, as the great prophet (and ebay entrepreneur) Sollog only offers wisdom upon payment of a nominal fee.
The internet has sure made life easier. I used to have to go looking for mimeographed sheets* stapled to telephone poles to find this kind of stuff.
* Usually 8.5x14, printed on both sides, 8- or 10-point type, with ADDITIONAL material scrawled into the margins. I once found a TWO sheet screed in San Angelo, TX on how various corporate logos SECRET CONTAIN THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST, but that was a rare find.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I don't need some self-help book from some guy who's insecurity about his own mortality leads him to spew out a bunch of crap about wasting time.
Alright, now I think I'll go munch on doritos and space out for awhile...
High-school is nothing more than a popularity contest/fashion show.
I've got news for you - the rest of life isn't a whole lot different. I'll use my line of work (software engineering) for an example. Some people write great code and some people write mediocre code. Some people have great people skills and some don't. Say you've got two levels of Software Engineer - one mainly designs and writes code while the other deals more with clients. And say you have two employees. One dresses neatly and is comfortable dealing with people (you know - that thing that makes you "popular") while the other is disheveled and "nerdy" but writes better code. Which one do you give the job that deals with clients? And which job pays more? I'll give you a hint: the person that is popular will get more money. Is it fair? Regardless of fair, is it the way things are?
(For the record, I say it is fair because people skills are more in demand.)
Addlepated - punk & metal
that obeying managers is more important than doing your job properly or following pledged oaths.
that lawyers care about profit, not justice.
that gates would win.
>That's it? out off all the wonderful, amazing, things in this world? The fun and the heart-wrenching? All you can do is worry about what happens to wyou when you die? >That's morbid.
What part of his post gave you the impression that he was worried? The whole concept of Christianity is based on the belief that faith in Jesus is what saves your soul. You either believe or you don't. No need to worry. And there's no law that states Christians can't enjoy life.
>And no, you're not going to Heaven. nobody is. When those neurons stop firing, it's over- quit hiding from it. How about you enjoy the brief few years between now and then? > Instead of just accepting some Semitic goat-herder's doublethink (he's god! he's man! he's both!), and boring the rest of us with that particularly inane drivel that is quoting the > bible.
I assume you either have proof there is no heaven, or you have faith that there is no heaven. Otherwise, it would be illogical to sound so certain, right?
Having fun is relaxing, which improves your health, well-being & creativity.
If you can get paid for doing it, or learn stuff that will help you in life, all the better.
don't have kids.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Haven't met any Ivy League graduates, have you...
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
" well, if you think you're going to learn enough about any scientific field to make a meaningful contribution to the human body of knowledge in that area without a formal education, you're insane."
Not necessarily. It depends on the domain of interest you pick. If you pick a domain that has been well researched already sure its hard to make new discoveries. If you pick an emmerging science. something new, you might be able to make dicoveries just being self thaught.
Part of the genious of people who make discoveries is they have the creativity to come up with the next research field and they are good at orienting the choice of research they make. I believe they are the type of people who get exited at doing their own thing and not continuing work that has already been done.
Astrophysics is old. quite frankly I think you're not the smartest if you try to discover something there without education or if you go in that field "for the advancement of science".
New things that are emmerging lately are from artificial intelligence: social networks, semantic webs, natural language processing. I doubt Wikipedia, amazon.com, del.icio.us were all developped by PHds. These are all technologies that are making serious progress. Someone could find a new aproach to AI and considering the free/open ressources available on the internet (including scientific literature), it wouldn't have to be a PHd. You just have to be a little visionary an predict the next big thing. If you judge a domain is still in its infancy, it's the time to try to make a discovery in that domain.
If you want to be a writer, say, just about the only thing a formal education can give you is an understanding of grammar and spelling. (/.ers, take note.) You do need this. After that, though, the way to learn to be a writer is by writing; also by reading
The last part is backwards, you learn to be a writer by reading, reading, reading, and then writing.
Perhaps he got confused. If you turn a glider INTO the wind, you INCREASE airflow over the camber, thus GAINING lift. Please correct me if I'm wrong...
I wish I didn't skip class so much during 6th form college (16-18, dunno what the US equivalent is). I made some bad choices - didn't like the classes I chose, did the self-taught-because-we-don't-have-enough-teachers classes, ended up doing 5 classes instead of the average 3.5, doing 2 years of Electronics class in 6 months etc....
;-)
I ended up getting all E's and F's, coming from an average B at high school. I worked hard at high school, I enjoyed it, I wish I'd gotten off with more girls
I loved university, it was the best 3 years of my life, I also wish I'd given an extra 10% effort in the final year to get the 2.1 instead of the 2.2+
Don't let people tell you what you want to do (like parents, careers councilors etc.) as it's *essential* you enjoy what you're doing, or you won't succeed.
#include <sig.h>
... wear sunscreen. etc.
i wonder if his invitation to speak was vetoed after they read a draft of his speech. as much as i agree with what he says, i know for a fact that my high school administration would never have allowed that speech, even if he edited out the "objectionable word(s)"
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Get laid as much as possible, with as many different people as possible. It doesn't matter in the long run, and you'll have some great stuff to remember.
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
You know, in my country each year a quarter million (3.5 lakhs) of young people graduate as engineers (civil, mechanical .. you name it). But the actual no: of job vacancies is may be 1/10th of that amount. And the end result is largescale unemployment. And I know of just passed out engineers (having 4 year degrees ) working as sales personel for a pittance because they could'nt get a job in their area of work.
t tp://thoughts2005.blogspot.com
I think instead of churning out more and more college graduates, stress should be given to all round personal development and enterprenuership. Students should be encouraged to start their own enterprises - may be in small scale sector. And guidance should be given to help them in their cause. This is the only way to reduce this sort of glut in the education sector else it is bound to make all our lives less than peaceful in the long run.
Ravee
--
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com
h
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
I started college already knowing 95% of what was being taught in the first year and a half of programming classes. The only stuff I didn't know was how to map my internal terminology to the terminology everyone else used. I was self-taught and had learned many of those basic concepts not from books, but from experimentation and playing. For example, I already had made a tree structure once. But it used indeces into arrays instead of pointers since I had never encountered a language yet with pointers in it. (Although I knew what a pointer was from having used them in machine language, although I called them "address variables".) And I didn't know that it was called a "tree". I thought of it as a "that category grouping splitting thingy I did that kinda worked like one of those single-elimination tournament diagrams".
But then after that first year and a half, my grades took a nosedive. I had gotten really lazy and in the habit of barely paying attention to lessons. Then we finally started hitting the material I didn't already know and I didn't notice the change right away, and didn't adjust my habits.
Luckily I noticed quickly what was wrong (It only took one semester of a drop in grades for me to wake up and see it happening), so I started actually paying attention and the grades came back up.
And I noticed something else: That point where the material started getting harder was, not coincidentally, the same point at which the cross-major students stopped advancing further. I'm referring to students who are not going for computer science, but are taking a few 100 and 200 level programming classes as requirements for some other degree in business or education. Once the classes started being the type where ONLY compsci students were present, and the class sizes dropped dramaticly, and you were meeting in small classrooms instead of big pit classes, the material got a lot harder (and finally interesting).
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I think you are correct, but it's not because college is all that good. It's because high school is bad and doesn't finish the job it's supposed to do.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Tell me what I am trying to say here
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Going to a four-year college and getting a degree really isn't all that important anymore. Yeah, you get a job, yeah you get money, and yeah you have fun but honestly the pay off in the end really isn't all that worth it.
I'd say that having fun, having a decent job and having money are probably some of the most important things you can get. I'd say it's definitely worth it. I dropped out of college after the first year and now I'm stuck working in a dead-end factory job, probably for the rest of my life, which means I'll never have any fun or have any money. Compared to that, I'd say that college and a decent office job is the better option.
Also I think that four years of drinking/partying is better than four years rotting away in a filthy factory.
nanoforges
You should have gone to a better college.
In a perfect world, we'd all know then what we know now, but realistically, making mistakes and adapting to changing conditions are what gives us the most valuable insight and experience. I kind of feel that articles like this serve little purpose beyond mental masturbation.
Rather than ask yourself what you could have known then that you know now, you might ask yourself, what lessons did it take too long for you to learn? What are you involved in right now, that your own experience tells you is a bad situation that must be changed, and why the hell aren't you doing something about it? Those who live in the past ignore their future.
If I were in that situation, I wouldn't complain about the money, I'd complain about what they are doing wrong. Taking half their money away isn't going to solve the real problem.
Insteed work to identify what the problem is so that it can be fixed or at least partially dealt with. If you do that, then eventually the cost will drop to your $5000 a student and you can get you tax decreased or spent on something more productive.
I agree that more money usually isn't the answer to society's problems, but less money is never the answer, but it might be the result.
If they were honestly the best person for the job? Yes.
Oh, I agree with you; my point is that "the basics" cover a very large amount of information these days, and generally require a solid undergraduate education plus roughly the first half of a graduate program to master. You can read journals and talk to scientists all you want, but unless you have the coursework under your belt, you're probably not going to understand it, at least not well enough to be able to do research that will lead to significant new knowledge in the field.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I thought the last sentence in the footnotes was the most interesting. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they'd do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration. Getting all the high school students together to form a union would be awesome. Sure they can't vote, but they could have some influence via walkouts and donations to PACs.
Would you hire a person who came in for an interview in flip-flops and had ketchup stains on their wrinkled shirt?
I also wouldn't hire someone dressed in the latest high school fad outfit either.
Hell, I'd rather sit in a nice office making 30k a year than busting my back for the same amount.
I've done both, and while the desk job seems better, that's only our inherent human [laziness|efficiency] talking. I never felt crappier than when I spent 8 hours a day languishing under fluorescent lights, squinting at a flickering CRT, sitting in a back-ruining "ergonomic" chair. Now I spend 5-7 hours a day installing communication and data wiring and I've never felt better. I'm not making a LOT of money now, but I'm sure making more than I was at my desk job, plus it's a lot easier.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It's easier to adapt to living on more income than you have now than it is to learn to adapt to living on less income than you have now. Always.
So aim low, learn to live lean, to live well within your means.
It's not the American way, it's not what's popularized on TV with VISA cards, but it's the better way and you'll be much happier in the long run.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I'd complain about what they are doing wrong
Sure, me too! But if it was only $700/student (to cite the parent comment's example), not as many people would be looking at their tax bill at the same time they were complaining about the schools. Grossly out of line education expenses coupled with really lousy performance, though, invite serious scrutiny. If the system can be made to work as well as it does in other jurisdictions, then the $10k per student would make DC a giant magnet for more families. Or, if they can get their productivity, efficiency, and performance up, the ultimately lower tax bill will also draw people to the area.
You're right, though, that just taking away money (without any other recourse for the parents) won't help. Giving that same $10k to the parent so that they can go off to a private school (though, I really chafe at any of it going to religious institutions of any kind) would immediately help these poor students, who only have one shot, ever, at these formative years in their lives. We can't wait for politicians and teachers' unions, etc., to hammer something out. Entire crops of students are getting a turkey of an education, and the tax payers are paying for it now, and will pay for it again when those kids are grown up and have no prospects outside of crime.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I wish I knew how bad all the school cafeteria food was for you, and how much weight I'd gain eating it.
Think of it as a no risk way of learning the skils necessary to impress people after high school. Seriously, social skills shouldn't be ignored as something that needs to be developed and high school offers a great developement environment precisely because it's unfair.
> What I wished I had known:
Sex
This is the best advice someone could be given. Mods- make it +5!
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
And this is posted on /., where thousands of geeks are currently wasting time.
And That's the Way It Was
At the bottom of the paper is a list of URLs to old education videos at archive.org
For my Education Psychology class I had to do a research paper on motivation then and now. "The Drop Out" is especially good. The short version is that nothing has changed. The only "change" is the amount of education needed to succeed. In the video High School is enough but in todays society, college is needed. But why kids drop out is still the same.
The problem is the myth that things have changed and that "old" people don't understand what the kids are going through.
The most successful schools are those which address not only the educational needs of students but also the social development needs. "The Drop Out" was made 10 years earlier but virtually quotes the hierarchy of needs. So yes it is possible and a very good idea for the older generation to guide the younger generation without being a "know it all nanny" putting the students off.
Historically, it's only the counselors that have been taught this stuff. Now, all teachers are getting educated on how to work with students in social matters.
Work Safe Porn
Those popular kids are busy mastering the one skill that will apply to every aspect of their lives. Networking. If you don't think that's an important skill to learn..well...I don't really know what to say.
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Be careful not to confuse science with technology -- or technology with business. Amazon is basically just catalogue sales transfered to an electronic medium; it's certainly successful, and I'm glad it's there, but IMO it doesn't represent any grand technological innovation, much less a scientific discovery.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Warning! False dilemma!
You could spend the rest of your life studying nothing but algebra if you wanted to.
People
To say that your highschool friends will all be useless in the future is a gross generalization. If I had taken this advice 12 years ago I would be left without my closest group of friends right now. Everyone in this group has gone on to make something of their lives (engineering, accounting, journalism, software development, teaching, management, etc.) and continue to do other interesting things.
That being said, I do occassionally run across people that I knew from high school that are still doing the same minimum wage jobs they had when we graduated and they are unhappy about it (if they were happy, who cares). So maybe a better attempt at summarizing people would be to try and hang out with people who have hopes and dreams.
Wasting Time
I would have to say that at no time in your life are you 'wasting time' if you're doing something that you enjoy. If you enjoy playing video games, reading, watching TV, sports or whatever, you are not wasting your time.
Do what you have to do to get by (school, work, etc) and then take the rest of the time to do whatever the hell you want. If you want to do something, do it now... you might not be around to do it next year.
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Objects in Mirror are Losing!
Your "methodology" is every bit as error-prone as the one used by the programmer you describe if you think this is the mark of all self-taught programmers. It would be just as bad if concluded that everyone with a four-year degree writes as terribly as the article's author.
To the following:
1 14 32283
:)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=136822&cid=
One more thing to add: pay attention to what you're doing
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Objects in Mirror are Losing!
1. Your main advantage, taxes, are minimized...
No, the main advantage is time. A one time investment of $1000 at six percent made at age 40 will result in a $4465 nestegg by age 65. The same investment made at age 16 will result in a $18,780 nestegg.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Or if you went to a sufficiently lax college.
Personally, I did, although I did go to class and ended up making the best of it.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Don't measure success by whatever convienent rule exisit in you life.
In high-school I esteemed to be like the people in my day to day life. Most of them did not value education highly, worked in a job they disliked just to pay the bills, had no dreams or ambitions, they lived for hunting and sports, etc. They were lower middle class and they were happy with that. After high school I worked for a landscaping company that did a lot of work for wealthy clients. Just being exposed to the type of people that had made a better life for themselves opened my eyes. So I busted my butt in college for 6 years while supporting a family. Now I make good money doing a job I love. I have goals and I'm moving towards them. The people I went to high school with are working at Circuit City or trying to get a job using thier Sports Medicine and Business Administration degrees.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
Uncle Rico: How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?... Yeah... Coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would've been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.
Also, don't think that its necessarily a bad thing to go to a nontraditional 4 year school. I go to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, one of the top art schools in the country. Its a 4 year school, and I'm in their more business oriented program for advertising/marketing (omg, and i'm a privacy loving geek too! my head asplode!). When I first got there, all I could think about was "wow...if only I had gotten better grades I could have been somewhere else", which wasn't entirely true, I got into plenty of other places. But now that I'm a senior here, I wouldn't trade it for anything else. They bring in top people from the industry to teach, the networking possibilities are amazing, I've landed solid internships at top places because of it, and I've become extremely independant because they don't have a 24/7 cafeteria, the dorms are apartments with full kitchens, and you either learn to cook, microwave, or starve. Because of that I found a new passion in my life, cooking.
Also, this school is more "real world" based, which before I used to think was just a buzzword, but now I realize that when I started working with real clients on real projects from freshman year on, that it put me lightyears ahead of liberal arts students.
I know how to work in teams, large and small, how to handle clients, how to present, how to manage, and how to take on each of the roles my team might need. And it hasn't until I've actually gone out into the real world to look at possibilities that I've realized "holy crap, skillset and experience wise, these people (liberal arts students) have absolutely nothing on me". I can't even tell you how good a feeling that is when you're coming out of college in this economy.
So no, this whole post was not a pitch for my school, all I was saying is that you should consider different approaches, because not all of them are as crappy as you first might imagine. But as always, do your homework on the place.
Also, take care to remember that people from different walks of life develop different skills. And when you're coming out of college, you first start getting to that real point where you can start trusting the professional opinion of your more experienced peers because they might actually know for the first time in their lives what it is they're talking about. And while this post has been a bit of an egotistic one, you can be damn sure that if I ever get into a position where I have to build my team, I will take the advice of Charles Schwab and hire people who are much smarter than me in their respective areas. And I'm sure some of those people will inevitably be from liberal arts schools. Because what I have in experience and diversity of my skillset, they have in their focused skillset with a MUCH more in depth academic knowledge base than I have.
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Ahh, but you forgot "One-Click Shopping", the most important technological innovation of the century....
My mom tells me I was reading by the time I was 1 1/2. I would sit in a big cardboard box filled with books, and spend the day reading. I remember being 3 years old, talking to a neighbor of ours who was a nurse, and having long, involved, scientific discussions about the human body. Life seemed like a great big toy that just kept growing the more you worked to uncover it.
Then I entered kindergarten.
Holy CRAP, was I ever unprepared for that! Instantly, I found myself on the receiving end of insults and other cruelties, coming from all angles. It had never occurred to me that something like that would happen. I had no idea how to deal with it. Needless to say, I ended up spending far more time with books (and later, my chemistry set & then my computer) than with the kids my age. I was interested in learning about the world, and the vast majority of them only seemed to care about bullying other people, consuming commercial entertainment products, and breaking rules. Even the other "nerds" acted this way and treated me horribly. I did everything I could think of to solve the problem, which mostly consisted of trying to be more like them, and to share their interests. That never worked, not even once: it's like they saw me coming from a mile away and knew I wasn't one of them and never would be.
Elementary school, middle school, and high school were the same -- major social ostracism. (College was a little better, in that there were more people like me, but there was still a massive contingent of the thuggish types.) I could not for the life of me figure out why so many people chose to act this way. How could they attach so much importance to appearance and social status? How could anyone possibly care so much about meaningless things, especially when there was a huge and interesting world out there to be discovered?
The problem persisted once I was out of college and in the workforce, but there was a new wrinkle. The same thuggish types were now working alongside me, ostensibly with the same qualifications I had, but their focus wasn't on doing their job competently or striving to be better...it was on faking their way through their job, goofing off, and stealing from the company. Worst of all, if they found someone like me who, just by existing, proved that they were bad people, they would tend to employ every low-life tactic imaginable to ruin my life. Four times, it rose to the level of getting me fired. Only once, in my early 30s, did I actually succeed against the thuggish types -- nearly all the people I butted heads with decided to leave the company, and I ended up as project lead! True, the 2 or 3 of us left had to do all the work by ourselves, but at least it got done competently. Unfortunately, the executives at that company were as gullible as the day was long, and fell for every con artist that came down the pike, and even though I and my small team improved our product to the point of creaming our competitors, the business end of things collapsed and took us with it.
Then my industry was hit by the dot-com crash and the offshoring trend...getting fired four times didn't help me either. As of this writing, I've been unemployed for 2 years, I live in the spare room of my mom's house, and earn pittances anywhere I can -- fixing people's computers, "handyman" stuff, lots and lots of painting, and other grinding sorts of work. And that, for me, has been the final blow. Over the years, I've had to give up on popularity, on friendship, on happiness, and on hope, but at least I had my employability. Now that's gone. I worked my ass off and kept my nose clean, and have less to show for it that someone that spent their life partying. All I have left are my brains and integrity, and frankly, they don't appear to have any value in this world.
I've been reading a lot lately, catching up on the books that I bought but never read. Finally, I got around to reading Ayn Rand. I started by seeing the movie version of The Fountainhead, then I read Atlas
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
And they are the same ones who will leave you horrible code, because they learned from web examples instead of a solid base. (real life case: mantain legacy app created by self-taught genius: a few thousands of lines of java, in ONE CLASS, with scores of static fields and static methods)
Your generalization is wrong. More often the bad code comes from cream-fed doe-eyed neophytes out of college. The 'genius' you refer to was really a moron for thinking he/she can treat Java like C.
That's one thing that gets me, the people other people think are geniuses are most often not geniuses. A real genius, you can't mistake. They are rare.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
I disagree about not getting a 4-year degree. While in your twenties it may seem like the 2-year grads are doing better. They graduate earlier so start making money earlier and typically have competitive starting salaries.
For example, a roommate I had during college was 3 years younger than me and graduated from a tech school at the same time I graduated from college. At first we were both making about $45K, but in the past 6 years, I've nearly doubled my salary while his has stayed virtually unchanged. He's now going back to school to get a 4-year degree.
The other point to consider is that 4-year degrees and graduate degrees (which require the 4-year degree) become a virtual requirement at most larger companies when you want to make the move into management. And managment at large companies is where the real money is.
For those who didn't plan very well for life, like me. Who decided to live for the moment, somewhat recklessly (OK...sometimes *very* recklessly), in an adolescent haze of immaturity, here's some advice that might be useful.
:)
Tip 1: Unless you really have your heart set on it, don't get married or have kids. Hey, let's face it, you're kind of selfish, right? Marriage and child-rearing requires tons of personal sacrifice, not to mention the financial burdens. If you need sex, find a girlfriend and don't trust her for birth control (many women try to procure a hubby by getting knocked up after lying about being on birth control). Use a condom or pull out, spray and pray. If you get her prego and things get ugly, she'll sue for custody and child support. This will bring you get all of the financial burdens of marriage and family and none of the benefits (if you can claim marriage with kids *has* real benefits, which I don't).
Tip 2: Don't live beyond your means. Try your damnest to not get caught into the credit card prison, fuck up your credit rating and not be able to buy a home or condo. Keep your credit rating top shelf to proceed to Tip 3.
Tip 3: Buy a modest home or condo, choose a mortgage with the longest term (I have a 40 year loan...I know, it's rare, but they're out there). There are several benefits to this. It keeps your monthly payment very low, since your principal balance is spread out so thinly over time. This way, if you ever lose your job or have other financial challenges, having to fork over a lower amount each month may well save your ass (and home). It has for me on more than one occasion. Having a low monthly payment also allows you to make bigger payments and pay down your mortgage more quickly. This leads to Tip 4.
Tip 4: Do everything in your power to pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible. I can't stress this enough! Eat ramen noodles for five years or ten years if you have to, but put all your extra money in paying off your home or condo. That's why it was suggested to buy a very modest home or condo, one you could reasonable pay off quickly. If you are able to do this (I will accomplish this goal this year), you will have removed the biggest financial responsibility most people deal with in their adult lives. Not having to make a mortage payment will make a big difference in your life.
You will no longer have to take shitty or unfilling jobs, just because it's at an income level that will allow you to pay your rent or mortgage. With a paid off home and no credit card debt you can pursue any job or career that might pay shitty, but would be very personally fulfilling for you. Perhaps you want to be a full time stage actor, or a painter or poet, musician, mime, toad kisser...whatever. You won't be economically coerced into taking a job you don't want, just because it allows you to meet your monthly expenses. Or how about taking six or twelve months off to travel the world? Or a job or career that is very part-time or freelanced. When economic concerns are no longer a deciding factor, your possibilities really open up!
Well, I hope my two cents worth helps at least one lost soul, looking for guidance!
DOn't kid yourself. If like the vast majority of the people on this planet you plan on working for a company and hoping somebody gives you a raise or a promotion you MUST learn how to dress, hang around with the right people and kiss a lot of ass.
Popularity is extrememly important.
BTW looks are also very important. Study after study shows that good looking people do better then ugly people.
My advice to high schoolers, work out, get and keep a great body. Get plastic surgery if you need it. Learn to sidle up to the rich and powerful. Hang out where rich people hang out, learn their lingo, learn their likes and dislikes, learn their habit. Finally think of something that would be irresistable to them and start selling it.
During the recent recession the sales of luxury items went up. Last chrismas luxury items sold very well while retailers like walmart were disapointed.
Maybe it's cynical but it's true.
evil is as evil does
College is not necessary?
:-)
I'd beg to differ. I cannot talk for other areas, but I can tell you that unless you're a prodigy or some sort of genius, you cannot be a half decent scientist without the background that colleges provide.
More than anything, the resources and expertise that good colleges provide can seldom be matched.
There is a reason people put in so many years in their PhDs
*snort*
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I wish they would have taught us at school that alcohol is way worse on your health than marijuana. But of course they won't, alcohol is a multibillion dollar tax revenue whilst marijuana is not. Same goes for cigarrettes. Just proves to me that the blue-eyed phuktards that are running our country are either criminals,mentally retarded,or both.
There's no reason to conclude that someone cannot go to school and be self-taught. Anyone who says that probably didn't go to school and doesn't have a clue what they missed out on. When I was taking programming classes, the ones who did really well were the ones who already knew how to program. They were able to integrate the new knowledge with their old and become very skilled. Most of the innovators of the internet age (with a few notable exceptions) have been entrepreneurial graduate engineering students from schools like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, CalTech, etc.
This reminds me of a Utah Phillips story he tells about a talk he gave to elementary schoolers:
... so this is much better told than read.
"... And I got to the microphone and I looked out over that multitude of faces and I said something to the effect of: 'You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource... Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources? Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource... they're going to strip mine your soul... they're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist. 'Cause the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes a river crooked. Hmmmm...."
He also says "punctuation is no substitute for timing"
When I was a Senior in High School, we had recently finished building the main networked computer lab. We were bringing teachers in and showing it off to see if they could use it, etc, for their classes.
One of the best programs we had was "Green Globs", an old XT/CGA math "game" that had various exercises like putting 2-D scatter points on a 2-D graph and you'd figure out a single equation that would pass through all the points. More advanced levels would make you only use certain functions, or would introduce boundries you couldn't pass through (so you couldn't just create a super tight sine wave, etc)
So -every- Math teacher in the school was in the lab trying this program out, and I was there basically running everything. It was utterly fascinating. Despite the fact they were all college graduates, most of them struggled like hell with things that many students in the school could easily do.
The main exceptions were the AP Calc and Geometry teachers, they actually formed a little clique and went totally nuts while the rest of them literally looked like dumbfounded Freshmen. One teacher in particular just sat and stared at the screen with glazed over eyes, it was freaking creepy.
There was something very surreal about the whole scene that imprinted itself very strongly into my mind. Particularly seeing the 2 only good teachers group up and make a particularly loud affair out of it in a way that seemed intentionally meant to mock the other teachers.
Side story.. Being almost as instrumental to the creation the first computer lab as the teacher that sponsored it and me exposed me to quite a few interesting things like that. I was basically treated like a faculty member by a decent portion of the staff and so was in on a lot of faculty meetings, had keys to various things, etc.
It totally floored me just how much smack they talk about each other! They are almost like high school students themselves. They cap on other teachers' bald spots, the way they walk, the way they dress, the things they say. They form exclusive lunch cliques that last for -years- in weird out of the way places in the school that most students don't know about. Other teachers are totally outcast and have no friendly relationships with other teachers. Hell, they even capped on students sometimes in private.
To some extent I agree.... But I've seen "bitter" self taught ppl who are only half good but like to show off to get back at formally educated ppl... Taking every chance to try to show that they know more, are more intelligent, and overall a better class of people. Even when they are not actually any better.
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
Go to class. If you have to choose between doing homework and going to class - go to class. Each person is different, but from my experience, you learn more in class (at the very least you will know what the teacher wants you to know which may vary from the book)
Depending what school a person went to, a person may have done reasonably well because HS is a joke compared to college. I know, I was awesome in HS (8th ranked) and when I got to college I was slammed.
I was the opposite (Bad grades in high school. Great grades in college). I think for me it was a case of hating pointless repetitive drudgery. There's a lot more of that in high school (you'll be graded badly for skipping this homework even if you can prove you know the material when taking the tests). In college it's much more a case where you'll be graded on major projects and tests, but not on the day-to-day little stuff. What matters is that you end up knowing the material. How you got to that point is up to you. Pick the study habits that suit you best. In highschool you have to use the study habits dictated to you by the teacher, and in my case they don't mesh well with how I learn. (I'm very good at noticing patterns, but very bad at rote memorization. Therefore I have the hardest time with subjects where you have to memorize a large pile of disconnected nonsensical material first before you start to see enough patterns in it for it to become sensical. I was horrible at memorizing my multiplication tables (to this day I still have "gaps" that I have to fill in using neighbors on the table, like "7x8...damn I don't remember that one. Well, what's near 7x8 that I can remember...oh, 7x7 is 49, I remember that one, and then that would mean 7x8 is 7 more than that, so 49+7 = 56. there. The answer is 56." For me, that's what arithmetic in my head is like, because, again, I just can't remember by rote very well. But, I did really well later in Calculus. Because once I see something fits a pattern, then I never forget that pattern.
Or, in other words, I can only remember things that I grok.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Sheesh, growing up is learning. Is it a surprise that looking back you wasted all that time, not listening and finding it out for yourself?
He didn't listen when he was younger, do you really think kids today will? I don't.
I think that the random and chaotic, sometimes hard experiences we go through are what make us what we are. I tried a lot of stuff, made quite a few mistakes and I think I'm the better for it.
(Score: -1, Missed Point)
~Idarubicin
To this speech, often thought to have been written by Bill 'The Borg' Gates, but actually by Charles J. Sykes.
first a note: you don't have to do what you studied in school for the schooling to be useful. We're not talking about vocational schools here. And even if they were, much of what you learn either gives you skills in other fields or at the very least gives you an appreciation of different areas (and how they relate).
quick google provided this: http://www.cete.org/acve/docgen.asp?tbl=mr&ID=115
# In 2000, the unemployment rate for workers aged 25 and over with a high school diploma was 3.5 percent; some college but no degree, 2.9 percent; associate degree, 2.3 percent; bachelor's degree, 1.8 percent; master's degree, 1.6 percent; professional or doctoral degree, 0.9 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics n.d.; Dohm and Wyatt 2002).
# In 2000, median earnings of year-round, full-time workers aged 25 and over with a high school diploma were $28,800; some college but no degree, $32,400; associate degree, $35,400; bachelor's degree, $46,300; master's degree, $55,300; doctorate, $70,500; professional degree, $80,200 ("Education Pays" 2002).
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Totally agree. That is why I was sure to say "financially" better. I don't think college is necessary to live a full and happy life. I just think it is foolhearty to say "i know people who are doing better than I am without any education. proves you don't need it." yes, it proves you don't NEED it but it doesn't prove that education doesn't promote such success.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
always wanted to through in what i found on google:
* In 2000, the unemployment rate for workers aged 25 and over with a high school diploma was 3.5 percent; some college but no degree, 2.9 percent; associate degree, 2.3 percent; bachelor's degree, 1.8 percent; master's degree, 1.6 percent; professional or doctoral degree, 0.9 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics n.d.; Dohm and Wyatt 2002).
* In 2000, median earnings of year-round, full-time workers aged 25 and over with a high school diploma were $28,800; some college but no degree, $32,400; associate degree, $35,400; bachelor's degree, $46,300; master's degree, $55,300; doctorate, $70,500; professional degree, $80,200 ("Education Pays" 2002).
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Yeah, college is a waste of time... if you want to spend the rest of your life as an uneducated idiot.
There were a lot of things I learned in college that I wouldn't have if I just went into the workforce - and not all of it relevant to the career I have. Not to mention that some of your best friends in life will be the ones you meet in college. Just because the little line on your resume won't help you get your dream job as much as before, doesn't mean that the furthering of your education in life is a worthless task.
You have the rest of your life to spend working, take another 4 years after high school to better yourself.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
This link gives a more jaded view of today's schools. The message is the same: As a high school student, you have to take responsibilty for your own growth. http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm
The bubble in the 1990s was just that, a bubble. It's over. More than that, the hangover after a bubble and crash takes decades to overcome. Historically, the DJIA increases at about 2.5% per year, except during "booms". There have been two "boom" periods, 1941 to 1954 (about 8%/year), and 1983-1999 (about 13%/year). The boom in the 1920s could be counted, too, but it came and went so fast it didn't affect the long-term trend.
On top of that, there's the demographic issue. For twenty years or so, there's been a net inflow of money into stocks. As boomers retire, there will be a net outflow. This will gradually depress the market over the next 2-3 decades.
Bush's scheme for privatizing Social Security is an attempt to pump money back into the market to boost stock prices. (Brokerage houses are salivating over the fees, commissions, and the opportunities to make big money off the dumb money.) It won't be a big win for people who opt for that scheme.
You went to college to make more money? That's certainly the wrong reason if I've ever heard of one. Learn for knowledges' sake, not making more money. Also, just because you know lots of people who make more money w/ high school and not college, doesn't make it true overall.
Reading all of those links seems like a lot of work. Can you just give the executive summary?
"The most powerful sort of aptitude is a consuming interest in some question, and such interests are often acquired tastes."
Fantastic advice. I have a 16 year old nephew and I'm trying my best to relay this to him, but it is hard. If there is anything I could convey to a young person it would be to comprehend a larger social network than their high school. That environment is frighteningly myopic.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
I'm an autodidact. However, I find that, in many areas I end up being narrow but deep in my knowledge. I learn the heck out of things that I need and don't learn the things that I don't need.
However, there are times when I don't see the obvious cross-discipline connections that someone who's had a little more broad formal instruction.
Sure, I kick the crap out of most people with a formal education who aren't also autodidacts but when somebody is both educated and a self-learner, they can do better than I can. (And yes, it bugs the crap out of me -- I'm accustomed to being the alpha-geek.)
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Well another thing was, I had a minor speech impediment, not enough for me to become totally anti-social but enough to make me "uncool" to hang out with all the jocks and other "cool" people. I resented that at the time, now I thank God. All those people now live in a "van down by the river". Instead I hung out with nerds and talked about computer games, physics and chemistry. And I was actually excited to learn new stuff in school. I remember I couldn't wait to get to a new chapter in Physics, or I would look forward about learning about derivates and limits.
Well now I am a grad in Computer Science. I guess the advice I would give the highschool crowd is to worry less about wanting to fit in and hang out and make friend with smart people not popular. And I would tell parents to not badger and force their children to become something they don't want, instead incourage curiosity, learning, wonder about the world, imagination.
IRAs are only 22 years old. They may change considerable in the next 20 years.
The prudent thing is to save and invest something for what ever is appropriate at that time.
I wish I had spent more time cultivating friends and experiences rather than chasing knowledge. The latter was too tempting at college with its classes and computers and libraries.
I have seen plenty of people with high-school diplomas or two year degrees from a community college/tech school do just as well (if not better) than me and my more expensive four-year degree.
I have a two year degree in programming and know more about it than some of my coworkers with four year degrees. But my current employer will not let me be promoted higher than I am now without that four year degree. So I'm going back to get it. Plus I would like to learn more about my trade and hopefully get better at it as well.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Your mistake is the "they". School systems don't work in a vacuum. The question that should be asked is "What are we doing wrong?" I've read far too many stories recently about parents pressuring school systems to give their children good grades because "My taxes pay your salary." It doesn't seem to matter that the parents don't encourage their kids to learn anything. Or then there's the other extreme, where the parents just think of public school as "free" daycare. They really don't even care if their kid even shows up, just as long as the kid doesn't bother them during the day.
The whole community is an extension of this. Doing well in school has a whole lot to do with the way the community thinks of school. If school is seen as something good and necessary, the children will do well, if it's seen as taxpayer funded daycare, the children won't. This is why children in many poorly funded communities do well; the whole community supports the school as best they can because they see it as important.
I definitely agree with your second point. Taking money away from a poorly performing school district basically changes it to a hugely underperforming district. It's bad enough that you've got a building full of kids who don't want to be there since their parents basically tell them it's all crap they have to endure rather than a chance to improve themselves; it's worse when that building is falling down because they don't have funds to do basic repairs.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
You're trying to convince a teenager that it's ok to make mistakes at their age, but the reason we all know it is, when we were teenagers, we made the mistake of thinking it was not ok to make mistakes. You're telling a teenager they'll learn from experience, but the reason you know is that you've had experience learning from experience.
It's all kind of a catch 22, and they won't believe you until they're old enough that they already know it for themselves.
- 90% of life is showing up on time and sober.
I don't know who said that, and I'd reduce the 90% to 75%, but it seems relevant. And leaves the other 10% open to interpretation.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Actually, it is fair, if you look at the world the right way.
Well, a particular way that I will claim is right, and then let you decide for yourself.
People talk about being [unfairly] over or underpaid. What determines what the "right" amount of money for your job is?
There are precisely two criteria for what a particular job is worth. Each has its own subtleties and nuances, but on the surface, at least, they are very simple.
1) How much perceived value does the employee create? This is all about how much the person doing the paying feels he is gaining by having the employee. In some cases this is easy to determine. If you hire someone who works from home using all his own equipment, and who earns the company a fixed rate for each hour worked, it is easy to calculate. For instance, suppose you hired a work-at-home graphic designer. Suppose also that all his time was spent working for clients, and that you billed $60/hr for his time. Therefore, the $60/hr is a ceiling for the perceived value. You have to subtract any costs incurred in managing him and whatnot, but the calculation is possible.
If, on the other hand, he works on internal products it is very hard to measure... this is all about how well he works, how well others work, and all sorts of other little incalculables. Thus it is the employer's *perception* of the value that matters.
Since in all capitalistic transactions, both parties feel that they are gaining something from the exchange, we can safely assume that whatever the answer to #1 is, this is an aboslute maximum for what the individual can be paid.
--
2) How many people are willing and able to do the job, or could be trained to do so "in time"?
Like in any capitalistic market, there are buyers and sellers, and the sellers must compete with each other. If there are 500 open positions for widget-makers, and only 90 people in the world currently skilled on the widget-machine, and if it took 4 years to train someone to operate said machine, the 90 people would all find very high-paying jobs (subject to the limitations of #1). The 500 employers would try very hard to woo the 90.
In other cases, there are 500 jobs and 250,000 applicants. In this case, it will be the individual offering the perception of greatest value at lowest cost that will get the job.
Frequently in such saturated markets, an employer will simply say that they are looking to pay $X and want, say, 10 people. They know that the very best candidated could earn $1.5X, say. But they don't want to spend years pouring over resumes. So, they set the pay low hoping that many people will self-select themselves out of the running. They then hope to find a "good enough" candidate from the group remaining. If they can not, they typically raise the offer, in an attempt to woo slightly better candidates.
However, once (in this case 10) people who are good enough agree to accept whatever the rate is, the game is over. That is the value of the work: the lowest price that a sufficient quantity of sufficiently capable individuals are willing to accept.
Question #2 ultimately yields a minimum price for the work -- the lowest price that enough "good enough" people will accept.
The final price is always between #1 and #2. The actual price within these bounds is determined primarily by the negotiation skills of the parties involved, and the urgency each feels. A desperate employer might be willing to spend an extra, say $5000/yr to get the employee to leave his current position and start next week, rather than save the money but spend 2-3 months finding someone.
Similarly and unemployed individual might take $5000/yr less than they feel they could get elsewhere because the offer came today and they can start in 3 days, instead of looking for months to find that better deal.
--
It just so happens that, in the software engineering world, the "nerd" stereotype runs strong. A fair percentage of software engi
Hoarding Call-A.P.P.L.Es will give you a great foundation in computer programming and computer architecture, but don't forget to mix in a few Playboys for variety.
Besides, a big part of the point of an undergrad education is simply learning how to jump through hoops. It can suck to go through it, but it is important in and of itself.
Which is why I agree with you completely.
That the reason I did reasonably well in high-school with very little outside work was because I went to class. Even if I slept through some of it I was taking it all in. You cannot succeed unless you attend class. Don't think that when you get to college or the real world you can succeed by not showing up just because you don't have to. It doesn't work like that.
While this may work in high school, it often (counterintuitively) doesn't work that way in college, even though it should.
I've been in many a class (mostly CS) where the prof spent all his time on his own research, and didn't care about the class at all. The upshot was that he used old homework assignments and exams, and lectures were about the stuff he was researching (which wasn't terribly relevant).
Combine this with the fact that some teachers (again, lots of CS profs I've had) are really, really bad at teaching, and often I've learned far more by sitting on the lawn with a textbook and a pencil than sitting in a lecture hall. (Even better is if you can get 3 or 4 friends together to discuss it.)
For one required CS class, I showed up once a week just to turn in my homework. For another one, I was bored to tears, so I signed up for an anthropology class at the same time which was much more fun (in a 300-seat lecture hall, they'll never notice if you show up). In both cases I did very well in both classes.
If I had to give a magic formula for doing well in a class, it wouldn't be "go to class". It would be "do the homework, and discuss it with your friends until you understand it".
While I agree that an overabundance of educated job-seekers can worsen unemployment, de-stressing the importance of a degree (if that's what you are saying) is a poor solution. Increasing emphasis on entrepreneurship is a good idea, but college education still matters.
Free Mac Mini - Help me
"Haven't met any Ivy League graduates, have you..."
Actually I have. And I imagine they read an entire post before replying. Perhaps you should try it.
Sailing into the wind is actually a way to increase altitude, since airplanes have a little thing I like to call "lift", which increases the faster the air moves over the wings.
This is of course not really relevant to the point he was trying to make, but it is still better not to use an outright false statement for an analogy.
A better use of their time would be to get the coles notes version, then go and do something else.
Let me think of a counter-example: Ramanujan comes to mind.
Very good point, and I totally agree, seriously. As the great Judge Smails has stated, "the world needs ditch diggers to".
And you could be one yourself, as ditch diggers don't need to know the difference between "to" and "too".
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Where is this documented? I'm not contending, just curious.
In reference to your sig, you can't deduct gambling losses anyhow.
However, you are required to report your gambling winnings.
Go to class. If you have to choose between doing homework and going to class - go to class. Each person is different, but from my experience, you learn more in class (at the very least you will know what the teacher wants you to know which may vary from the book)
Or do homework in class, if you can listen and work at the same time. It's best if the homework and class are related, so you can work while the teacher shows examples (you'll learn much more than you would taking notes, and will be able to ask intelligent questions). But in some classes it helps just to be there, even while doing unrelated work (it's easy to detect the concepts people consider hardest, and study those later).
Nothing new here.
I learned this in "high school", on the very first day:
Non scholae sed vitae discimus. (Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, Epistula CVI)
The very first latin sentence we had to translate.
Another one by Seneca:
Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium.
And "Vitanda est improba siren desidia" (Horace) is to the point too.
The score to last week's Jets/Steelers game... could have made a killing in Vegas!!!!
100% Insightful
"Going to a four-year college and getting a degree really isn't all that important anymore." I think this perspective overlooks one of the most valid reasons to go to college: personal growth. Life isn't all about making money.
Guidance counsler: "Do you use?"
Me: "Use what?"
Guidance counsler: "You know, Drugs"
Me: "What?"
Guidance counsler: "Is there some thing you are not telling me?"
Me: "?????"
A few years later I started to use... Humm.
Now. When I have kids, I am going to raise them with out a TV, or Computer. That will really make them special. It will be hard to isolate them from the others however. Also imangine the look on their faces when they find out that I know almost every* thing about computers.
*Every thing is at version 2 when this was written.
http://www.everything2.com/
Peace.
This really isn't a federal problem, you can see that barely 5% of education funding in WI is federal money. This is pretty typical. I can't complain about my federal income taxes being wasted on education. I'd have to complain on the state and local level, and I think they are doing a good job.
Personally I do think education should be more heavily funded on the federal level and not based on property taxes like in so many places.
Society gets what it deserves in many cases though. Parents are willing to raise money for the football team, but when a referendum for more money for education is on the ballot, they always vote it down.
See how your state ranks: http://www.alec.org/meSWFiles/pdf/Education_Report _card.pdf
What I wished I learned at an earlier age:
No body owes you anything
Seriously, if you live your whole life thinking you're entitled to things, be ready for lots of disappointments. You're much happier when you live your own life.
I haven't looked at the numbers lately, but in the past, the financial return on getting a Ph. D. was almost always negative...most Ph. D. holders would have done far better financially if they had invested the money it took to get the advanced degrees and got a job immediately after their Bachelor's degree instead.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Not that I fully agree with the OP, but how about Faraday and Franklin? Those guys made valuable contributions to physics without a formal education.
Yeah. Treat school like a day job... a day job where you have six different bosses, and every one of them wants yo to take home half an hour of work every day or you will get demoted.
Long term investments are when you WANT to take risk, because historically any unstable system becomes more stable when experienced over time. If you are investing for the long term get a nice diverse portfolio of 'mover and shaker' companies and ride the ups and downs, in the long run you will be better off than if you had put it in a low-risk mutual fund the whole time. As the cashout time nears (retirement), you take advantage of the fluctuations and move your money into more stable funds or bonds. Retirement Planning 101.
Biggest regret I have about high school? Putting all my effort into homework and extracurriculars and not bothering to acquire any social skills. When I got to college and started to care about having a life, I had no clue.
Hey, dude!
Your mom is upstairs, your sister and her family are here and they want you to come up out of the basement to eat dinner with them. Oh, and here's 60 dollars for the latest game you wanted.
... while growing up is that the lack of political knowledge and involvement of the people around me could only mean that I actually lived in a Republic decaying into an Empire entirely on historical schedule. They couldn't tell me what a Republic was, since they didn't practice its methods.
Pervasive ignorance breeds not only despots, but mostly their subjects. But how do you detect that you live in a sea of ignorance? Ignorance of ignorance is the deadly start to it all, folks.
Edison contributed very little, his staff however contributed hugely and have never been given the credit.
I call bullshit on the *very little*.
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
--Thomas Alva Edison.
He knew it all along.
If you can come up with new ideas as fast as your helpers can build them, then more power to you.
"Knowing when to delegate" is the mark of a great leader--and great capitalist.
gewg_
It is almost funny the big argument against homeschooling is socialization.
Yet in high school and such the big thing is to study hard and get good grades but to do that you tend to not do other things like hangout with friends.
Or you form into cliques and clubs. And the worst part about that is the tendency for the B-list cliques victimize the C-list and lower groups to make themselves feel superior and that is just harms everyone. And you can't really call a Lord of the Flies situation like that good for socialization.
I am more and more considering keeping my children out of the school system.
I would rather guide them in knowledge and help them make it interesting for themselves rather then stick them in a classroom that will only get through half the book in a year.
I would rather have them meet good and successful people rather then the luck of geography.
I would rather have them learn how to run a business then just be an employee.
Grond can breach it. Grond can breach anything.
OMG, I hope you were flamebaiting....I see why you posted as an anonymous coward.
A job is just something you can use to help you collect money
Give me a break. No offense at all to those who decide to follow the academic path, but you are full of crap. If you want to publish papers, go knock yourself out, but to assert that sitting in your academic ivory tower is the only true path to success is incredible horse shit.
This may come as a shock to a published, Ph.D. such as yourself, but there are lots of ordinary "day job" folks who not only earn a decent salary (shudder, shudder) but they enjoy what they do, innovate in their fields, etc.
Yeah, thanks for straigtening us all out. Getting tenure at some pissant college is what we should all be going after....
Mod me troll if you want, but at least I'll use my own handle.
Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
"To a newly arrived undergraduate, all university departments look much the same. The professors all seem forbiddingly intellectual and publish papers unintelligible to outsiders. But while in some fields the papers are unintelligible because they're full of hard ideas, in others they're deliberately written in an obscure way to seem as if they're saying something important."
I liked this quote from the essay, and I can totally relate to it. I took an anthropology class for my social science requirement. I thought, hey this could be fun learning about prehistoric humans. Then I got to the readings. The writing was incredibly (and unnecessarily) dense and obscure. There was maybe one sentence worth of information for every five sentences of text. I wouldn't call it useless, but I could've learned just as much from a few PBS documentaries.
This was intended for the Anon. Coward post beneath this parent. My bad.
Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
When I was in school, I was taught that I won't succeed in life if I didn't lose my unhealthy interest in computers and stop reading books about computers in class.
I ignored them.
Then, years later as I was getting out of school, they started teaching us that "you'll have to go to school to learn computers if you want to succeed in life". I ignored that nonsense, too, because by then I was already very proficient in computers and was doing computer work on the side.
I'm doing just fine now.
I think the moral to the story is that nobody knows for sure what to do until you are talking about it in the past tense. It's so easy to teach the past, but it's hard to predict the future.
In the real world people do care how you dress and your grooming habits. So HS does teach you some useful skills as far as human interaction goes. But knowing your never going to be around most of these people ever again you can work on other things...
1. Pick a group of people and Lie all the time to them for a week and see if you can get away with it. Which lies are easy to pick out and which are hard. What type of actions give away lies and which type of lie is so benign that people forget you said it.
2. Pick some group and start bending them to your will. See if you can change speech patterns, modes of dress, thought's feelings, or what ever. But, keep these people from knowing what your doing / keep them from noticing that they changed the way they wave at each other or if they notice keep them from noticing that your the trend setter.
3. Get someone or some group to warship you. Either as the person who decides things for the group or the person who they look to for advice. Ect.
4. Keep someone from dropping out of something either a group or activity. Or if you want to really work for it go for someone that was going to drop out of high school.
5. Get someone to drop out of some group or activity.
Some of these skills become invaluable in life. Others give you some moral issues to deal with. EX: Do you feel glad that you destroyed someone faith in God? But, you can practice most of these skills with little fallout latter in life. And it becomes a lot more obvious when someone is trying to manipulate you, which makes it a lot easer to discover their motivations, and thus how to control them.
Blah...blah...blah...blah.... Give a guy a website and a keyboard and all of a sudden he's the great philosopher.
It would be just as bad if concluded that everyone with a four-year degree writes as terribly as the article's author.
Isn't that calling the pot calling the kettle a nigger?
We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
If these "Rich People" have such great social skills, why don't they hang out where the "Poor People" hang out? What if your rich and nerdy?
Or do their social skills only apply to other "rich people"?
I say B.S. Be yourself. Be happy. If reading J.R.R. Tolkein under a tree every day at lunch makes you happy, if wearing old dirty clothes makes you happy, if doing what you really enjoy makes you happy, then go for it. Don't fall into some mold just because that's what the "Rich Kids" are doing. Because nobody's believing that you are a rich kid regardless of how much you blow on clothes and stanky ass cologne.
Here's one I never figured out until well after High School:
When I was in school, you weren't cool unless you wore Polo shirts (not the knock-offs either), high-top shoes, and wear Polo cologne. Mullets were a plus, if you had the means. So, everyone did just that. Who got all the girls? The guy that didn't wear Polo shirts and high-tops. I doubt he wore the cologne either, but I never smelled the guy. Did anyone figure that out? Only that guy. So the options were: look "cool" and jerk off or look different and get laid.
Same thing applies today. Why try to "fit in" and look like everyone else. How attractive is someone without any definitive traits to make them look different from the person next to them?
You're welcome.
One good tip.
:-) The govt creates money out of thin air, so they can create more rather than actually steal from you.
Ask for damn more equity in startups, dont let the CEO rip everyone off and get 90% for him self, tell him he is toast and time is money, even 2-3months delay in finding someone can derail his million dollar success, so demand that extra 5% to 10%. No one is worth more than 51% ever!!!! if someone claims to be worth 90%, then tell em "ok do 90% of the work your self scum", and I bet they can't, so play hard ball.
Oh and travel, see the world (at least europe). And if you have rich parents/relatives, then your damn lucky and probably lazy.
When you make your first $100k, buy a CaymanIsland (http://www.caymanco.com/welcome.html) credit card account thats in a tax free zone and hide your money there
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I am a geek. I was having a problem meeting real friends not work aquaintences.
I joined scouts as a scout leader and now I have friends from many walks of life very different to my own but just as interesting and dedicated as I hope I am.
I actually went and met those people on the other side of IRC. It was fabulous sitting in a pub in Ireland with people I had known fro three years, and then the same in Germany. I count these people as friends because they are real and can come and stay at my house anytime.
I was working 16 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Work has NEVER been so happy with me since I started saying no and working 9-5 (well mostly). Working hard does not always mean working better.
http://things-i-wish-i-knew.blogspot.com/
All the PhDs I know are quite well off, earning 5 figures and doing extremely well for them - the school and your advisor quite obviously play an important role in your future prospects.
That said, most people do a PhD not for the financial renumeration but because they like what they do.
Hey... it's all part of groin up, right?
This is pure BS.
I have studied a lot over the years and I have come to the opinion that most geeks cannot get egoless programming. Programming is owned by the people you are working for and with (FOSS) not you. This is across the board, self taught and college graduates 'own' code and hate others helping or changing 'their code'. College graduates are typically WORSE because they are taught that sharing is cheating which is a totally wrong premise in the real world. Give me a self taught anyday, this includes Uni students who worked outside the square.
Self taught and proud of it!
Now that's some good advice right there. Also, don't be afraid to lie: Clients lie to you, employers lie to you. You might as well lie to them. You don't really have a Harvard degree? Who cares, they didn't tell you they're planning on outsourcing you. 15 years of C#? I got that too.
I beleive that everyone who is excellent is self taught. Why because they do not stop when they leave school. If you stagnate then it does not matter if you are self taught or a college major.
:-) You probably learnt from self taught people.
Did they do 'just enough' to get something working and keep their job or did they continue to learn. I have been self taught for 25 years. Every day I learn something new. Test driven development, testing principles, programming, even inspections of code.
Ohhh yes, I teach at University part time now.
My great friend is 25-years-aging and dating a 42-year-old bi-polar lady. Trust me, if you are thinking of jumping into a flesh-marriage then you should consider choosing someone that you are comfortably watching the flesh whither and die while your flesh wears with its time.
Was she blonde? I have red-hair, but am not attracted to red-headed females; I think they all look like scottish dykes. -- my phobia. I once walked into a lesbian bar full of tire-wasted scottish-quilt dressed lesbian butch dikes --- big farking moostake, yuh.
... not playing more sport in high-school. I spent too much time reading in the library and mucking about on computers. End result; I was very fat, unhealthy and uncoordinated. It took years to turn that around. Not until after university, in fact. It's far harder to become healthy than to simply stay healthy.
Being fat made it difficult to do social things later in life. Dating. Dancing. Hiking. Cycling. Swimming. Really made life very unfun for a very long time.
My only advice for high-school students would be to exercise those flabby butts. You'll understand why when you get to university.
If only my parents put in money into my retiremend fund from the age 10.
I know that when I have kids, I will setup an account for them and put in $30/week or something.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Don't forget that styles which are now considered formal and classic were once fads as well. You never know how long a fashion trend is going to last (though thankfully most of them don't last long).
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
The important thing is to get out there and do stuff. Instead of waiting to be taught, go out and learn. I wish I could have made the distinction years ago.
The only thing I wished I had known after high school is that your sleep patterns change almost immediately after you turn 18. Suddenly, you can't just pop out of bed every day. Suddenly, it's no longer a chore to take a nap. You can do absolutely nothing all day and still feel too tired to masturbate before crying yourself to sleep.
Going to a four-year college and getting a degree really isnt all that important anymore.
Your other three items I agree with wholeheartedly. I completely disagree with your view on college.
First, it is incredibly important to go to a four-year college. If you have any aspirations in life AT ALL, go to a four-year university (preferably a school you can afford) and live on campus. I believe the social experience itself is more valuable than anything else you can do in life. It is a very good place to find an acceptable mate - in general your average college student is smarter, better groomed and more beautiful than your average person that doesn't go to college. It's a great place to meet future business connections. It's a great place to learn to relate to other people - outside of the 1000 or so you spent your first 13 years of education with.
College is a fantastic opportunity to experience new things, go new places, if you can afford it - go live in a new part of the country (or world). So many things that are incredibly difficult after you have to get a job/house/wife/kids/new lexus/whatever.
Now, as for the other point. Is the piece of paper important? I think so (speaking as someone that doesn't have that piece of paper). Sure, I do well, and I have friends that do well, but the bottom line is that piece of paper can often get you a better job and more pay. Many businesses will pay you more money or give you promotions just because you have a four year degree - no matter what it's in. That is just the harsh reality of the world we live in. One insurance company that has corporate offices locally will only promote you to an underwriter if you have a four year degree. I heard one person that worked there had a degree in golf course management, but it was good enough to get the job.
Having said all that, here's my advice. GO TO college. If you know what you want to do with your life, study hard and learn everything you can - you'll be better for it. If you don't know what you want to do (or don't want to do anything) go anyway. Get in a cheesey business program (everyplace you ever work will probably be a business), go to lots of parties where lots of girls will take their shirts off, take road trips with your friends, go to football games, join clubs/fraternities/sororities - just try new things. Don't get yourself it a lot of debt, but don't work too much either. It's the one time in your life where you are an adult, can drink, vote and die for your country, but you are also allowed to be a kid and have fun. Don't miss it.
Find coupons in Greeley
that Paul Graham is a tedious windbag
I thought that I would be dead by 30, but I always lived like I wouldn't be.
No regrets.
Regrets are a waste of time.
If there is something you should have known and you are the type who loves to wallow in regrets, it pretty much doesn't matter what you knew because you have a perverse desire to imagine some golden age in the past when you shoulda, coulda, woulda. And you will still be in your waller because that is what you want.
What a waste of time imagining a fictional better past is! Live each moment like it is the start of your infinite now and don't buy into the world of regrets and shoulda's. Face each moment, each day, like you are new and fresh and alive and greatful to just have air and water and food and a warm and dry place to sleep. Know that all is well even as you feel all can be better.
Screw regret and trying to live in the fantasies of imagined pasts.
Just my point of view.
Ex-Basketball Player
by John Updike
Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,
Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off
Before it has a chance to go two blocks,
At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berths Garage
Is on the corner facing west, and there,
Most days, youll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.
Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps---
Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,
Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low,
Ones nostrils are two Ss, and his eyes
An E and O. And one is squat, without
A head at all--- more of a football type.
Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards.
He was good: in fact, the best. In 46
He bucketed three hundred ninety points.
A county record still. The ball loved Flick.
I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty
In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.
He never learned a trade, he just sells gas,
Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while,
As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube,
But most of us remember anyway.
His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.
It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though.
Off work, he hangs around Maes Luncheonette.
Grease-gray and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,
Sips lemon cokes, and smokes those thin cigars;
Flick seldom speaks to Mae, just sits and nods
Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers
Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I've seen many people get ahead in a business setting who were not attractive, some even with very visible physical deformities.
As for hanging out with the rich, learning what they like, and thinking of a product to sell to them... while it sounds good on the surface (They have so much money!) in reality the problem is that selling to ANYONE is tricky. By limiting your target market to "The rich" you are also making your job much harder.
Instead I would say - figure out what you can do well that you can sell to the most people with as little effort as possible. Then you can grow from there.
The one thing you should pay attention to in regards to rich people is how they manage money. Learn about complex uses of money, and it will serve you well. You don't have to be very well off to manage money well, make it grow and work for you instead of draining from you like water off a duck.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And yet, I'm still happy.
;-)
Just for the record: I earn a 6 figure salary, live in a 3500 sq ft ranch home, am happily married with a kid on the way. (some people gauge success on such markers. I don't, but if you do, there you are.)
But your reply was still funny.
-Tom
Even if you teach yourself a subject its great to hear it again in school, the teacher will most likely teach it from another viewpoint
The lesson to take from that is not that school is useful, it is that learning another viewpoint is useful.
Everyone can be a teacher of different things. If you tend to use them as such then there is little need for school. School just happens to be the place that makes it easiest to pick up many authoritative viewpoints quickly, but it is not the only means.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My crazy friend keeps going back to school because his self-worth is tied to getting advanced degrees and contributing to society. Meanwhile he can't hold a job, smokes too much, drinks all day, gets and SSI check, doesn't talk to people, doesn't have any sex at all or any meaningful relationships.
I think it is wonderful for people to get advanced degrees. It is too bad that so many of these people can't do anything other than keep going to school.
If you are lucky enough to have these degrees than wonderful for you. If you are in the small group who do it on merit, and you are a genius and got all kinds of scholarships, then wonderful for you. But what i have noticed about academics is that most of them are people who kept going to school because they had an elitest point of view and actually aren't good at anything that they do. They come from privledged families and buy their degrees. They never have a real job, they never do anything. But they get their tenure and then post how being published as an academic is something to really be proud of.
come on, get a grip. Aren't most academic papers unintelligable to anyone other than someone at that same school or in that same class? Aren't most disertations burried in a school's library and never read by anyone? Don't most professors seek tenure so that they are isolated from real markets and real responsibilities?
If you people are so high and mighty, then why do you need tenure? Why do you need tax right-offs? Why do you give special treatment to children of alumni?
I don't see where you got a message to "work harder". WHat he really said is "waste les time", which is a huge difference. What he was saying in fact was to treat school like a day job, which means put in whatever effort is required to get through it - but then expend real energy on your own projects that you care about most in order to learn what you like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He did explain exactly what he meant in plain language directly after, you know - dont' blindly follow or blindly rebel (give up), instead do your own thing. Pretty clear to me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Reading through that ... I can only ask, what could he have accomplished WITH a formal education? It seems he spent a lot of time "independently discovering" already known theorems. I guess we'll never know ...
Is it fair?
Absolutely. Finding a nerdy engineer isn't that difficult. Finding a nerdy engineer that is a people person, can communicate with non-nerdy people, and doesn't dress like a nerdy engineer. Much more difficult.
Find coupons in Greeley
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"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And that's straight gospel folks! (Luckily, I stopped before popping the question).
Popularity is extrememly important.
BTW looks are also very important. Study after study shows that good looking people do better then ugly people.
My advice to high schoolers, work out, get and keep a great body. Get plastic surgery if you need it. Learn to sidle up to the rich and powerful. Hang out where rich people hang out, learn their lingo, learn their likes and dislikes, learn their habit. Finally think of something that would be irresistable to them and start selling it.
No thanks, buddy. I'd rather be ugly on the outside than ugly on the inside. You're not doing anyone any favors by promoting that kind of soul-devouring attitude. It's all well and good to be cynical about the state of the world, but that doesn't preclude at least trying to make the world a better place by promoting positive attitudes.
I would imagine the ROI on a Ph.D depends on the Ph.D itself.
A Ph.D in CS or Engineering is probably going to pay off better than one in English (university prof pay isn't that good after all).
Your blanket statement should be analyzed further.
All that advice is too vague to be remembered and applied.
Best advice I have I wish I'd known which is specific and memorable: Spray inside your shoes with lysol once a week. Keeps off fungus keep your toenails shiny; never regret!
I once found a TWO sheet screed in San Angelo, TX on how various corporate logos SECRET CONTAIN THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST, but that was a rare find.
I'm from San Angelo, and don't remember seeing this sort of thing stapled to telephone poles, let alone a 2-sheeter. (Contrast Austin.) Where was this find? I'm curious about what "culture of randomness" I've been missing.
Sometimes management is more important than genius.
vote for a change, those dinosaurs at the gov of [YOUR-COUNTRY] wont make a change, they are too old and frustrated of their lifes that they just want the young generation to suffer from stupidity as they did when they were young. as for what we can do, make computers so hard to use that they'll just die off, extinct and be gone. world wide, politics needs younger people. people who are not afraid of a change.
My point (horribly made) was that 'self taught people' aren't somehow magical, and neither are those who did college. I went through that 6 year career to get my degree, and I know I graduated alongside people who I wouldn't trust with my projects anymore than I would trust my manager to write my code.
This sounds a lot like that fake commencement speech allegedly given by Vonnegut which turned out to be a simple story written by a woman reporter in the midwest (perhaps Chicago).
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Oh, so have I :)
My intention was not to put down self taught people.
I disagree with the willingness to expiriment and self-motivate being teachable
Self-motivation is from within oneself, that's for sure. However, thinking around corners, bizarre applications of known tools/methods, and not being afraid of trying something new can. It does make for a sometimes darwinian schooling (a sizable % of people get kicked out), but the right aproach to grading can make a course a thorough training in the above mentioned qualities.
The guys who I _really_ admire are the ones who devour knowledge after school. The guy who 'self-teaches' himself building on the foundations provided by the classes. Those who strive to complete their education for the fun of it. I, too, still study to keep perfecting myself as a pro, but I lack the incredible craving for information and experimentation of the true natural of the field. I have learned a lot in my jobs, but CS isn't my life like it is for lots of these geniuses.
Come to think of it, I'm kinda self-taugh too. I was mucking around hacking MUD source code with steve oualline's Practical C before I went into CS specialization :)
(end rambling :D)
>>What I wished I had known:
>Santa Claus is gay.
I wish I'd known that too. I've been attracted to the guy for years, but I didn't know if he was into guys as well, and I was too frightened to make a move.
Damn, think of all that time I wasted.
Anyway, thanks for letting me know. By the way, how did you find out? Has Santa been emptying his sack up your behind or something?
In what sense?
If you're referring to the fact that I mistakenly left out the word "I", you should probably concentrate on a more substantive rebuttal. There's a big difference between a simple omission, and several rather glaring grammatical defects. If you'll look at my signature, it's there for precisely that reason. Had I been able to fix it, I surely would have.
The computer world has a name for this: premature optimization.
Did anyone do a double-take on that sentence...
All I was thinking when I read that the first time was was, "Is that what they call it now?"
During high school is the only time in your life where it's acceptable to bang high school chicks.
Don't waste your time chasing older women when you're in high school. There will still be plenty around after you graduate.
As a sophomore at Garfield HS in Seattle, I can't say this guy seems to know what he's talking about. Kids should do this, kids should do that. Yeah, it's all good and well to say it, but what's good for us in the long run isn't always the most attractive option - and sometimes, it's not the one that'll raise my grades or get me into a good college, which is precisely what I need to get done.
In several classes my grade is a low C/high D... It's not that I can't do the work, it's that I don't want to do it because a good part of it simply doesn't interest me and isn't applicable to my chosen career path.
I'd love to stay in the computer workshop all day and write C code or work on the openMosix cluster that I and two fellow nerds are trying to set up. The fact of the matter is that I have to go to class, and learn silly things like history.
Don't get me wrong, some [catb.org] history [wikipedia.org] (and much more than just those two things) is extremely fascinating. Most that I do learn, however, is not something important to being a "concerned citizen" or good programmer/Hacker and I forget it within several months or weeks of learning it.
Necessary evils, yes. But I believe that a good part of the time I spend in class is wasted on me.
"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."
n/t
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Punch out the assholes while they still can't prosecute you as an adult.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Your mistake is the "they". School systems don't work in a vacuum. The question that should be asked is "What are we doing wrong?"
Aargh, as soon as I read the parent post I knew someone was going to say this, and I should have known someone would say this too.....
Taking money away from a poorly performing school district basically changes it to a hugely underperforming district.
After hearing the same counter replies for so many years in other discussions, I would think I would get used to it - but it still shocks me every single time. Why is is that people try so desperately to "fix" a "system", even when it's clearly beyond repair. Systems are the means, not the end, but in fact, it seems no matter how bad a "system" gets, there is always someone who thinks that if they just try harder to make the system work - then things will get better. No matter how ineffective they are, no matter how many people some "system" harms, no matter how awfull even if a "system" leads to genocide - there is always somebody that seems to want to step up to the plate and prolong it a little longer for the sake of saving the "system" and "making it work". God dammit! What the hell is it gonna take!
With the public school system, I can't imagine that most parents wouldn't want to have their kids have a good education. The problem isn't that the parent's aren't trying hard enough, it's not that people aren't spending the money wisely enough. It is simple and plain accountability. I repeat - accountablilty!!! . In fact, how much you wanna bet that in that exact same area there is a private school where the teachers are paid half as much, and the cost per student is a third as much, and still the kids come out better educated. I'd be willing to put money down on it right now.
If the parents are doing anything wrong, it's that they are supporting a system that doesn't work, shouldn't work because it likely supports itself unfairly, and can't work no matter how hard you try because the very nature of it's financing and leadership ruin any real chances of direct accountability.
A fit body will make you more attractive and is better for your health. If you can afford plastic surgery it too will make you feel better about yourself, make you more attractive to the opposite sex (which will make you happier).
It has nothing to do with being ugly on the side. Once again many studies have shown good looking people do better and have an easier life.
evil is as evil does
Does U Toronto have a graduate program? (too lazy to look myself, sorry). You should know that computer science (and its applications) gets more interesting the higher up you go, like math. If you have a graduate program there, take a grad class or two that look interesting before you write school off. Undergrad curricula are basically learning to program, data structures, and a few odds & ends (DB, graphics maybe). But in grad school the world opens up - bioinformatics, robotics, logic & constraint programming, machine learning - real, varied problems to solve. Don't judge computer science by what you learn as an undergrad. If you're restless take a break but don't write school off. Grad school is the difference between being a code monkey and a professional doing something interesting. If you're at all smart you'll get tired of code monkeying in a few years and want more - I did - and grad school mostly delivers.
Someday we'll all be negroes
Poor or rich, everyone needs to learn to manage money. The rich kids that do not wind up in a bad way anyway, even if the family might prop them up for some time. It's far more vital for a poorer kid to do so...
I came from a pretty poor situation as a kid, and I credit a fair amount of what success I have had in life to being dilligent about learning what you can do with money. Not as dilligent as I should have been probably, but still pretty well overall.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't have a master's degree. Whoops. Just ten years in the field.
I must not be doing the research I thought I was. I guess if I get that first author in nature in the next few months, I may feel a little better about my inability to advance the field.
Work on interesting projects? Please.
My suggestion? Do things in high school which you might do otherwise if it weren't for the other people doing them. You will have plenty of time later on in life if you're wise to work on projects. Now, I'm not saying don't work on your own personal projects - just temper those attempts with more social activities, if at all possible. Without social activies, its impossible to mature socially - and social immaturity will be one of the biggest setbacks you will run into in your life, period.
College is probably the worst time to have such social inhibitions, too, as it will lead to even further regrets. Such as never getting laid, not knowing how people tick so that you're able to impress that one particular girl, or never having confidence enough to approach the people you're interested in spending time with.
In my case, I didn't participate in sports and didn't express much interest in the opposite sex publicly. Was I interested? Hell yes. But in retrospect, I wish I'd taken the opportunity to get with the lead high school cheerleader, and other things of that order. I'll never have such freedom or opportunites like that again now that I'm grown up and have responsibilities. There will be plenty of time to sit in front of your computer researching, programming, and other such things.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I should have taken up soccer in 10th grade.
I should have bathed a little more regularly and thoroughly.
And I should have been a lot more presumptuous in the pursuit of sex. I viewed females as much more different in motivation than they actually are. Some are lonesome and looking to not be. It's hard to know which, but getting turned down hurts less than cumulative celibacy.
And Julie, if you happen to be reading this, please accept my apologies for being so obtuse.
I am not de-stressing the importance of a degree. Definitely a degree has value . But the college education if it has to pay dividends must be employment generation oriented.
p ://linuxhelp.blogspot.como gspot.com
And another thing, it has been widely acknowledged in the industry that the number one skill that a person should have to be employable is the "people skill". That is he/she should have a positive attitude, good written and oral communication skills and should be a team player.
This also should be integrated in the college curriculum.
If a person doesn't have that - even though he may be a rocket scientist - may not be employable.
ravee
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http://thoughts2005.bl
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
1) "Smart people tend to clump together, and if you can find such a clump, it's probably worthwhile to join it" Not important. Like minded people tend to clump together. I'd rather join with 'wise' people.
2) "Collecting donations for a charity is an admirable thing to do, but it's not hard." Stupid. Have you ever tried?
3) "Writing novels is hard. Reading novels isn't." Read bad novel is not hard. Read good novel is hard, otherwise you'd miss the good stuff of the novel.
The worst:
"One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can flog yourself through them." Wrong definition of discipline. Tell a pianist, gymnast, writer, journalist, sprinter that discipline is not important! And you quote Wittgenstein! Paul, you are very bright, but not of the same calibre with Wittgenstein!
Well, one thing you do very well -- marketing :)
Yes, clearly you are smart enough to use the <blockquote> tag.
These nuts now have their own TV shows and followings in the millions. They go on about how Spongebob and Teletubbies are trying to turn American children "homosexual hedonists" or some other such nonsense.
I'm from San Angelo, and don't remember seeing this sort of thing stapled to telephone poles, let alone a 2-sheeter. (Contrast Austin.) Where was this find? I'm curious about what "culture of randomness" I've been missing.
I wish I could tell you, but frankly, I never knew where ANYTHING was. I was only at Goodfellow Air Force Base for about three months in 1988 for training as an intelligence analyst in the army. I walked from the base to the mall on a few occasions (5 or 6 miles) and I saw it on some back street along the way.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I wish someone would crack this asshole's machine. Install windows XP Home edition on it.
That will teach 'im a lesson.
Oh - dont forget that Baboon's Face asshole, and the GNAA cockmonkey.
There's no denying that being fit is good for your health and mental well being. But you're talking about using totally artificial means to make yourself appear attractive just so you can take advantage of the fact that good looking people get more perks from others. That's the very definition of shallow.
Also, that way lies madness, as more and more people take advantage of better technology to look more and more perfect. It soon reaches a stage where it becomes pointless. Everyone will look the same, and along the way society has had an even easier time than usual disregarding the ugliness hiding inside many of the attractive people. Social evolution will take two steps back. Unattractive people will prosper through technology, passing on their unattractive genes to their descendants, who will then have to take advantage of technology to mimic attractiveness.
If everyone adopted your attitude, life would become a beauty pageant contest with no spiritual meaning. Everyone judged by what's on the surface. People already have problems with being unable to find a purpose in life. Just think how much more difficult it will be to find a purpose in a world as shallow as the one you're advocating. Who would want to live in such a world? Not even you, if you really understood what you were suggesting.
I just don't think you should be going around teaching young people that they should modify their appearance just to get some small advantage in the job market. It's the wrong priority. Sooner or later, the appearance no longer matters, and then they'll be stuck with jack squat for real skills and personality with which to continue their lives. That's not a recipe for success.
Along with the appearance thing you were advocating being a total kissass suckup to anyone with power. Altogether you were promoting an extremely ugly attitude toward life. Ugly on the inside. If you don't think that's important, I pity you.
I also wish someone had told me that college students and working adults are just as weird and different from me, if not more so, than the kids at my high school. Then I would have appreciated my high school classmates a bit more and not had unreasonable expectations of college and society.
I agree with alot of you points, but from an employers perspective, self taught people are the best, not only because they clearly have a natural intrest in the work, but you can pay them alot less. A degree may not make you the better programer, but it will usualy guarantee the better pay check.