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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."
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!
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.
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.
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.
To some extent, I'd agree...
I'm still young, just fresh out of college. While my high school days were packed with a lot of outside projects and involvement, I regret not having spent my time better in college. On the other hand, I'm still young enough to see my brothers and a few friends in the same situation.
The result is that I'm able to spend my time better now, which will certainly pay off later. While you can look back and realize that you might have spent your time better (who doesn't wish they'd invested in some tech stocks at the right time?) you can also feel satisfied knowing that you weren't wasting all of it on something with no payoff. I spent so many hours of college seeing how fast I could beat each level of the 8-bit Mario Super Bros.
Speaking of wasting time, I think my Slashdot break has gone on long enough.
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.
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.
>I would rather not work at all. And most people feel the same way, if they would just admit it.
I would rather work. I simply love what I do. I'm sure I could get away without working for the rest of my life, but I'd go up the wall within a few days. Ask most PhD students, they'll probably say the same. (Given how we're paid, we'd better love what we're doing!)
I think it's more of a difference in how you approach it. Today, in fact, I'm going to write part of a paper. It's not particularly fun, but by doing so, I get to do the fun part: I get to talk to people and say "look at this incredibly cool thing I did". I also get to do the incredibly cool things, and tease apart the Gordian knots that keep people from communicating in useful ways.
Lea
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.
"Speaking of wasting time, I think my Slashdot break has gone on long enough."
Not as long as mine...I own my own business so I get to read the whole thing. Which brings me to my pet "Wish I'd Know This In School" peeve, which is why didn't anyone, not even my parents, tell me that I could actually start my own business and not have to necessarily go and get a job working for someone else.
During the last year of the English equivalent of high school, me and my classmates would go to the career counselling officer for lessons on how to get a job. We'd also take day trips local businesses and watch people we'd seen in the year above ours working at their little desks or operating machinery. We even took a few trips to local coal mines which really freaked me out (Anyone seen Kes? that was me).
Luckily I was interested in playing music - joined a couple of local bands - moved to London - joined a band that toured the World - moved to the Pacific NW - got a life - and managed get the hell out of the cycle of horrible, depressing life I was faced with, but it really needn't have been that way.
How about one single hour a week about how to start your own business. Or how to handle money that your business will generate, or marketing your business, Etc Etc Etc. instead there was nothing. It was ALL about how to get a job.
Needless to say we all knew that the rich kids at the private school down the road were being taught how to hire losers, or how to stay rich, so there was never any real mystery as to why things were the way they were, but I still feel sorry for my classmates.
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.
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?
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 was the exact opposite. Believed everything I was told and took it to heart. Worked away. Worried about high school grades. Worried about college and prepared for "the real world" in the manner they told me. Once got old enough to gain my own experience and go into the real world, I realized it was all not true, and if it was ever true, it belonged to a world that hadn't existed for several decades. It's good that kids ignore or take what they're told with a grain of salt. Nothing about the wisdom my father gave to me about the white collar business world of the 60's pertains to the casual dress IT world of the 00's. There are no life long careers. Kissing ass just makes you the butt of office jokes. Unless you're looking at a really good college and scholarships, high school grades or even graduating don't matter. Once you have the piece of paper for your degree, your college grades don't matter unless you're attempting grad school. Once you have experience, your piece of paper doesn't matter unless it' used as a bullet item to impress some MBA. The most important thing to getting a job on your resume is the reference who turns it in to the person hireing and says "this is a friend of mine."
No doubt, when I pass this wisdom to my own children, it will be irrelevant to the new world they live in.
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
I'm 37 and have some good memories of the recent past (real Rock and Roll!. 'Course, I then remember how crappie the speakers were back then, how much of a pain it is to have to get up to change an album (and how heavy they still are-just moved, still have two boxes of vinyl), etc.
Yeah, as kids, we could run around at 8 years old, on our own, for Halloween. Now, I can't let my kid go out after dark. 'Course, I can go around with long hair and no one hassles me.
Air flight in the early 70's was like taking a cruise today; no $89 round trip cross country fares. And the news was really filtered. Just having access to a diversity of information sources is cool.
There will always be bad things happening and good things happening. Just depends on what you focus on. I caught a nice sunrise on the way into work today. Cool!
I drank what? -- Socrates
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.
I partially agree. The trick is to convince them that while it's mostly busy work, that's the point. Much of life is busy work - pay bills, wash car, mow lawn, wash dishes, get up in time for work, fill out reports, attend meetings, etc., etc. Busy work is part of life. High School is really (partially) about teaching you to do busy work - some of the actual knowledge will later turn out to be useful, some you'll never use again.
TFA makes the same point:
- Jasen.