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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
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!
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 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
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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/
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 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."
> 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).
If you think that's an advanced math course, I have a whole world of excitement for you. Seriously, there's wonderful stuff out there that you haven't even gotten near.
I've observed that math is a really great thing to study if you want a lot of options. With a small amount of training, you can do almost anything, because you have the critical thinking skills and the rigorous framework to understand it. I'm not saying that a math major could apply to a PhD in economics and necessarily get in without any additional training, but that it wouldn't be hard to get that training. The PhD program might even be more than interested in accepting someone who they had to train. Going the other direction would be considerably more difficult.
Another interesting example is in finance. Financial companies hire physicists and mathematicians like crazy when they can get their hands on them (I've heard they also like theoretical computer sciences). Basically, they want people with advanced mathematical training, who they can direct at the problems of finance. From what I've seen, hiring the other direction would be very, very difficult.
Math is mind-broadening. There are so many different structures and models to apply to problems in other fields. I've seen quite a few people be very sucessful simply by understanding more math than `needed' by their field, and applying it.
Lea
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
Edison contributed very little, his staff however contributed hugely and have never been given the credit.
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?
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...
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.
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
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