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Comment by yeureka | Hacker News Reader

This sounds very familiar.

When I was in University I didn't understand why some people didn't care about grades and partied so much. When we left school and got into the real world I understood why: they had rich parents with contacts that could get them good jobs or seed capital for their own businesses.

I had lots of ideas and worked in a lot of startups for more than 10 years but now the following phrase from the article describes my situation very well:

"Most of the time, potential founders who share my background tend to work at lucrative jobs in finance or tech until they can take care of everyone in their families before they even dream about taking more risks — if they ever get there."

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The other possibility is that going to the parties is a good use of time, and that is where many students develop their networks. In addition to that, signalling theory would indicate that what classes you take and how well you do are much less important than the university you attend and the faculty you graduate from.

Would you say that going to parties outweigh directly networking?

Networking might be a benefit, but I'm sure that people go to parties with a different goal in mind, and that the time cost of partying can be better utilized in other ways.

In the undergrad university scene that is being discussed I'm having a hard time visualising what "direct networking" would look like.

However, I can confidently say there's a big difference in the bond formed between two people chugging beer bongs together vs asking someone in a lecture if they'd like to have lunch.

I also think the party scene would be difficult to replicate in terms of the sheer size of your potential network (I make no assertation about the objective quality of that network, but the article suggests it's not what be predisposed to think).

Anecdotally, I've got lifelong friends from both camps; but the people I lean on now in my professional development are the people I partied (hard) with at university.

I can confirm, I'd place much more value (including monitary- and career- value) on the connections made with people sharing the experience of being an irresponsible young person than I would the connections made during study/projects/"networking" etc. This isn't to say that A) these groups didn't overlap significantly or B) I wish I'd gotten blackout drunk more often; but the social aspect of being forced into close quarters living your life for a few years with peers in your age group is as least of equal value to the "education" part.

I've tried to say it in many different ways, but I'll try again: being "graded" constantly and basing huge path-driving decisions on those grades are a huge detriment to people and to society. I and many others would have had a much better, more rewarding, and more valuable experience if the point of Univerity wasn't gathering a dozen metrics a week for several years in a row in order to get a piece of paper.

I think the most important part of networking is to do it authentically. If you are naturally a partier, go to parties. If you are naturally studious, study with other people. I made a lot more useful connections with the folks I worked on projects with (or even moreso, folks I met on the Internet) than those I partied with, but that's because I always felt very out-of-place at the blackout-drunk party scene.

I tend to grow my network through researching security vulnerabilities in open source projects, even though that's not my goal. :\

(I'm agreeing with your post.)

Bases on years of experience I would estimate that the "good" jobs, often regardless of the field, are landed as follows:

Networking (60% of my "gigs":) Nepotism (10%, maybe more, much less in my case) Proven Ability to Deliver (20%) Good Luck (10%)

I guess drinking laws mean this can't happen in the USA, but plenty of parties I went to would start with a meal and a couple of drinks in a restaurant before moving on to a bar then a nightclub.

That's not much different to what happens at conferences I've attended, except it ends before the nightclub, usually.

Conversely, I didn't party much at all in college, and I don't really have a professional network from that period of time. I developed all of that later, post-college, when I started partying (I'm a late bloomer, I guess). I hate "networking" events, and have never managed to get much out of them when I've forced myself to go, but love meeting people organically through regular social outings. Some of those people turn into friends, some turn into professional contacts, and some turn into both.

Interesting observation. Anything that creates an emotional bond & takes down walls is going to build long lasting relationships among people. So partying is one of them. Especially if you are at a top school where most of your peers will end up at important places. You want those strong relationships since we all know business is people.

Building a network that's reliable is far more than someone you met at a meetup and added them to your LinkedIn. It starts either at school or through some social functions where one can connect on a deeper level than just a title.

Maybe this is why it's so much harder to form meaningful bonds later in life.

Also makes a good case for formal education and a school that has good signaling ;-)

> The other possibility is that going to the parties is a good use of time, and that is where many students develop their networks.

This was kind of my experience. I went to university two states away from where I grew up, knowing a grand total of one person there. I had the academic end more or less handled, but my first semester at university was the loneliest I've ever been in my life. I made good grades, but otherwise I was miserable, depressed and lonely.

It's easy to meet people in high school. Most high schools are small compared to major universities, and you have classes with those in your grade. Many of them you've been around for years. But now you're thrown into a new setting, with thousands of people. It's hard to make that transition from high school friendships to college friendships.

I spent my freshman fall pretty much just going to class and straight back to my dorm. On the weekends I would go to the football game, but that was it. The rest of the time I watched TV or played on the Internet. It was probably the loneliest I've ever been in my life and, as Christmas came that year I was seriously questioning whether or not I wanted to continue at my university. I had moved two states and five hours away, just to sit around and be lonely.

I told myself going back from Christmas if Spring semester wasn't any better I was going to transfer back home. Well, spring rolls around and one of the guys I'd sat next to in the intro to engineering class invited me to rush his fraternity.

Whut? I had been pretty vehemently anti-Greek; I was a nerdy computer science guy who liked roleplaying games and science fiction movies - not really what I assumed "frat" material was. So my first inclination was to say no thank you.

But I then I stopped myself. "What's the worst that could happen?" I asked myself. "The worst that happens is I don't like it, and I've wasted a few hours. No matter what, it beats sitting in my dorm room, in the dark, mindlessly surfing the web."

So I did it. And it turned out to be one of the best decisions I made.

I met so many amazing, awesome people it blew my mind. The guy that ended up being my big brother (for non-fraternity folks, think of a big brother as a mentor) could have been my twin separated at birth - we shared so many arcane interests (including roleplaying games and science fiction movies - we had a chapter D&D campaign running by the end of the semester).

I was eventually initiated, and throughout the remainder of college, the fraternity was a big part of my social life. It was instrumental in breaking me out of my shell and grounded me in the university community. I ended up graduating, having never again considered transferring. And I learned so many valuable social and leadership skills thanks to being involved in the fraternity.

Fast forward 15 years, and the people I met in the fraternity are still some of my best and closest friends. I still do a couple of concerts a year with group of brothers, and have ever since we were in college together. My big brother was the best man in my wedding a few years back and I was the best man in his wedding last year. Several other brothers were groomsmen as well. Several brothers drove up for my daughter's baptism a couple years, and we still go to gatherings once a year or so.

About eight years ago one of the brothers had his house burn down. We all pulled together and filled up a pickup truck worth of supplies to get them him and family through the tough time until insurance kicked in.

A group of four of us have a long running iMessage group that sees thousands of messages a year, especially involving our sports programs. When I'm watching football, I'm usually doing it with one window on the game and another on the chat window as we follow along. It's like being with your friends at the pub.

And it goes without saying that brothers end up getting jobs from other brothers. I think I know people in every conceivable industry at this point thanks to having met them at university.

Pretty much every major event of my life since I pledged, fraternity brothers have been a part of. All because I took a risk on something I thought I might not like but decided to try anyway. I'm glad I was wrong.

So yes, those raucous parties and silly rituals do serve a purpose. We're social creatures by nature and it's a way of building up your social life, and blowing off the stress of school. Universities are institutions of learning, yes, but we're not there just to learn 24/7, just like I'm not at my job now 24/7. These things are fun, and they build up your social network.

>I spent my freshman fall pretty much just going to class and straight back to my dorm. [...] one of the guys I'd sat next to in the intro to engineering class invited me to rush his fraternity. [...] I met so many amazing, awesome people it blew my mind.

So I find this slightly confusing, because in my experience of university, the fact I was living in dorms already offered me the opportunities to meet people that you're talking about. Pretty much from the day I arrived, people were sat talking in the corridors, and everyone else was as anxious to meet new people as I was, so I don't know how I could have avoided making friends.

That said, I do know that despite my social anxieties, I tend to be pretty comfortable talking to people I don't know that well (if anything, more so than people I do), so that might have made it easier than I realised.

One thing that does occur to me though, is in the UK alcohol is readily available to students. I realise US colleges are hardly dry, but I'd imagine it's not quite the same as the UK, where almost every student will have their own stock of preferred drinks ready for any social occasion.

> That said, I do know that despite my social anxieties, I tend to be pretty comfortable talking to people I don't know that well (if anything, more so than people I do), so that might have made it easier than I realised.

In retrospect, some of it is probably social anxiety.

But I think the bigger part is simply feeling a lack of connection with other people in the dorm. Other than living together we were all leading entirely separate lives. Different majors, different friend groups, etc. We'd see each other in the evenings but that was pretty much it.

The size of the school (~30k students) also didn't help me - the chances of me sharing a class with someone in my dorm were pretty low. Even big classes like Composition, there's probably 40 different composition classes being taught at any semester. I did have one or two people from my History class in my dorm, but that class had 400 people in the auditorium, so not really conducive to discussions. I was just one fish in a really, really big sea.

It was compounded by being an out-of-state student from a long way away from home. Many of the people in the dorm with me were in-state students, many from the same large high schools in the major cities. They came with a built-in networks of friends, many of whom were in the same or adjacent dorms. I knew one other person from my city at all, and he lived on the other side of campus.

So in my particular case, I had a lot working against me. I have no problems believing many people had a great time socializing in dorm life, but I just couldn't develop a connection with anyone there because of the sheer magnitude of the issues.

Which was kinda why it was so weird my friend invited me to rush. We'd sat next together in Intro to Engineering and chatted a few times, maybe sat together once in the cafeteria and studied for class, but not exactly what I would have called a deep connection. It was really surprising when I was offered that invitation.

In a fraternity, though, you are forced to build that connection. It's pretty much the entire point of the organization. If you want to be a part of the organization, you have to be a part of the brotherhood. You have to develop a connection with those in your pledge class (those who join the fraternity the same time you do), or you drop out or get dropped out.

I started with a smaller number of people that I could get to know (there were 11 people in my pledge class, a much smaller number for me to work with). And because we had tasks to work towards together, both as a pledge class and as an organization, we learned to work together with each other. I can't speak for every fraternity, but mine was super, super big on requiring us to work together. There was only one thing we were ever asked to do as individuals. Every single other thing we were expected to do as a class or as an entire organization. With requirements like that, I couldn't help but get to know people.

I'm not saying this type of thing is for everyone, but it really did work out well for me and for everyone else in my pledge class.

> One thing that does occur to me though, is in the UK alcohol is readily available to students. I realise US colleges are hardly dry, but I'd imagine it's not quite the same as the UK, where almost every student will have their own stock of preferred drinks ready for any social occasion.

My school, a large state university, was actually completely dry (officially, at least). Part of it is the drinking age in the US is 21, so only upperclassmen are even above that level at all. But even if you were over 21, alcohol was prohibited on campus. All the dorms, buildings and grounds were dry.

But this was pretty widely ignored, even by the administration. Generally speaking, as long as you weren't making an ass out of yourself or driving, you were okay. Sophomore year I traded beers with my RA (the person in charge of the dorm) on a pretty regular basis.

yes, and also I am not sure it's really that hard to be a reasonably decent student and attend parties. I mean you could study 8 am to 8pm on a Saturday, go to a party, be in bed by 1 am and study 9 am to midnight the next day

Signalling theory absolutely does not indicate that.

> When I was in University I didn't understand why some people didn't care about grades and partied so much. When we left school and got into the real world I understood why: they had rich parents with contacts that could get them good jobs or seed capital for their own businesses.

I'm not from the US, so I obviously can't tell if the same is true there (and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't, given the sheer cost of tuition): here, there's a strong push for most people to go to university straight out of high school because that's what's done if you're at least averagely smart as you need to to get a well-paid job (or so the story goes, regardless of its truthfulness).

At the same time, many people don't really know what they want to do (and degrees here lack the breadth of those in the US), so they end up dicking around a lot, going out partying, because they have no real focus. They don't care about their grades—they don't even care about university—it's purely a means to an end (i.e., getting a decently paid job), and when that end is more than a couple of years away while you simultaneously get your first taste of freedom as an adult, it's hard to care about effects that are years away.

> I didn't understand why some people didn't care about grades and partied so much. When we left school and got into the real world I understood why: they had rich parents with contacts that could get them good jobs or seed capital for their own businesses.

I think thats overly generalized. When I went to college I was (by design) mixed into a group of students whose parents were migrant workers; they were at college with the first year of tuition covered on a special program for migrant workers. I noticed among them the same thing I noticed among some of the more affluent people at school: some worked hard and did well, others did nothing but party. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more common among people with affluent parents, but I think the stronger reason is college (in the US) is a bunch of 18 year olds on their own for their first time; some are ready for the responsibility, many aren't.

And even those who party all the time might be able to finish with the best possible grades.

This is so absolutely on point.

I've been through life, until now, with exactly that feeling, expecting but not knowing that others feel the same way.

I've been in a bit of a rut recently, and this gives me some ammunition to get myself back together... so thank you for quoting, and thank you, author.

Rich people network and want their kids to be successful, what a shocking revelation, so different from us poor people.

Chances are if they're slacking off in university then they're going to slack off at work too, which means whatever they're not doing will need someone to be hired to do it anyway.

Maybe this is because the OP was of an Asian background where taking care for extended family is taken for granted. In reality, most poor families are quite atomized, even when they live under the same roof, so that shouldn't be a big deal.

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