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Comment by cgriswald | Hacker News Reader

> I really don't think there's much difference between learning as an adult or a teenager. It's just that we have less time.

I am a 40-year-old full time student with a kid, but no job. I disagree completely. I've got the time. When I was 20, I remembered everything I saw or heard even once. I could recall it with ease. Concepts came easily when they were explained in text or in lecture. Now? I'm still plenty smart and usually get the best grade in my class, but I have to work hard for it, where before I never worked at all at it. I have to spend time actually memorizing things. I have to take time to think about concepts in order to understand them. (Weird, right?)

As far as I can tell, the only real advantages I have over my younger self are that I am better disciplined and I appreciate my education more.

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You also might be remembering your skills inaccurately. In jr high and high school I also got top grades easily and rarely studied. In college I finally had to. I wondered where my ease of learning had gone, but eventually realized the most likely explanation was that the material had simply been much easier/more intuitive and that I was tricking myself with selection bias.

I'm not the same person, but I never studied in college either. I would go to lecture and get 90%+ on the exam. I would get Bs and Cs because I would never do any homework. I could use concepts from math classes without having used them before, as long as they were explained in lecture.

  I am a 40-year-old full time student with a kid

One big difference may be: how much quality, uninterrupted sleep can you budget now vs. then?

I think another big one is stress. When I'm stressed out I cannot focus as well. This stops me learning. As a kid you just live in the moment and even what I thought of as stress back then really wasn't.

You mentioned you have a kid and no job. So, you might also worry about the future of your family -- unless you're super rich. I think that makes a big difference. When I was 20 I had the great privilege that I simply didn't care much about my future most of the time. I was able to concentrate fully on what I was doing. Now, I have to handle all sorts of minor problems that occupy some space in my consciousness. I have to allocate time for learning new stuff in advance instead of just doing it when I feel like it and when I'm best at it.

with a kid covers a lot of ages, are you sure you actually have as much time as you think you do?

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