I'm now trying to teach my son that just learning to do the work, even if it's boring, is the real skill you need. But he's too focused on winning every mini-game.
> A 2012 study at the University of Rochester (with a smaller N= 28) altered the experiment by dividing children into two groups: one group was given a broken promise before the marshmallow test was conducted (the unreliable tester group), and the second group had a fulfilled promise before their marshmallow test (the reliable tester group). The reliable tester group waited up to four times longer (12 min) than the unreliable tester group for the second marshmallow to appear.[11][12] The authors argue that this calls into question the original interpretation of self-control as the critical factor in children's performance, since self-control should predict ability to wait, not strategic waiting when it makes sense.
but it sounds like the original experiment controlled for the trust factor so I don't really think it shows that the original results were invalid.
Having said that, I've not done a huge amount of research into this so maybe take my opinions with a grain of salt or two.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-...
I would have been burnt in college, except I got to homeschool the last few years of high school. During that time I took CLEP tests. They were pretty easy for the most part, but they required I actually do the reading and prepare for them. That helped, since in school I just had to pay attention in class, and I'd be good. Then I went to a community college for most of my core classes. That helped too, because there the homeworks either were optional or counted for very little, but I got to see how not doing them hurt my grade. By the time I went to the actual university I wanted to for my major specific stuff, I had developed better study habits, and knew what it took to actually do well. I was helped at that point that, since it was the courses relevant to my major, it was all stuff I was interested in, and actually wanted to attain mastery in.
I don't think this is the right approach, because you need the ability to focus on work even when it is not fun.
You do need something that makes the work rewarding in some way, but I wouldn't push to hard to try to make it fun.
> Or, try and instill a goal less of "getting the grade" and more "attain mastery of the subject"?
This was my approach in high school as well. It led to me being the one everyone wanted to study with because I picked up the material the best, but then I flunked classes because I never did the homework.
I would flunk classes that depended mostly on homework, and ace classes that depended mostly on tests. Since I had convinced myself that mastery was more important than grades, this reinforced my behavior.
Somehow, the acing the tests part allowed me to get into an Ivy League college. Which I then flunked out of because at that point, I couldn't get by without actually doing the homework and studying outside of class.
This pattern of behavior continues to be something I struggle with as an adult. I can be quite productive for short bursts of time, but have a hard time keeping on track with longer term projects that don't pay off immediately.
I think what you need is to learn the value of steady incremental work that only shows significant results after a long period of time. Basic reinforcement training techniques can be used for this; provide rewards for getting incremental work done, but better to provide them intermittently. Eventually work up from smaller rewards for smaller goals to larger rewards for larger goals.
I think that reinforcing consistency, habit, and small incremental progress rather than brilliance is a big part of what you need. The problem with brilliance is that you can easily get a lot of positive reinforcement for it; people are impressed at how well you understand something, at how much you know, at how quickly you pick it up. But even if you are better than average at picking things up and figuring things out, you will eventually hit the limits of what you can do through brilliance alone; there are some things that will just take long hard work no matter what, and then all of that reinforcement for brilliance comes back to bite you because you're not getting the same kind of reinforcement, and you can easily get stuck and lose faith in your self-image.
> I don't think this is the right approach, because you need the ability to focus on work even when it is not fun.
this is just coming from my personal experience, but i think it is very important for a kid to have a job sometime in the high school years. my parents are fairly well off and they "protected" me from this need by just giving me spending money (sometimes for a trivial amount of chores, but usually just free money), so that a menial job would not distract me from my studies. of course, i just spent that money on frivolous things and outings with friends that distracted me from school anyway, and i ended up doing quite poorly (though i made it most of the way through a fairly prestigious school before it caught up with me).
eventually i transferred to a regional (but still quite rigorous) university and had to get a restaurant job to pay my expenses. i learned a whole lot about the world real fast. it wasn't so much that i learned about the value of steady work, but rather that low wage jobs in low margin industries really slam home the point that you will never have anything unless you put in the work, and i worked real hard from that point on. i still have bouts of procrastination, but i never just let things slide now, and every time i spend a dollar i feel the amount of my own labor that i am letting go.
You need discipline, not fun. Schools largely fail at teaching discipline, let alone self-discipline.
Yet here we are on HN on Thursday morning...
I had a very rude wake up call when I got to college.
I know high schoolers now and I encourage them to actually do the work. It's not that x,y,z topic may be important someday... It's the skill of doing the work, even when you don't want to, that will be important in life.
Fortunately we didn't have the uncivilized GPA system here so my first year indiscretions had no impact on my final degree.
The only real exception is if you’re screwing up so bad that they kick you out, in which case you don’t get the degree because you don’t complete the coursework.
Other larger companies that cared were Lutron, Epic, and a few more I don't really remember. I think Epic even asked me what my ACT score was.
Beyond that first job though, my GPA hasn't mattered at all, which is good because mine was pretty mediocre.
It didn't help that I went to uni to study Physics, either.
This still happens even though older semesters will tell any freshmen that they need to attend courses and do exercises to make it. What kinda works are mandatory exercises.
It might be "fairly easy" if you're lucky enough to have had a decent K-12 education, which is what prepares you to do what you say and do it effectively.
Far too many students graduate high school barely literate, without knowing how to learn, without sufficient direction or motivation. That's not to mention various emotional and psychological issues students might struggle with that keep them from applying themselves and making the most of their university education. It's also not to mention the fact that way too many students look at university as primarily a place to party, or to cheat their way to a degree.
I was in the military for 4 years between them (and I was not a good student before), but I decided to go to university specifically to learn something that interested me. And it was sad seeing my peers waste their time doing the same stupid crap I'd outgrown and become bored of in the military. (At least there I wasn't expected to learn anything hard.)