What a High School Student Learned from Paul Graham | Hacker News Reader

What a High School Student Learned from Paul Graham

heyhamza.com

56 pointschamza21 comments

"If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they'd do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration."

My father went to MIT on the GI bill after serving in combat in WW2. His class was the first to go after the war, and they were all combat vets several years older than the sophomore class.

When the fraternity hazing started, one of the vets told the kid with the paddle "you ain't gonna touch me with that". Hazing was suspended for the next 4 years.

I get a chuckle every time I think of some kids trying to haze a combat veteran.

>Nothing used to terrify me more than the question: “Well, what do you want to do with your life?”

Life is unpredictable, and this include careers. Thus a better question is:

"So, what have you been doing lately?"

"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."

Isn't it after working quite a bit on stuff we don't quite like that we start to like them? Maybe it's hard to discover what we like before we have given it a chance practiced or worked on it a bit. My bet would be that most people who thought they liked violin, math or hacking at 1st sight, already had worked on it without knowing before. Their parents listened to music, went to concert with them, a teacher showed them how to build a Turing machine with paper and tape...

I like that post, I would dare edit last sentence to "Go out, work, practice, and learn"

There's too much pressure these days to know what you want to do with your life. How can a 15 year old know anything about his future, when he's just trying to get through the next midterm? I'm not excusing mediocrity and laziness. For as the saying goes, if you don't know where you are going, any road can take you there. But, in the grand scheme of things, not enough attention is placed on discovery and growth. And, too much is place on fitting into some category.

It's easy to forget that in many ways a 30 year old only has twice the experience of a 15 year old. There are brain development issues, but talented 15 year old is often significantly better at their specialty than the average 30 year old.

PS: You can stagnate at any age, around 25% of Americans did not read a single book last year.

I used to buy into the idea that reading a book, any book, is a good idea. That may be true if you're learning to read, but most books are junk and add no value to your life. You can stagnate easily by reading lots of potboilers, for example.

> It's easy to forget that in many ways a 30 year old only has twice the experience of a 15 year old.

At walking and eating, sure, but for many other things, the 30 year old has more than 2x as much experience. It depends on when they start.

For example, if someone learns math at 5, that someone can have 10 years of experience at 15 and 25 years at 30.

If said someone doesn't start doing something until 10, the numbers are 5 and 20.

I suspect the average 30 year old in the US is probably worse on a standardized math test than the average 15 year old. Back in collage I took Differential Equations, but at 30 I really don't recall the specifics. In many ways I was probably better at math a 17 than I am today. Now take the average person that can't recall how to use %'s correctly and they may have been better at 15.

That's why I wrote "can have" instead of "will have" - elapsed time is an upper limit but individuals may do something else with that time.

When I was 15, I was working on my first video game. It was an utter failure. Nonetheless, I keep trying anyway.

That become my career path.

I think your example shows that we need to start giving our kids more free time so they can explore first hand what they love to do.

We have plenty of free time, but not enough encouragement.

Many modern high schoolers don't really have that much free time between AP classes and "extra curricular" activities. And I say it in quotes because like the AP classes, often those activities are the result of college application pressure (not always).

Brilliant! Just cleared so many thoughts going on in my mind about college - should I go or not? what should I take up (too many to choose from).

Now I know what to do - go learn and do something. It will make things clearer.

Not only for college but life at general.

Any chance PG said anything about college? Any talk? Essay? Links please.

[edit to the link] good you ask, but as a kind remark, you could as well have started your journey by googling what you asked and you'd have found a lot of stuff by yourself including: http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html and college.html Showing you did an effort to find, before asking, increases chance others will help you.

Just after writing this comment, I googled and got the two articles. But there are some random interviews and videos that I might miss.

Thanks =)

There is this one:

http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html

Wow! What an amazing feeling it must be to know that one of your essays has had a positive impact on a young kid. Nice going PG!

Sweet!

I got -3 point's because I said sweet? wow......

I got -5 for saying 'cool'. I understand your post has to be informative, as opposed to mere trolling

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