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Comment by jshaqaw | Hacker News Reader

Part of the issue here is defining what it means to “achieve”. I was a gifted child and graduated at the top of my fancy Ivy League university. Did I go on to conquer the world? No. And many days I stress and feel bad about that. But that’s mostly when I allow myself to judge myself by the external validation system of society. Society values a big bank account or fancy awards which is fine. A happy life spent with family, spent learning and pondering lots of different things rather than focused specialization, spent achieving enough to live well but not make the Forbes rich list or a Nobel prize are considered external failures to live up to potential. But it is a happy life and in the end that is all that matters. It isn’t easy to tune that out and be thankful for what you have but it is vital to my sanity.

I have children now who are very smart and capable. If they want to conquer the world that’s great. But what I really try to reinforce is that they should find a life that makes them happy and try to ignore the sentiment that they MUST be a Supreme Court justice or a unicorn CEO if that isn’t what their soul tells them.

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I’m so glad I had parents who encouraged in me what you are encouraging in your children.

I was accepted to a very prestigious university, and as my friends, their parents, and other adults (including some family) found out, there was mostly encouragement to just go there. The attitude was, “why wouldn’t I want to go there? Just think of the opportunity!” They we’re shocked I was thinking of attending a state school instead of automatically saying yes to the prestigious one.

My parents were much more practical, pointing out how much it would cost - even after the scholarships I’d be given - and how much debt I’d have at the end of 4 years.

They pointed out how difficult it can be to go a long ways away for college sometimes, and how young adults of that age can struggle, especially in the first year. I saw that happen to many friends and acquaintances; leaving to a school far away, only to move back much closer to home after a year or two.

One friend who wasn’t strongly encouraging me to go to the prestigious school? Someone who was in a grad program at that prestigious school. He was confident I’d succeed and be happy at either a smaller, state university, or the big name one. When I chose the state school, this friend - who had been pretty neutral up to then - said he was very impressed and happy that I went the way that I did.

All the people who hadn’t had that experience seemed pretty hesitantly approving of my choice to go to the state school. “Oh, you chose that one? ... well, good for you!”

I later ended up working at the same company as many people from more prestigious schools, and graduating from the state school with no debt let me be a co-founder of a company much earlier in my life than if I had tens of thousands of college debt. I’m totally happy with my choice.

The whole prestigious school thing means little imo.

After you meet a few dunces from a top school and the rare genius who went to CC, you really stop caring.

College is what you make it. If you aren't networking a top school, I don't see the purpose, we all learn math.

I would argue that as University education has scaled up and become commoditized, the value of a generic degree as a signaling function has decreased, and that in response the value of matriculation to a top school has only increased. Schools are just brands and become an extension of the personal brands of their students and alums. Unless you're studying a hard science or similar, I'd bet that the value of lower ranked schools will become obsolete sooner.

To add a little additional context: the prestigious school I was accepted to wasn't exactly highly known for the field I was going into, and with the reality of grade inflation at top-tier schools, I figured I might get a better, or at least more hard-nosed, you-better-work kind of experience at the state school.

I'll never be able to truly compare the two, but I know at my state school that I learned a lot, improved my ability to learn, and gained a lot in perseverance, not to mention made some great friends.

My friends generally did not have parents who worked at top Wall Street firms, were nationally-elected politicians, or were celebrities, and my friends generally were not going to work at the most high-paying, time-demanding, possibly-quality-of-life-shrinking companies/jobs. That's okay, because I don't want to do 80 or 100 hour work weeks, and I don't want the people around me encouraging that, because I want to experience a lot more to life than those kinds of work experiences. Nothing wrong with people who want that, but this route worked well for me.

Part of why it worked for me is because I was privileged enough to have parents who helped me understand myself and what I wanted out of life.

I think education is going to radically change in the next decade or so. Online education is going to come up to par with the greatest of institutions. The missing link is the actual credential. The signal of the end of education as we knew it in the past is when a wealthy/powerful person comes out and endorses one of these things in a real way. For example, if Elon Musk comes out and says SpaceX considers a cert from $NetflixOfEducation as equal to an engineering degree from MIT on a resume... then it's all over. I believe this will certainly happen at some point, it's just a matter of when.

Generally I agree with your view, but there are real hiring problems that have to be solved first.

>if Elon Musk comes out and says SpaceX considers a cert from $NetflixOfEducation as equal to an engineering degree from MIT on a resume... then it's all over.

If 50 developers apply for a job and 3 of them are from MIT and 47 are from lesser known schools, using the MIT signal as a filter is efficient. If $NetflixOfEducation is too accessible and half of the applicants have it, then it loses its value as a hiring signal. Of course there are other filters too. Previous employers is an important one. You can create comprehensive professional examinations like they do in medicine, where a passing grade is a major achievement. But these don't scale well because the more they scale the easier it is to cheat, especially if the risks of getting caught cheating are minor (i.e. there aren't previous barriers that must be overcome via investment of time in other institutions first).

The other dynamic of top schools is the networking effect. There is real value in concentrating thousands of the "best and brightest" together in one place and bouncing them off each other. It doesn't scale, which is both a problem (for qualified people who are excluded for whatever reason) and a benefit (for those who participate, there is value in the scarcity).

> If $NetflixOfEducation is too accessible and half of the applicants have it, then it loses its value as a hiring signal.

Only for companies who hire for signals.

For companies that hire for throughput this does not hold.

I actually think it's a bit more complicated than that. For a large company trying to fill a ton of openings, I think where you went to college is actually an even more important filtering criteria (ie an Ivy League degree is almost an automatic pass from resume to phone screen), but the list of colleges that get a near automatic pass is larger.

What do you mean by "throughput" and how do you measure it ahead of an interview? Given 50 resumes for an open position, how do you select whom to interview? Does your process scale to many dozens or hundreds of open positions per year?

As someone who's had the opportunity to go through a pile of 100+ resumes and have met people who have gone to Ivy League (or other top technical schools like Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, etc) I definitely do not put too much weight on education (even for new grads). As a software engineer I'd rather put weight on their projects and accomplishments. I've seen a lot of students from prestigious schools with high GPAs who completely bomb the in person interviews.

People have been saying this about most new technology for a long time. Between the printing press and the television this isn't new. The University abides.

As a hiring manager, I don't agree with this. Frankly, although I always look for a person's education history, the only time this actually matters is if it allows me to make small talk with them during introductions.

Additionally, a person with a hard science BS from a small college may well have received a far superior education than someone graduating from a top tier university in the same discipline. It makes a huge difference for many students how engaged their professors are in teaching, vs research.

This isn't accurate, for instance the data structures/algorithms courses at top schools are significantly more attuned to how industry hiring works than mediocre schools like the one I went to, where you need a lot of external practice in order to be able to pass interviews.

I suppose it depends on what industry, and also where you're hoping to get hired?

My undergrad courses might not have gotten me totally ready for an interview at a FAANG company (though it's been over a decade since I graduated!), but that also wasn't a goal of mine.

And my undergrad courses did totally prepare me for a few interviews at very highly-respected companies, complete with job offers, without needing a lot of external practice.

Do companies use school pedigree for filtering? Yes. Are there other ways to stand out from the crowd? Yes.

I’m not talking about filtering. I’m talking about succeeding in interviews.

> If you aren't networking a top school, I don't see the purpose, we all learn math.

Indeed. Additionally --- not sure if this is true for all fields --- the stuff taught on the college level is basic enough so that passable level of teaching is fine, as better teaching is marginally useful for good students. Things change a bit on the doctoral level, where the topics diverge more and it's important to go to a good direction early on --- however, not sure how much this differentiates universities inside the US.

I always am bothered by these stories because they seem to imply the person matters more than the school.

I had mediocre grades and stats (#2 in class, 1500/1600) but I didn’t get into a prestigious school and went to my state school. The fact that I couldn’t even get into a top school appears to bode pretty poorly for my future if this is the criteria!

Which part of my story bothered you, and what criteria?

If we're talking whether someone will be generally happy and successful in life regardless of where they attend school, yes, I 100% think a person very much does matter more than any school they may attend.

And if we're talking whether someone is more "worthwhile", or will have a better life, if they get accepted into a prestigious school, I don't think that at all.

I think some circumstances I had no influence over, including going to high school in a less-populous state that likely had many fewer people even applying to prestigious schools, probably had a big part in me getting accepted.

> The fact that I couldn’t even get into a top school appears to bode pretty poorly for my future if this is the criteria!

What is the criteria you think would bode poorly for you? If you're a hard worker, spend lots of time to learn your chosen career skills, and spend lots of time becoming a clear and empathetic communicator, I think you can be very successful in your chosen career path, regardless of your GPA or standardized test scores from high school.

Could you please stop posting so much on the topics of schools, elites, and elite schools on HN? It's excessive:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:akhilcacharya%20school&sort...

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:akhilcacharya%20elite&sort=...

I get how strongly you feel, but it goes against the spirit of the site when people keep posting so repetitively about one particular issue that they feel strongly about. HN threads are supposed to be driven by curiosity, which is a quite different motivation.

OK, fair enough, but it lends itself to the topic, which also posted about at a pretty significant rate.

Which “very prestigious school” doesn’t have financial aid? Any elite school will be much cheaper than a state school (possibly free) if you don’t have very wealthy parents.

You can have "not wealthy parents" and still not get approval for financial aid if you're over a certain threshold. And plenty of people get into prestigious schools but don't have the grades/accolades to get a merit scholarship.

And with the cost of schools only rising, the impact on families that might appear "well off" only increases too. So people get loans. And maybe that loan will be worth it and the networking you do will pay for it. Or maybe it won't.

I would argue that for many people, unless it's not just an elite school but THE elite school, it probably doesn't pay off.

> Any elite school will be much cheaper than a state school (possibly free) if you don’t have very wealthy parents.

This was not at all true in my situation.

Over ten years later, I imagine some things are different, and I know some very rich schools have shifted certain policies since then.

Personally, my goals are to have an interesting job (i.e. using a modern tech stack), have the resources to pursue my hobbies, and have the autonomy to be eccentric if I want to.

However, meeting those goals require a lot of money. This is especially the case since interesting tech jobs, access to niche resources, and tolerance of alternative lifestyles are all associated with living in a large city.

Therefore, I find myself in a situation where making a lot of money isn't my goal, but I feel that I have to do it if I want to achieve my goals.

Therefore, I find myself in a situation where making a lot of money isn't my goal, but I feel that I have to do it if I want to achieve my goals.

Can't you work remotely? There are a lot of smaller cities (at least in Europe) that have a great vibe, are welcoming to all kinds of people, and do not have extreme housing costs.

I live in such a city, a large chunk of the population are students, so there is a vibrant social and nightlife. But the city is too small to have a lot of 'big city problems'.

I'm working remotely but living like a nomad. A month at most in different villages across India. I now miss the city life, and am also considering moving to Europe, perhaps a small city in Germany. Can you share more about these smaller cities? What was your criteria for choosing the city you are in presently?

Smaller cities present issues in Germany (and Europe as a whole) for a multitude of reasons, for example healthcare[0], reliable bandwidth, older populations[1], etc.

Choosing a small city with a train station, however, can dramatically improve your access to most of these things as the trains typically imply population, which typically begets services such as internet, pharmacies, etc.

So honestly my first recommendation is filtering small cities by that.

0: https://www.thelocal.de/20181221/germans-turn-to-medibus-as-...

1: https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/politics/divided-nation-g...

Smaller cities present issues in Germany (and Europe as a whole) for a multitude of reasons, for example healthcare[0], reliable bandwidth, older populations[1], etc.

Well, Nentershausen is very small ;). We had weekends with friends in Nentershausen for a couple of years. It's a village, not a city.

I was more thinking along the lines of (random Dutch/German university cities): Heidelberg, Tübingen, Ulm, Erlangen, Nürnberg, Nijmegen, Groningen, Leiden, etc.

I've had good experience in the outskirts of Berlin.

It's a big city but it's so spread out that living in one of the outlying districts can be like living in a small town near a big city (in many ways Berlin feels more like an agglomeration of many smaller cities than e.g. Vienna).

It's also (still) a relatively affordable city, especially outside the central districts.

If you need any information or help about Germany, you can contact me if you want (see profile).

What was your criteria for choosing the city you are in presently?

We lived in Tübingen (Germany) for five years. But the city was just a tad too small for my taste. There are only few stores (outside tourism-focused stores) and it there is fairly little to do in terms of concerts, etc. It is part of the Stuttgart metropolitan area, so there are a lot of work opportunities. I loved the scenery of Southern Germany, but Germany is too hierarchical, conservative, and old-fashioned for my taste (of course, there are exceptions, such as Berlin). It's really a drag that you can't do groceries on a Sunday, people expect you to pay with cash everywhere, internet connections are somewhat mediocre, etc. Oh, and there is almost no biking infrastructure in cities (outside cities it's quite ok). That said, a lot our our friends/colleagues there like Tübingen/Stuttgart area.

We moved back to Groningen, The Netherlands (where I studied + did my PhD and my wife did her PhD). It may be somewhat remote for some people. But I love it, there are multiple concert venues (including the legendary Vera), there are plenty of tech-related activities. We have fiber to home. We can shop on Sundays (handy when you work throughout the week). Bicycles are the primary form of transportation. Our 5yo daughter clearly enjoys school here more (used to be in Kindergarten in Germany). The largest downside of Groningen is that there is not a lot of challenging local work (outside the university).

If my wasn't offered a job in Groningen, we would have considered Nijmegen, perhaps Utrecht (+ nearby towns) or Leiden. I have worked several months in Amsterdam, but it is too busy for me ;).

> It's really a drag that you can't do groceries on a Sunday,

In America I can buy groceries any day of the week, but as someone who often works odd hours, I find it a drag that almost none are open past 10 or 11pm. The buses don't run after midnight~1am, either, so if I need a dozen eggs at 3am, I have to get in my car and drive.

I feel that's not the sort of behavior that a city with aspirations should be encouraging. If you want interesting things happening in your city, you need people working at all hours to make it happen, and many will be on wages that don't support living downtown. You don't want every worker driving a car. It's simply not scalable.

> people expect you to pay with cash everywhere

I'm the opposite. I only pay by card or check for regular pre-planned purchases (like rent, or insurance). It's well established that people buy less when they pay with cash! I'm disappointed by all the trendy new shops that are card-only.

Huh. Here in Michigan I live in a city of 30,000 people, with my usual grocery store open 24 hours a day and about five minutes' drive away.

"In America ... I find it a drag that almost none are open past 10 or 11pm"

I used to live in Atlanta and there was a 24-hour Kroger right across the street from my townhome. One night at 2am, I bought a gas grill at that Kroger on a whim. Good times.

Now I live in Silicon Valley and there are quite a few 24-hour grocery stores according to google map.

I've actually been thinking about doing something similar in India. How has it been going for you?

How eccentric do you want to be? What exactly are your hobbies? This doesn't seem very hard to pull off with a pretty middle-of-the-road tech job and living pretty much anyplace, but maybe I'm suffering from a failure of imagination.

> Personally, my goals are to have an interesting job (i.e. using a modern tech stack)

I always wonder why using a modern tech is interesting? Let's say there's a job where you're using J2EE 1.4 or some other outdated technology from the early 2000s. The thing is, I remember when that technology was hot shit and people considered working on it very interesting. So, it looks like, over the course of time, doing the very same task, with the same day-to-day activities, went from interesting to uninteresting?

I think it's mostly job security. I've worked on many technologies that I really enjoyed despite the flaws that every tech has (Flash for example) that have 0 jobs 10 years later.

On the other hand, if you are a COBOL expert today, you will be in high demand and will make enormous amounts of money.

For a while! Probably a better position for a 55 year old developer to be in than a 25 year old one.

Oh yeah, I agree with that - but that's not job being "interesting", that's just job security.

I wrote my comment because I felt some disingenuity in the OP saying that jobs with modern tech stacks are interesting for him. It means that he's either genuinely intersted in following the tech frameworks threadmill, and jobs with modern tech stack allow him to do that - or, he's lying to himself that he's intersting in it, to make getting up for work every day a little bit easier.

I think it's a heuristic signal. Old tech stacks are usually used in old projects that solve old problems.

I doubt the OP would mind building a J2EE project from scratch to solve a novel problem. But nobody does that -- usually if there is a J2EE job, it's maintenance, which can be less interesting. And if there is a novel problem, it will likely be solved with the current status quo ("modern") technology.

Sorry for the delayed reply. I had missed your guys' posts.

For me it's couple of things:

My experience has been that newer languages and frameworks tend to be more user friendly. In particular, I tend to enjoy the abstraction and design aspects of programming more than the nuts and bolts technology aspects. So, for example, I find the low level aspects (e.g. memory management) of C annoying and I appreciate that React lets me use all of the abstractions that a programming language provides to define UI.

I tend to like functional programming techniques and dislike object oriented ones. FP techniques seem to be popular with the current generation of tech while the previous generation seems to have been dominated by OO. Of course that's not true in every domain and could change in the future.

This is a stereotype, but I tend to associate older tech stacks with companies that are more conservative, less innovative/more established, and/or less technology focused.

Finally, like you guys have mentioned, newer tech is associated with less maintenance work and greater future job prospects; even if that's just signaling as opposed to being inherent to the technologies themselves.

It's great that you encourage this attitude in your kids.

I had a similar high-achieving story until I experienced some mental health issues during my PhD. I came out the other side realising that what made me happy wasn't a high-octane, top-of-my-field job, but a bunch of other stuff that I went for instead. I mainly feel lucky that I was well-placed to do that, even if some might say I'd wasted some potential.

Glad you figured things out - but I’m very curious about what you switched to.

I switched from computational simulation stuff to software engineering (big company, but not FAANG), since I found that the coding was much more rewarding than running the code. I think academia is a great career, but that it is better suited to other people.

I like my 9-to-5(ish) job coding up software that people actually use. I also like that when I go home, I don't have the emotional baggage of worrying about work.

Another similar story here. Got all the way to end of post-doc until I realized I was doing it all for external reasons (immigrant from culture that pushes academics very hard). I definitely won't be pushing my kid the same way. Sometimes I wonder if it is possible to swing the pendulum too much the other way? But I hope to strike a happy medium.

Yes it is possible to push it too far the other way. The immigrant culture that pushes academics very hard simply needs to be amended to add on the part of life that is fun. I pushed my kids hard, encouraged them to have fun and enjoy life, and now they do that on their own. They make their own goals, set out plans to achieve them, getting parental help along the way, but also encouraged them to have fun.

For example, my daughter recently asked if she should stay home to study for exams that are about 3 weeks away instead of going on a school trip to a different city. I told her to study her ass off precisely so that she could go without any guilt.

She did, and she feels much more rounded and fulfilled.

Don't think that what your parents did was so wrong it needs to be corrected. Think of what was missing and what you can do about it.

Do you mind giving an example or two of how you push or pushed your kids in a positive way?

I didn't say I pushed them in a positive way :) Sometimes they need their heads pounded figuratively.

But generally, I talk to them about their goals and ask them if they really want them. Usually the answer is yes.

Then I say something like "Are you willing to give up some play time with fortnite (or equivalent)" to achieve your goal? Usually the answer is yes.

Then I ask them how they will know they are getting closer to their goals. Usually they'll say something that makes no sense (because they're kids) and so we'll google characteristics of getting towards said goal.

Then I'll ask them what do they think they should do on a weekly basis so that in 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, they will be at the level they should be in that time. They usually have a good answer based on aforementioned googling.

Then I ask them when they plan to make the time for this. Usually they have a good answer for this since they manage their own schedule.

Then, my job is just to remind them if they forget and if they are not keeping up, ask them if their goals have changed or why they are not keeping up with their plans. This is the part where sometimes I need to pound them on their heads figuratively.

How old are your kids? My worry is that if I do this with my future kids they'll simply tell me what I want to hear since they won't have developed a clear understanding of what they want in life and what's possible to do in life.

16 and 11. I think the 11 year old maybe only started picking it up in the last year or so, but after they picked up a hobby they really liked.

just knowing that you care & realising that they have the agency to choose what it is they want out of life is already a plus.

Its nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.

The world needs more good people. The world doesn't need more smart people.

We need people who are both.

Being 'good' in a non-smart way is not actually being very good at all.

That's bullshit, you can be good regardless of your place in life, regardless of what you do or don't have.

That is bullshit, and not at all what I'm trying to say.

More good people, more smart people, but much less people overall.

Why not?

It isn't like smart would mean more motivation or anything. I do think it would have benefits like not being as able to be ripped off or fooled by mostly simple math. I think it'd mean we'd have more knowledgeable nurses and fewer folks that believe medical woo.

I'd even argue that being good fails if you aren't smart. "Schools just need to get back to the 3 R's - readin', writing', and 'rithmatic" isn't all ill-intentioned, after all, and is (in part) a complaint that kids aren't ready for the world, but their solution shows ignorance to what the schools teach, why it is taught, and things like that.

I feel like your comment is implying a very specific type of "smart" person...

Perhaps a better way to put it is that smarts without wisdom and/or ethics can cause some serious damage?

I imagine smart people have done more good for the world than good people. The big lasting improvements to our lives have almost exclusively come from technology and when you look back at technology the vast majority of it was created by smart people(a lot of whom were good too). Vaccines, antibiotics, and farming technology have probably saved more people than every charity that has ever existed combined.

Good != charity. Good people voluntarily enlisted in war to fight tyrants. Or sacrificed to give decent upbringing to their kids, often against extreme hardships, so that they don't become degenerates or criminals. Etc etc.

I don't know much good on average wars do. For every good person fighting a tyrant, there's a good person fighting for the tyrant.

Wars are bad (assuming they are usually started by "the bad guys" - an unreasonable aggressor). But, in order to stop the bad guys from taking over the world, the good guys need to sacrifice their lives.

Well said. Some people talk about enlightenment. To me, that is nothing else than fully realising that what really matters has actually been at our reach all the time. It's just that it is so difficult to filter out the external pressure to "achieve more".

I like what you said about enlightenment. On a similar note, I tend to say, there is no such thing as those enlightened and those veiled in ignorance, we all shimmer from the same inexplicable source. But otherwise, I read this yesterday (and even submitted it onto this site), you might find it interesting: http://merton.org/ITMS/Seasonal/11/11-4Kronenberg.pdf

I like the last bit: What I am saying is this: the score is not what matters. Life does not have to be regarded as some game in which scores are kept and somebody wins. If you are too intent on winning, you will never enjoy playing. If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.

"we all shimmer from the same inexplicable source"

Just thought I'd say I love this description.

It may sound ridiculous (you're going to laugh), but when I find myself stressing over superficial things, it helps me to think of the song "The Grand Illusion" by Styx. To me, no words better sum up the odd complexity that has emerged from humanity. It's my mantra. My wife's mantra is equally ridiculous and true: "it just doesn't matter" from Bill Murray's monologue in Meatballs. Maybe one of these mantras will help you.

I have to also note that in my ~20yrs of corporate experience, the kinder you are, in concert with being as blunt and truthful as possible, the more people will trust and value your input.

I think these traits emerge if you repeat mantra's like the ones above to yourself multiple times a day - when skimming through your emails in the morning (I often just delete or archive all but 1 or 2), when in a meeting that's going in circles or getting heated (I often just smile and leave), when you're running late for work, when you're worried about taking time off, when your air conditioner brakes or you get into a minor fender bender, or $200K of you're employee owned shares are suddenly nullified. It's all a grand illusion, and it just doesn't matter.

Here's another one: It's all part of the human experience.

This is not one to tell others when they struggle, same as yours, but it can help me from time to time.

This is awesome. Indeed, according to the mystical traditions, enlightenment is about realizing that it is all a grand illusion. (Though I would add, that in addition to "it just doesn't matter" it also matters very, very much!)

If it doesn't matter, why go to the job at all?

Some of us like to eat.

So it DOES matter, after all. Screw up enough at job and your ability to eat goes away.

So, here's the point - as a baseline, if you have a fishing pole or can read a book about which plants are edible and which are not, you are not going to starve. Everything else is icing on the cake. Of course your actions matter, but there is a sea of minutiae that people tend to spend time on that simply doesn't matter in the grand scheme of the universe.

You will screw up. There are people smarter than you. Do your best to contribute and be honest about what you know and don't know, and you will be highly valued by your peers.

Enlightenment is just the realisation of to know who you are and know what you have to do instead of thinking you know who you are and thinking you know what you have to do.

I've always thought this was the ideal form of parenting. Relax expectations on the children, let them find their own path.

I've recently changed my mind and I think offloading the discovery of purpose onto children creates more pressure on them than a moderate pressure to conform to society's existing expectations. What's worse than being unhappy and being told you have no reason to be unhappy?

If they discover on their own that they don't care about society's rules and living off in the woods and growing their own food is the key to happiness, so be it. But to assume everyone will be able to develop that path to happiness is optimizing for the edge case. Most people need guard rails for life and to live within a social construct that defines success and failure for them.

If you are happy, you can probably consider yourself successful. If you are 'successful', it is by no means a given that you are happy.

Excellent points.

> not make the Forbes rich list or a Nobel prize

...not to mention that many scientists gave up opportunities to go after Nobel prizes to focus instead on more meaningful topics of research.

I completely agree. I think a good life is balanced and not being the best for the sake of being the best.

I'm interested in Ivy League universities admissions though. From their point of view I think they want the best of the best

I wonder if they try to filter out the people who are smart but would rather enjoy life than change the world.

In a somewhat similar vein, learning & practicing “deliberate gratitude” saved my sanity.

Taking a mindfulness class was what introduced me to the concept, but regular practice of gratitude helped save my mind (and perhaps my life!).

What if "being happy" for them means watching Youtube all day and playing computer games?

That's what I'm struggling with with my 15 year old. This is currently affecting his GPA to the point where it'd limit his college options to community college, and maybe not even that (since you do have to work even there to not fail).

I simply can't convince him that this is not a good use of his time, and he will regret it profoundly later in life.

When you're "addicted" it is hard to get perspective.

Not sure about your situation or feasibility, but banning the activity for 30 days might clear the fog. There are blogs about journalists giving up Twitter temporarily for example.

Another angle might be explaining the difference between a creator and consumer.

His answer to that is he completely refuses to do anything at all in that case. Grades be damned. Now what?

Still healthier I think. Boredom was a motivator in the old days. Military school might be an option too, haha.

That's the trouble with armchair parenting advice. "Haha".

Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.

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