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Comment by narkee | Hacker News Reader

> I took no time to do homework, and instead spent time reading math books and programming

vs.

>I got an extra recommendation from a professor teaching the math class I was taking, whom I had asked to explicitly let them know that I was mature and a hardworker...

These statements are irreconcilable. A hard worker does work that he/she is assigned, and does not make pre-mature value judgements on the worthiness of said work. Being smart does not mean you're a hard worker. That was a pretty irresponsible recommendation by the professor, considering you didn't exhibit the qualities you claimed to.

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> These statements are irreconcilable. A hard worker does work that he/she is assigned, and does not make pre-mature value judgements on the worthiness of said work.

Nonsense. Work should always be in furtherance of some goal.

I don't want to hire the person who does exactly as I say, even if it's a dumb idea in the larger context. What's important is reaching the goal (ethically, legally &c).

While there are people who use anti-authoritarianism to justify laziness, that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Perhaps I was unclear. I had crappy grades in high school. High school homework was a pointless waste of time, so I didn't do it. I had good grades in 3 of 4 of my university math classes. Homework there was interesting and not a waste of my time, so I did it. When I hit MIT, my grades skyrocketed, because with a small number of exceptions, the classes were fun, and the problem sets were interesting and useful.

I did poorly in my first class -- I didn't realize this immediately -- I don't believe I sent a university transcript to MIT admissions, but if I did, they would have seen one bad and one good early, and one bad and two good normal admissions.

What? A hard worker is just somebody who works hard. (Note: on something, not on everything. Working hard on everything is impossible.)

Well, maybe the professor didn't know what his grades were like.

> A hard worker does work that he/she is assigned

Maybe. But a smart worker evaluates what's important and what's not. Formal education and learning are sometimes completely orthogonal to each other. You might be thinking "well, how do you know what's important?" and the answer is that it's a gamble and decisions like those are not for everyone. There is no virtue in simply doing what you're told and being passive in your own education.

The OP claimed that he procured a reference that attested to his "hard-workingness". It's perfectly ok to be a smart worker, and I don't disagree with your point. My point of contention is with the abuse of the reference system - what value does the reference system have if you simply ask for (and receive) character attributes you do not possess?

So basically he was admitted on traditional merit, by misleading application reviewers.

Yeah I guess it depends how you define "hard work". Certainly spending hours reading math books and programming is some sort of work.

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