I don't really feel like I ought be a critic of anyone's writing (given that I am not one myself) but college boyfriends, wandering away from the campfire to look at the stars... it seems like the author takes a really long route to get to the point.
Her point (as I took it) was that she had such a strong habit of living her life entirely in terms of her accomplishments that she was living her life inauthentically without even realizing it. And it took a whole lot of space away from her life just to become aware of it.
Not everything can be reduced down to a three-word "TL;DR."
Edit: It's http://letsmend.com/ - you can find a domain registration page if you search her name and the name of the startup.
Again, the experience she described cannot be reduced to "YOLO." YOLO could just as easily mean "I left Google to do something bigger and more successful." But that's the opposite of what she did. She learned to figure out what she actually wanted instead of what she would get praised for, even if it was an overall less ambitious life path.
Why waste your life doing what doesn't fulfill you? You only live once. Is that not applicable as well? This is precisely my argument. I'm just saying we should be ok with offering critique on style and content, not silencing it around here.
Because it can be extremely difficult to distinguish your own needs/wants from the desires and expectations of the people around you.
No one wakes up in the morning thinking "I'm going to ignore what I want for no reason, and instead do what everyone else thinks I should want." And yet it's an easy trap to fall into, like the author did.
On critiquing: something has gone very wrong when you're making dismissive and snarky remarks about someone's long, personal thought piece. You could do a number of interesting things, like, say, disagree with it or suggest improvements. But if you're idea of a critique is "this is long and boring and I know this stuff", I suggest simply finding other reading material instead.
- you get upset at OP for missing the point and criticizing the author for being too wordy
- you give a neat two sentence summary of the article
- you say sometimes you can't give a nice neat summary of an article
- the massive dose of irony that just happened is lost on you.
The Internet is great at the rapid dissemination of micro-communications. But let's not forget that there's merit in taking your time as well.
EDIT: By rectify I meant upvote haberman, not downvote me :) Well thats fine too, but meant the former.
But the point is that there's a certain box smart people today in the 1975-1990 generation are put in.
* Get good grades
* Go to college
* Get job at company (alternatively, start your own company. That's pretty trendy today.)
* Find spouse
* Buy house
* Have kids
...etc.
Why bother? That's a good question. Why not simply drop out and go surfing? What's the point of the job? What's the point of having the money to buy stuff? Why use your intelligence, this intelligence that so many people have complimented, in the same way every other person like you has been doing?
It's a variant on the age old question - who are you, really? Why bother being you as you are now?
Maybe that explains it better. But the article really resonated with me.
Do you agree that we need to do more school? Lots of people indicate that much of American school really isn't about learning to think, it's more about passing the class, fitting in, mixed in with a heap of credentialism.
Can you write a bit about what makes Asia far worse?
One would be to skirt the system, prepare for exams, and basically retain hardly anything.(This happens extremely often now, especially because of the number of smart yet not-so-determined kids who can get away with coasting, but they don't realize that it'll cost them later.
American schools tend to be lenient on the amount of time required to be spent on school work which allows them leeway to pursue things interesting projects if they are so motivated.
The second is to actually learn the material and work your way through it, thus being able to handle the exams well, and getting something out of your education.
The large part of why students pick the first option is most of the time the material is not very challenging and students find it much easier to slack off than take an initiative to go above and beyond the standard curricula.
The flipside occurs in Asian schools, where while the material is not challenging, it does take a lot of time and effort (not mental, but just constant work) to do well, and survive. This albeit crushes the innovative side that students should nurture at a high school level.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080709051840/http://www.lambdas...
^_^
When I was a student here I had a class where you could get an A for submitting a copy of your notes, no test, no homework. A lot more had tests with "fill in the blanks" questions. Then there was the rare few classes which actually made you think, but in my experience these were at the graduate level.
I believe that he meant to keep learning and reaching...not stacking up degrees.
I love the ole' trimtab
> Try reading 1800s literature.
But seriously, why be dismissive (perhaps too strong a word - but mildly derisive at least) of such a wide swath of human culture that many admittedly find interesting to make a point that has nothing to with literature or writing style for that matter?
edit: Of course, coming out of Victorian works and then reading modern works feels like a breath air of simplicity and prose without a hint of purple... perhaps to the detriment of the moderns.
Hi, I wrote that post. I'd appreciate it if you didn't attribute factors like "fatuous disdain" and "twitter-length reading abilities" to me.
My point was not that long passages of writing are a bad thing in every context, ever. That you've extracted that from what I said speaks more about you than it does me. Pretty much every length of prose is appropriate somewhere. My point was that this length of text was not warranted for this story. The extra passages do not add to the story, they detract from it.
"World famous, highly regarded literature of the 1800s was long, therefore no passage of text can ever be too long" seems like a spectacularly self-defeating argument to me.
The subtle thing here is that she's blaming being at Google for her lack of fulfillment when a mature person would look inward first. I'd bet dollars to donuts that a similar thing happened to her ex-boyfriend. No rationale, vague sentiments, very little actual introspection, except what might make her happy.
Real maturity is about character, finding how to be a better person and not what the world can do for you.
That said, I'm sure she'll go far in life. I sincerely hope she lerans to improve herself as a person in order that she can be a fulfilled human being.
Again, she's looking at things from a very immature perspective, that of life owing her a fulfilling career without actually doing what she's claiming to be doing. Introspecting.
I expected useful insights in what Google was doing wrong, losing such acclaimed talent, but... nothing. It's all about her wanting to fuck up for once, after a life of unmitigated success. I guess this means Google is actually doing something right by losing her, lest she fucks up the company just because.
Wanted means conscious will: she craves the freedom to do everything she wants, including fucking up. I guess an account manager at Google doesn't get that sort of freedom, which might be a good thing after all.
She had a vague dissatisfaction with her time at the company, and she tried to walk people through how she gradually discovered what it was she didn't like.
The whole point of it is that there wasn't any specific thing about Google she didn't really like; that's what makes it interesting (yet also boring and confusing) to read about.
Not a great reason to get so unkind.
I apologize if her (or anyone's) feelings were hurt by my comments.
Her article was about how you shouldn't care what other people desire, you should figure out what you desire and go after that. After all, they're not the one living your life.
Your comment is about how you read the article because of the Google brand, and that you trusted the upvoting masses on HN to weed this out. Notice the language. "Google brand" - why does the fact that this has the word "Google" in it make you want to read it? "upvoting masses" - you trust the masses of HN more than your own judgment?
Perhaps there was something in this article that's worth reading after all, and you glossed over it?
(FWIW, it was my upvote that put this article on the front page - it had 2 upvotes on the New page and was 10 minutes old when I saw it, and I liked it, and so gave it the 3rd upvote.)
I trust the HN hivemind to do (most of) the filtering for me, absolutely. Otherwise I wouldn't read HN, I'd just subscribe to the gazillion feeds out there and read through each and every headline. Despite evidence to the contrary (the number of replies I've written in this thread clearly show that I don't have a highly-driven, high-achieving life similar to TFA's author), I can't dedicate an infinite amount of time to reading stuff on the internet.
Past that, I trust my own judgement in defining what is actually interesting to me by skimming headlines. Finally, once I've read an article, I'm not doubting my inner-self's ability to judge whether the material is actually interesting or not.
This is one of those few times where the two-level filter (HN + me skimming headlines) failed to weed out uninteresting material, and I assign part of the responsibility to the linkbaiting title. I don't think that's unreasonable on my part.
I really strongly believe as a left-coast culture put a lot of emphasis on amazing out of the ordinary experiences as THE ONLY WAY to get "perspective". But the reality is if we learned more about how our brains work, we'd be able to get that sense of perspective in daily life on a regular basis.
This is why I'm more impressed by people who meditate every day while maintaining their previous life, over people who attend a yearly meditation retreat but don't do anything different. The hardest part is changing your daily life without going highly radical.
Because to make society better, having everyone defect and leave to a monastery is not going to be a good idea. We still need people doing their "normal" jobs and getting things done. I need lunch damnit!
Of course we're on hn, so there is here a lot more people prepared to this than anywere else but still. I like this kind of post, which reminds us that we should be able to focus on what really motivates us.
Of course I'm still pretty young, it could seems obvious to you or others, but if it's in frontpage I assume that I'm not the only one inspired by these posts.
But that's just what I think he meant.
I feel like the authenticity she refers to is very much a 1st world problem (though I'm sure she's worked hard for her success). Most of us work to pay the bills and don't feel like charlatans if our industry doesn't happen to be our life's dream if we even have one.
BTW, anyone have a link to this authentic startup she's referring to?
Ancient writers of many cultures wrote about living well and how to move towards it. The cultivation of the spirit is neither expensive nor new.