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Comment by auctiontheory | Hacker News Reader

I somehow doubt that sabotaging the kid's education would reduce his anarchism and individualism.

Well, the anarchy could have been forgiven, but individualism? Put him up against the wall!

I've looked at the blog in question ( http://hampsteadtrash.blogspot.co.uk/ ) - and it's obvious that the real problem was about his being critical of the school administration.

His petty thug of a headteacher seems perfectly deserving of every bit of the attention he is about to receive.

Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone.

Or, in the words of The Clash[1]:

    You have the right to free speech
    As long as you're not
    Dumb enough to actually try it

Considering how the school has reacted to his writings, I'd say that he is probably right.

[1] http://www.metrolyrics.com/know-your-rights-lyrics-the-clash...

I always said he was up to no good.

Is kicking someone out of a building that bears more than a passing resemblance to a prison really sabotaging their education?

... Yes. As a self-taught programmer, I believe university is important. It gives quite a lot of advantages (mostly social ones, which are the most important). And undergrad universities select primarily based on school performance, so kicking him out definitely would've sabotaged his higher education.

To piggyback on this comment in hopes of finding some assistance: I've been trying to figure out some long-term strategy of how to get into a top-tier university. I have the ACT scores for it, but I dropped out of highschool to go work in software. The decade of dev experience is certainly nice, and I've studied core CS theory on my own (xv6 and paxos for example), but I'd really like to attend a top uni in order to do graphics research. I wonder if it's even possible for a 25 year old highschool dropout to achieve this? I was thinking I could do well for a couple years at some local university, then apply to transfer to Penn, Stanford, etc. I've heard transfer students are more likely to be accepted. But I wonder what else I could do to increase my chances.

As someone who dropped out from Brown (and transferred credits from State universities I attended while in HS) and been engaging with newer educational things like project breaker[0], there are plenty of social advantages out there with "non-traditional" organizations that give more freedom and open just as many doors…

Though yes, if you are trying do research, uni might be good, but there's plenty of university politics/culture involved that might make you want to drop out again (esp with research and such), despite it all… Besides, who's to say you can't do research outside of uni?

[0] http://www.projectbreaker.org/

Well, I've been doing my best to research on my own, but at this point I need access to a high quality spectrophotometer in order to perform measurements of various materials' absorption spectrums under various lighting conditions. They can run ~$5k, so uni seems like my best bet. I figured I couldn't really just show up and ask to borrow their spectrophotometer... they'd probably want me to have a degree or some kind of credentials before trusting me at all.

Project Breaker looks quite interesting. Thanks for letting me know!

No, no. Show up knowing what you're about, vs. someone with theories "no one else understands" (from watching this once, I wouldn't be surprised if MIT professors get a bit of training in how to handle the crazies), you've got a hypothesis that's interesting and you need to do specific tests, and, oh, yeah, you'll be happy to let them share credit. You might be surprised at how far you can get.

Do some networking. If you don't have any contacts, start showing up for seminars at a target university. Listen, start contributing a bit to the community, then ease into "By the way, I have a [fill in the blank] I'd like to test...."

Yeah, worrying about being thought of as a crazy person is precisely what's prevented me from trying to contact any professors, because I'd imagine they have to deal with that sort of thing pretty often: outsiders bothering them with unscientific pet theories. That's why it's frustrating not having credentials.

Attending seminars is a good idea. Thank you. I wonder if I should call up universities and ask for info regarding any computer graphics related seminars / events. It seems like those would be very uncommon, but it's probably my only chance.

I have no contacts because I was mercilessly harassed throughout highschool and leaped at the opportunity to drop out and write software for a living. So I have no idea how to network. Showing up and saying, "Hey, would you be interested in chatting about computer graphics theory?" seems like it'd earn me strange looks.

I just moved to Chicago, so I was hoping University of Chicago has some sort of computer graphics program, and that I can figure out some way of becoming involved with it.

"I wonder if I should call up universities and ask for info regarding any computer graphics related seminars / events"

That shit's on the website, dogg.

Hmm... Is it?

Searching their events for "graphics" produced no results, and searching for "computer" (in hopes of anything CS related) wasn't very helpful. http://event.uchicago.edu/maincampus/search.php

EDIT: The CS research interests page is interesting... http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/research/interests though nothing specifically graphics-related.

EDIT2: The closest thing to graphics research I can find is http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/fl/research/index.php?p=proj... ... though I don't really understand what its goals are based on its description: "Integration of Access Grid and ParaView to enable remote participants to interact with their visualizations in a coordinated manner across all sites, to improve information flow and expedite visualization development and scientific results. This will remove a significant bottleneck in achieving visualization results and understanding, by allowing participants to exchange data interactively while exploring their data visually. In this first development, specific areas of ParaView functionality will be targeted for inclusion in the shared interaction, based on feedback from the domain scientists as to the areas of highest relevance and impact." So I guess that's something graphics-theory-related, which I suppose is worth looking into...

Here you go: http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/events

Looks sparse but I don't think the academic year's started yet, scroll back to last spring and it looks like the real departmental calendar.

Could just be you're SOL on the type of stuff you want at UC. That's academic life.

Oh, thank you so much!

One trick is to not lead with your stuff.

Become a de facto part of the community. Spend a little time on campus to find out how people dress, then just show up unannounced at appropriate events like seminars. Initially be invisible except for the usual pleasantries like smiling, if asked who you are and why you're there say you're a programmer and the topic sounded interesting, absorb the atmosphere and the way things are done. You'll learn all sorts of useful stuff, maybe find something you can help with (hey, you can program...), eventually you can edge into your stuff.

Eventually you will have to reveal who you are(n't), but credentials have no magic (there are a lot of worthless, time wasting but well credentialed people out there), and the higher the level of the place, the less they tend to care about formalities. As one of the country's top schools ... well, the U of Chicago isn't anything big in computers, so that department might no be so easy going, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I have no contacts because I was mercilessly harassed throughout highschool ... So I have no idea how to network.

School/college does not teach you how to network, at least not any more than life outside school does.

Small recommendation: read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is educational, inspiring, and describes many people in your position.

Read it with an open mind, not with cynicism, and you'll learn so much.

Totally understand. But have you looked into public labs? I know there are DIY biotech hacker labs[0] so maybe something is out there near you.

Also, do you have any friends in uni who may have access to a spectrophotometer? I've asked friends to get me uni papers and run experiments if they had the time (though I have also helped them out with matlab code for simulations and such)…

Also, these places aren't really the most secure places in the world. If you got swiped in with a friend, carried a backpack, picked up some lab gear by the door, and conducted a quick experiment, I'm sure you can get by.

[0]http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/genspace-diy-scien...

Just rent kit. I needed a high end LeCroy DSO a while back. These fuckers are £18000. Leased one for a month for £700.

And Glasgow is a top 10 University in the UK so trying to sabotage someone because they dont fit in at school is disgusting.

Uh, yes?

Well yes, as it's unlikely that another school would let him in (post 16 education is no longer compulsory), and as he says, if he'd been kicked out a year earlier it would have essentially forced him to forfeit his a-levels and thus either delay, or preclude him going to university.

But as long as that sabotage severely curtails his future, do they care?

Would it? 2013 says it's pretty hard to curtail one's future. No single entity controls it, there's no gatekeeper.

They just show their own misery.

The headteacher appears to think he can keep this guy from getting a college education, and he might well be right.

True, there's no single gatekeeper, but there are a zillion little ones, and too large a fraction of them will stop someone without a degree, or one without a higher tier one ... and probably more in the Great Recession when there are so many credentialed unemployed.

If this guy wants to be a politician, which he seems to do, then passing thru hostile gatekeepers is his job description.

Anyway, even if he would not it's not as easy either. Imagine someone cold-calling univercities telling he's a headteached (whatever this means) and persuading not accept the student N. He'll be seen as a lunatic, wouldn't he?

That's the thing we don't know. His attitudes aren't necessarily "lunatic" based on post-WWII U.K. history, and we don't know how much this sort of thing is still an "old boys club" in which he got a hearing from people who weren't entirely cold called.

Conflict with a teacher cost Richard Gabriel of "Worse is Better" fame entrance to Harvard or MIT and a lot of subsiquent grief: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_P._Gabriel

If this would be true I would not be happy with the situation in the UK. But, if he's really going to be a politician, it would be very good for him to face this thing he's supposed to fight later on.

> 2013 says it's pretty hard to _further_ curtail one's future

FTFY

Seems like it would just confirm his beliefs.

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