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KPier comments on Less Wrong mentoring thread - Less Wrong
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I'm 17 and just got into a top U.S. college, where I want to major in math and economics. I am a bit worried that I haven't learned good work habits and that I waste too much time on the internet, since high school was mostly a breeze for me. I've heard from a lot of people that kids like me get hit hard in college when they have to work hard for the first time, and while I can think of lots of reasons I'm different, this is probably a good situation to take the outside view.
So in short, I'd love a mentor. How does this work, exactly?
Same (if you replace math and economics with engineering).
Did you check out the introduction thread for highschoolers?
Congrats!
Where'd you get in?
I understand if you mind my asking, and I don't mind if you feel uncomfortable answering. You can also respond by email.
I just like being happy for people that I know/find to be similar to me in the ways that I'm different from others/
I'm in pretty much the exact same situation but I'm thinking math and physics.
I was in a similar situation as you, 4 years ago. I worked a fair bit harder, learned WAY more, and had a WAY better time in college. To be fair, my work ethic is still not very good, but I pretty much get A's in the classes I care about and B's in the ones I don't.
I suspect that you will be fine - you're probably smart enough that college won't be as hard as you might think, and you'll also be more motivated to dig up good work habits if you really need/want to.
Not a mentoring relationship, but a short plan that should help you avoid most trouble:
Write a check to your roommate for $100. Do not sign it, and leave it pinned on the back of your door, above a calendar. Write all your assignments on that calendar, moved up as far as is reasonable. (For example, if you would do the weekly homework assigned Thursday and due Thursday on Wednesday, i.e. one day before, then write it as due on Friday, i.e. one day after it's assigned). If your homework is not done* by the date on the calendar, you sign the check, your roommate cashes it, and you replace it with a new one.
As Scott Adams puts it, losers have goals and winners have systems. Focus on setting up the incentives you want for yourself. (The importance of this when choosing friends cannot be stressed enough.)
* Perhaps you work on a problem for an hour and you can't break through, and you need to ask a friend or professor for help. You may find that a first draft is all you can produce after one day. That's fine, and this system is more beneficial if that's the case, as it brings those things out into the open early.
The disadvantage to this is that it gives your roommate an incentive to distract you.
Yep. But having a compliance officer is helpful more often than not.
It'd be easier to make a beeminder account and just give someone the link to watch your graphs.
Easier, perhaps, but better? I don't find the incentives from websites to be nearly as strong as the ones from people who live with me.
It allows for wider selection of confidants. A roommate might be a trusted friend who've you known for a while, it might be a bland personality from craigslist. Further, an offline analog one is subject to conjoleing, conflicts of interests, and lawyering that an online digital system is not subject to. When failure is automatic if you don't report progress and the money goes to a third party these relational complexities are removed with a scalpel rather than having to be dealt with like a bad itch. By having a person keep taps on you through typing in a URL rather than having to go through to trouble of getting a picture or text everyday you lower the barrier of entry and the amount of work it takes for the system to remain stable.
One thing I've noticed is that my behavior depends to a large extent on where I am and who I'm with. For example, when I went off to college, I learned to be much more patient and tolerant when dealing with other people. However, when I went home to visit my family, I fell back into my usual ways of finding my younger siblings annoying, and even snapped at a friend I had made in college during an IM conversation.
So you might try making a point of working hard whenever you're in your dorm room (or your school library, or wherever) and try to establish working hard as a conditioned response to being in that place.
When it comes to wasting time on the Internet, I recommend you use a website blocker like this one that allows you to do regular expression blocking. This allows you to block a website's homepage only, while allowing you to do specific things (like search for something you read) which are probably okay. (Example: reddit.com/?$ should block the Reddit homepage only.) It's not actually all that painful to remove addictive websites from your life entirely if you replace them with nonaddictive breathers like Hulu. (Don't underestimate the importance of rejuvenation. To be productive, a good goal is "distraction free work and guilt free play". If you feel guilty when you play, playing may not actually served as a relaxing activity for you, which could make it very difficult to regain energy.)
My number 1 self-improvement secret is to spend time every evening thinking about how your day went and planning out the next day. You can even keep a queue of productivity ideas you have read about and try one out each day as an experiment.
A more general version of this is to "reset" yourself using the following procedure: notice that you're being unproductive, plan a break and a detailed work strategy, take your break, then execute your strategy. I find myself "resetting" constantly, to the point where I no longer see myself as controlling my life and only as periodically shifting the steering wheel in order to stay roughly on course. (The evening planning session is a special case of this because the break is sleeping for the night.)
I'm sending you my Skype username in a personal message in case you want to chat further :)
http://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/nxdzz/im_not_as_smart_as_i_thought_i_was/c3d91jl