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billswift comments on Welcome to LessWrong (For highschoolers) - Less Wrong Discussion

23 Post author: Curiouskid 26 November 2011 03:47PM

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Comment author: billswift 27 November 2011 06:38:33AM 1 point [-]

Use the school to pursue your goals.

  1. Some things definitely benefit from having a teacher - especially math and languages, take as much of both as you can stand.

  2. Select classes to boost your motivation in things you want to learn but your enthusiasm and day-to-day motivation drags.

  3. If you want to get into a good college, don't follow some other posters' advice to slack off on some "less important" classes. You need to keep up your GPA, there are no unimportant classes. Instead, treat them as practice for anti-procrastination techniques, like doing them first. If you don't care about college, then you don't need to worry about your GPA.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 27 November 2011 08:26:28AM 9 points [-]

If you don't care about college, then you don't need to worry about your GPA.

And if you don't care about college, make sure that you actually have a realistic plan for what you'll be doing after high school. There are all kinds of near-far/hyperbolic discounting/wishful thinking/self-deception -related issues where you might go from thinking "oh, college isn't really important" when you're starting high school and then realize "oh, but I don't actually have any realistic plan for no-college" near the end of high school, when the decision of what to do next actually becomes relevant.

Personally, the farther off I was from the point where I'd actually need to find a job, the more vague and ill-thought my plans for what I'd do at that point were. I went from "I'll just take whatever courses seem easy and interesting" in early high school, to "oh crap all the interesting career paths involve math which I haven't studied much" in late high school, to "I'll major in cognitive science and figure out some job later on" in early college, to "getting a job with just a cogsci degree is actually pretty hard, I'll switch my major to computer science for my Master's degree so I can actually get employed" in late college.

Even if you don't care about getting into college now, you might change your mind later on. If you maintain the good GPA, you'll be keeping your options open. If you regardless choose not to, make sure that you have a very good reason that doesn't leave any nagging doubts in your mind. Take the outside view and keep in mind that at 17, it's very unlikely that you'll know yourself well enough to be certain about never changing your mind. You simply haven't been exposed to sufficiently many lifepaths and social/work environments to know which ones you'll actually end up detesting, let alone which ones you find the most comfortable. (I still haven't figured this out for certain at 25, and I would not be surprised if I was still unsure at 40.)

Comment author: KPier 27 November 2011 06:46:36AM *  4 points [-]

If you want to get into a good college, don't follow some other posters' advice to slack off on some "less important" classes.

Seconded. I'm worried I'm one of the posters who seemed to be giving this advice, so, to clarify:

In some classes you care about remembering the material, internalizing it, and understanding it. In these classes, use spaced repetition, don't cram for tests, do reading outside of class, go in for help when you need it, and pay attention in class.

In other classes, you care about getting an A. Turn in all the homework, cram for tests, pay attention in class if necessary and make sure you understand the material well enough to succeed on tests. I recommend studying a lot for the first test, and then, depending on your grade, deciding how much studying will be necessary in future. In a lot of high schools, it is possible for very bright kids to get As while doing nothing. If and only if this is the case, you should consider whether doing the work is worthwhile.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 27 November 2011 08:02:35AM 7 points [-]

In a lot of high schools, it is possible for very bright kids to get As while doing nothing. If and only if this is the case, you should consider whether doing the work is worthwhile.

And note that if you intend to pursue any kind of more challenging studies (anything involving heavy math, for instance), you should probably get into the habit of doing the work even if you could get As by doing nothing. Otherwise there's a high probability that you'll suffer from the curse of the gifted:

When you were in college, did you ever meet bright kids who graduated top of their class in high-school and then floundered freshman year in college because they had never learned how to study? It's a common trap. A friend of mine calls it "the curse of the gifted" -- a tendency to lean on your native ability too much, because you've always been rewarded for doing that and self-discipline would take actual work.

You are a brilliant implementor, more able than me and possibly (I say this after consideration, and in all seriousness) the best one in the Unix tradition since Ken Thompson himself. As a consequence, you suffer the curse of the gifted programmer -- you lean on your ability so much that you've never learned to value certain kinds of coding self-discipline and design craftsmanship that lesser mortals must develop in order to handle the kind of problem complexity you eat for breakfast. [...]

But you make some of your more senior colleagues nervous. See, we've seen the curse of the gifted before. Some of us were those kids in college. We learned the hard way that the bill always comes due -- the scale of the problems always increases to a point where your native talent alone doesn't cut it any more. The smarter you are, the longer it takes to hit that crunch point -- and the harder the adjustment when you finally do. And we can see that you, poor damn genius that you are, are cruising for a serious bruising.

As Linux grows, there will come a time when your raw talent is not enough. What happens then will depend on how much discipline about coding and release practices and fastidiousness about clean design you developed before you needed it, back when your talent was sufficient to let you get away without.

It's very easy to fall into the trap of always getting As done with zero effort, and then becoming incapable of actually putting in effort when you get to the stage where simply being bright isn't enough anymore. I have suffered from that problem myself, which is one of the reasons I've decided not to pursue math-heavy paths. I'm simply not cut out for putting in that much work in those fields, but things might have been different if I had slacked off less earlier.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 November 2011 07:24:09PM *  3 points [-]

It cost me quite a bit of time and effort to overcome this. First two years of uni basically wasted for that purpose (did do a lot of cool stuff though, some of it even useful).

I may relapse in the future, so readers please don't take this as a success story, until I'm back here with a PhD or a successful start up. :)

Comment author: Curiouskid 27 November 2011 06:45:31AM 0 points [-]
  1. I could learn math quicker by self-studying and watching Khan academy. I could learn a language quicker by going to a country where that language is spoken or making a friend who speaks that language (I'm thinking spanish). Or I could read in that language (I'm already fairly fluent though. So this might not apply to all).
  2. All classes in school kill my motivation. What is motivating about jumping through hoops and doing problems that don't actually teach you. What's motivating about being surrounded on all sides by people who are slacking and cheating?
  3. College != success || money. Look at "The education of millionaires" or Uncollege.
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