What you'll wish you'd known

[Marshac]

I pulled this off of slashdot, but it's still interesting

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

.... just out of curiosity, does anyone else here read slashdot?

 

[BigMoneyJim]

I read Slashdot. I saw that article but didn't read it or the discussion. It caught my attention but lost me with this part of the summary: ". . . suggesting, among other things, that students treat school like a day job, working on interesting projects to avoid what he has found to be the most common regret among adults of their high school days: wasting time."

"Wasting time" is the fondest of my school memories and is my vision of ER. So I figured the article had little to offer me.

By the way, before this I don't recall hearing anyone espouse the regret of wasted time in high school. Well, maybe regrets that not enough girls were chased...

 

[Marshac]

I too remember my social interactions much more than I remember my classes in High School. I do agree with you though... I don't regret spending the time "being a kid", and I actually feel sorry for many of the home schooled kids who don't have time to be kids (gotta get that AS by age 16!).... sad.

There are some gems in there though...

"If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I'd say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. You don't need to be in a rush to choose your life's work. What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do."

"If you're wondering what you're doing now that you'll regret most later, that's probably it"

"Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they tell you, and don't just refuse to."

"Curiosity turns work into play"