When you get to college, you'll be very disappointed to discover that's that's literally the only reason people publish in most cases. It ain't for the money, t

When you get to college, you'll be very disappointed to discover that's that's literally the only reason people publish in most cases. It ain't for the money, that's for sure. It's how you make a name for yourself amongst your peers in the same field. You might get a sneak peek at the publish-or-perish dynamic to a lesser degree when you get to high school- sometimes you can get into special programs where you have a chance to help out with research being done by college students. If you get into a really good program and really distinguish yourself, you can even get your name alongside theirs on the paper. Unfortunately, you will find that believe it or not, those college students are not already working out which color of Ferrari to buy with their sweet advance from SIGGRAPH or wherever. I think they deserve it personally, because I really care really hard about pushing science and engineering forward, but sadly the big bucks are still going to NFL players and pop stars instead.