8 ms·

High-five, fellow "burned by needing to do real work in university" high schooler :(

mcv 8y ago
Same here. Once I figured out that I didn't really have to do any homework in high school, and wasn't even required to do so in university, I was doomed. I'm now trying to teach my son that just learning to do the work, even if it's boring, is the real skill you need. But he's too focused on winning every mini-game.
- rhizome 8y ago
  Look up The Marshmallow Test. If there was one thing I wish my parents had instilled in me, it's good study habits.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    Though nobody is good at working hard to reap rewards that are a decade or more down the line, which is where learning to do boring work really pays off.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    Wasn't that debunked? It's useful as a myth - "teach your kids patience", "don't go into the woods alone" - but it doesn't actually turn out to be true.
    - Sean1708 8y ago
      I've not been able to find anything about it being debunked. Wikipedia[0] says > A 2012 study at the University of Rochester (with a smaller N= 28) altered the experiment by dividing children into two groups: one group was given a broken promise before the marshmallow test was conducted (the unreliable tester group), and the second group had a fulfilled promise before their marshmallow test (the reliable tester group). The reliable tester group waited up to four times longer (12 min) than the unreliable tester group for the second marshmallow to appear.[11][12] The authors argue that this calls into question the original interpretation of self-control as the critical factor in children's performance, since self-control should predict ability to wait, not strategic waiting when it makes sense. but it sounds like the original experiment controlled for the trust factor so I don't really think it shows that the original results were invalid. Having said that, I've not done a huge amount of research into this so maybe take my opinions with a grain of salt or two. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment#Follow-up_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
    - maroonblazer 8y ago
      Maybe you're thinking of "grit", popularized by Angela Duckworth. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-duckworth-responds-to-a-new-critique-of-grit https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-...
    - newfoundglory 8y ago
      It wasn’t exactly debunked, but seems to measure something different to what they thought recently. So as a parent your takeaway should be to give your kid experiences of delayed gratification that actually pays off, and help them learn to identify which scenarios fit into this.
- lostcolony 8y ago
  Maybe try to figure out how to make the work fun? Or, try and instill a goal less of "getting the grade" and more "attain mastery of the subject"? I would have been burnt in college, except I got to homeschool the last few years of high school. During that time I took CLEP tests. They were pretty easy for the most part, but they required I actually do the reading and prepare for them. That helped, since in school I just had to pay attention in class, and I'd be good. Then I went to a community college for most of my core classes. That helped too, because there the homeworks either were optional or counted for very little, but I got to see how not doing them hurt my grade. By the time I went to the actual university I wanted to for my major specific stuff, I had developed better study habits, and knew what it took to actually do well. I was helped at that point that, since it was the courses relevant to my major, it was all stuff I was interested in, and actually wanted to attain mastery in.
  - lambda 8y ago
    > Maybe try to figure out how to make the work fun? I don't think this is the right approach, because you need the ability to focus on work even when it is not fun. You do need something that makes the work rewarding in some way, but I wouldn't push to hard to try to make it fun. > Or, try and instill a goal less of "getting the grade" and more "attain mastery of the subject"? This was my approach in high school as well. It led to me being the one everyone wanted to study with because I picked up the material the best, but then I flunked classes because I never did the homework. I would flunk classes that depended mostly on homework, and ace classes that depended mostly on tests. Since I had convinced myself that mastery was more important than grades, this reinforced my behavior. Somehow, the acing the tests part allowed me to get into an Ivy League college. Which I then flunked out of because at that point, I couldn't get by without actually doing the homework and studying outside of class. This pattern of behavior continues to be something I struggle with as an adult. I can be quite productive for short bursts of time, but have a hard time keeping on track with longer term projects that don't pay off immediately. I think what you need is to learn the value of steady incremental work that only shows significant results after a long period of time. Basic reinforcement training techniques can be used for this; provide rewards for getting incremental work done, but better to provide them intermittently. Eventually work up from smaller rewards for smaller goals to larger rewards for larger goals. I think that reinforcing consistency, habit, and small incremental progress rather than brilliance is a big part of what you need. The problem with brilliance is that you can easily get a lot of positive reinforcement for it; people are impressed at how well you understand something, at how much you know, at how quickly you pick it up. But even if you are better than average at picking things up and figuring things out, you will eventually hit the limits of what you can do through brilliance alone; there are some things that will just take long hard work no matter what, and then all of that reinforcement for brilliance comes back to bite you because you're not getting the same kind of reinforcement, and you can easily get stuck and lose faith in your self-image.
- toss1 8y ago
  Same here, as all above. Yet here we are on HN on Thursday morning...
- Taylor_OD 8y ago
  This. I found out if I showed up everyday in high school and focused in class I could get a B or A in every class without doing any work at home. I still did some homework but it was in school. My time outside of school was mine. It was great. I had a very rude wake up call when I got to college. I know high schoolers now and I encourage them to actually do the work. It's not that x,y,z topic may be important someday... It's the skill of doing the work, even when you don't want to, that will be important in life.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- Raidion 8y ago
  My dad told me that school isn't about learning, it's about learning how to learn. That really changed my perspective. I won't care about classical painters and what years they were around and why they were remarkable in even 6 months, but when I do find something I care about, I'll be able to apply focus and learn.
arethuza 8y ago
I'm quite proud of the range of results I got in maths at University - I tried the "no study" approach in first year and got burned badly. Fortunately we didn't have the uncivilized GPA system here so my first year indiscretions had no impact on my final degree.
- dpark 8y ago
  GPA has no impact on your final degree in the US either. You complete the same coursework and get the same degree as the person with a perfect GPA. The only real exception is if you’re screwing up so bad that they kick you out, in which case you don’t get the degree because you don’t complete the coursework.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - arethuza 8y ago
    What I meant is that in the UK the "class" of degree us (or at least used to be) based almost entirely on what you did in your final year. People seem to refer to GPA for US degrees in the same way that we use the class of honours: first, upper second etc. even though they would appear to measure different things.
  - haZard_OS 8y ago
    On a number of occasions I have had prospective employers ask what my final grade was for specific classes. I have never been asked about my GPA specifically, but my grades at the University certainly affected me beyond academia.
    - megaman22 8y ago
      That's pretty asinine. I wouldn't have the foggiest idea what I finished any of my classes in college at, even when I was only a year or two out.
    - pavel_lishin 8y ago
nsb1 8y ago
I don't know if we need a club or a support group, but I'm in.
atilaneves 8y ago
One more... It didn't help that I went to uni to study Physics, either.
- hood_syntax 8y ago
  I did CS and it was bad enough for me, can't imagine Physics...
aswanson 8y ago
Me too. I skated through hs and got a wakeup call at uni. The most critical skill hs can teach is to do homework. Even if its boring.
Cd00d 8y ago
I never learned to study in HS either, and then on top of the actual workload in college I suffered a brain injury shortly after HS graduation that ruined my short term memory function. That first year of college was a massive challenge in learning discipline and just learning!
pmoriarty 8y ago
Schools are really failing their students by not helping them realize just how difficult university and "real life" can be.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Actually university is fairly easy if you seize the learning opportunities that courses give you; many students attend neither lectures nor tutorials/exercises nor tutoriae and then complain how difficult it is to pass the exam. This still happens even though older semesters will tell any freshmen that they need to attend courses and do exercises to make it. What kinda works are mandatory exercises.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    "university is fairly easy if you seize the learning opportunities that courses give you" It might be "fairly easy" if you're lucky enough to have had a decent K-12 education, which is what prepares you to do what you say and do it effectively. Far too many students graduate high school barely literate, without knowing how to learn, without sufficient direction or motivation. That's not to mention various emotional and psychological issues students might struggle with that keep them from applying themselves and making the most of their university education. It's also not to mention the fact that way too many students look at university as primarily a place to party, or to cheat their way to a degree.
  - dibujante 8y ago
    Hm, maybe. I attended all of my courses because that got me straight-As in high school. I was then blindsided by needing to study for anything ever. So I was engaged, as far as I knew - but I didn't know how unengaged I was.
    - Retra 8y ago
      This is why I think people need to work and grow up a bit between high school and university. Figure out why you want to go before you commit to it. I was in the military for 4 years between them (and I was not a good student before), but I decided to go to university specifically to learn something that interested me. And it was sad seeing my peers waste their time doing the same stupid crap I'd outgrown and become bored of in the military. (At least there I wasn't expected to learn anything hard.)

mcv 8y ago

Same here. Once I figured out that I didn't really have to do any homework in high school, and wasn't even required to do so in university, I was doomed. I'm now trying to teach my son that just learning to do the work, even if it's boring, is the real skill you need. But he's too focused on winning every mini-game.

rhizome 8y ago
Look up The Marshmallow Test. If there was one thing I wish my parents had instilled in me, it's good study habits.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  Though nobody is good at working hard to reap rewards that are a decade or more down the line, which is where learning to do boring work really pays off.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  Wasn't that debunked? It's useful as a myth - "teach your kids patience", "don't go into the woods alone" - but it doesn't actually turn out to be true.
  - Sean1708 8y ago
    I've not been able to find anything about it being debunked. Wikipedia[0] says > A 2012 study at the University of Rochester (with a smaller N= 28) altered the experiment by dividing children into two groups: one group was given a broken promise before the marshmallow test was conducted (the unreliable tester group), and the second group had a fulfilled promise before their marshmallow test (the reliable tester group). The reliable tester group waited up to four times longer (12 min) than the unreliable tester group for the second marshmallow to appear.[11][12] The authors argue that this calls into question the original interpretation of self-control as the critical factor in children's performance, since self-control should predict ability to wait, not strategic waiting when it makes sense. but it sounds like the original experiment controlled for the trust factor so I don't really think it shows that the original results were invalid. Having said that, I've not done a huge amount of research into this so maybe take my opinions with a grain of salt or two. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment#Follow-up_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
  - maroonblazer 8y ago
    Maybe you're thinking of "grit", popularized by Angela Duckworth. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-duckworth-responds-to-a-new-critique-of-grit https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-...
  - newfoundglory 8y ago
    It wasn’t exactly debunked, but seems to measure something different to what they thought recently. So as a parent your takeaway should be to give your kid experiences of delayed gratification that actually pays off, and help them learn to identify which scenarios fit into this.
lostcolony 8y ago
Maybe try to figure out how to make the work fun? Or, try and instill a goal less of "getting the grade" and more "attain mastery of the subject"? I would have been burnt in college, except I got to homeschool the last few years of high school. During that time I took CLEP tests. They were pretty easy for the most part, but they required I actually do the reading and prepare for them. That helped, since in school I just had to pay attention in class, and I'd be good. Then I went to a community college for most of my core classes. That helped too, because there the homeworks either were optional or counted for very little, but I got to see how not doing them hurt my grade. By the time I went to the actual university I wanted to for my major specific stuff, I had developed better study habits, and knew what it took to actually do well. I was helped at that point that, since it was the courses relevant to my major, it was all stuff I was interested in, and actually wanted to attain mastery in.
- lambda 8y ago
  > Maybe try to figure out how to make the work fun? I don't think this is the right approach, because you need the ability to focus on work even when it is not fun. You do need something that makes the work rewarding in some way, but I wouldn't push to hard to try to make it fun. > Or, try and instill a goal less of "getting the grade" and more "attain mastery of the subject"? This was my approach in high school as well. It led to me being the one everyone wanted to study with because I picked up the material the best, but then I flunked classes because I never did the homework. I would flunk classes that depended mostly on homework, and ace classes that depended mostly on tests. Since I had convinced myself that mastery was more important than grades, this reinforced my behavior. Somehow, the acing the tests part allowed me to get into an Ivy League college. Which I then flunked out of because at that point, I couldn't get by without actually doing the homework and studying outside of class. This pattern of behavior continues to be something I struggle with as an adult. I can be quite productive for short bursts of time, but have a hard time keeping on track with longer term projects that don't pay off immediately. I think what you need is to learn the value of steady incremental work that only shows significant results after a long period of time. Basic reinforcement training techniques can be used for this; provide rewards for getting incremental work done, but better to provide them intermittently. Eventually work up from smaller rewards for smaller goals to larger rewards for larger goals. I think that reinforcing consistency, habit, and small incremental progress rather than brilliance is a big part of what you need. The problem with brilliance is that you can easily get a lot of positive reinforcement for it; people are impressed at how well you understand something, at how much you know, at how quickly you pick it up. But even if you are better than average at picking things up and figuring things out, you will eventually hit the limits of what you can do through brilliance alone; there are some things that will just take long hard work no matter what, and then all of that reinforcement for brilliance comes back to bite you because you're not getting the same kind of reinforcement, and you can easily get stuck and lose faith in your self-image.
toss1 8y ago
Same here, as all above. Yet here we are on HN on Thursday morning...
Taylor_OD 8y ago
This. I found out if I showed up everyday in high school and focused in class I could get a B or A in every class without doing any work at home. I still did some homework but it was in school. My time outside of school was mine. It was great. I had a very rude wake up call when I got to college. I know high schoolers now and I encourage them to actually do the work. It's not that x,y,z topic may be important someday... It's the skill of doing the work, even when you don't want to, that will be important in life.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Raidion 8y ago
My dad told me that school isn't about learning, it's about learning how to learn. That really changed my perspective. I won't care about classical painters and what years they were around and why they were remarkable in even 6 months, but when I do find something I care about, I'll be able to apply focus and learn.

arethuza 8y ago

I'm quite proud of the range of results I got in maths at University - I tried the "no study" approach in first year and got burned badly. Fortunately we didn't have the uncivilized GPA system here so my first year indiscretions had no impact on my final degree.

dpark 8y ago
GPA has no impact on your final degree in the US either. You complete the same coursework and get the same degree as the person with a perfect GPA. The only real exception is if you’re screwing up so bad that they kick you out, in which case you don’t get the degree because you don’t complete the coursework.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- arethuza 8y ago
  What I meant is that in the UK the "class" of degree us (or at least used to be) based almost entirely on what you did in your final year. People seem to refer to GPA for US degrees in the same way that we use the class of honours: first, upper second etc. even though they would appear to measure different things.
- haZard_OS 8y ago
  On a number of occasions I have had prospective employers ask what my final grade was for specific classes. I have never been asked about my GPA specifically, but my grades at the University certainly affected me beyond academia.
  - megaman22 8y ago
    That's pretty asinine. I wouldn't have the foggiest idea what I finished any of my classes in college at, even when I was only a year or two out.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago

nsb1 8y ago

I don't know if we need a club or a support group, but I'm in.

atilaneves 8y ago

One more... It didn't help that I went to uni to study Physics, either.

hood_syntax 8y ago
I did CS and it was bad enough for me, can't imagine Physics...

aswanson 8y ago

Me too. I skated through hs and got a wakeup call at uni. The most critical skill hs can teach is to do homework. Even if its boring.

Cd00d 8y ago

I never learned to study in HS either, and then on top of the actual workload in college I suffered a brain injury shortly after HS graduation that ruined my short term memory function. That first year of college was a massive challenge in learning discipline and just learning!

pmoriarty 8y ago

Schools are really failing their students by not helping them realize just how difficult university and "real life" can be.

blattimwind 8y ago
Actually university is fairly easy if you seize the learning opportunities that courses give you; many students attend neither lectures nor tutorials/exercises nor tutoriae and then complain how difficult it is to pass the exam. This still happens even though older semesters will tell any freshmen that they need to attend courses and do exercises to make it. What kinda works are mandatory exercises.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  "university is fairly easy if you seize the learning opportunities that courses give you" It might be "fairly easy" if you're lucky enough to have had a decent K-12 education, which is what prepares you to do what you say and do it effectively. Far too many students graduate high school barely literate, without knowing how to learn, without sufficient direction or motivation. That's not to mention various emotional and psychological issues students might struggle with that keep them from applying themselves and making the most of their university education. It's also not to mention the fact that way too many students look at university as primarily a place to party, or to cheat their way to a degree.
- dibujante 8y ago
  Hm, maybe. I attended all of my courses because that got me straight-As in high school. I was then blindsided by needing to study for anything ever. So I was engaged, as far as I knew - but I didn't know how unengaged I was.
  - Retra 8y ago
    This is why I think people need to work and grow up a bit between high school and university. Figure out why you want to go before you commit to it. I was in the military for 4 years between them (and I was not a good student before), but I decided to go to university specifically to learn something that interested me. And it was sad seeing my peers waste their time doing the same stupid crap I'd outgrown and become bored of in the military. (At least there I wasn't expected to learn anything hard.)