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Well, this falls nicely into the "bucket of common experiences lots of people can talk about". :P Turning 25 in two-ish weeks. Currently just past my 3rd year

Well, this falls nicely into the "bucket of common experiences lots of people can talk about". :P Turning 25 in two-ish weeks. Currently just past my 3rd year at a FAANG after failing to figure out a "path more interesting than just a software job"* during college. Life isn't rainbows and unicorns, but I'm building a nest egg while figuring-out-what-I-acutually-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up, learning, and playing with pixels (aka "doing AR stuff at work"). I've got a handful of (less close than I'd like to be) friends, my family is doing okay (even with a breast cancer-y mom; thank goodness that got caught early), and I'm managing to stay reasonably active. I'm probably going to break up with the person I'm seeing soon; the "breaking up" part probably won't be so fun, but least there will be some good memories. The formerly straight-A student, state champ mathlete me sometimes wishes I could just be that good at things, that easily, again. But life is life, and I really don't want my existence to have peaked at high school. ;) As for advice to 25-year-old me.. seeing as how I'm not there yet, I can't really say. I'm just hoping to glean some advice like the rest of us youngin's in this thread. :P *18-year-old me knew she'd be good at CS, but wanted to avoid the cubicle life that both her parents had. Almost-25-year-old me... is fine for now, but there's something about fields of open-office desks that makes a person feel like a cog. Maybe I'll go to grad school or join in on a startup (assuming I can find/make one that I don't cynic-the-idea-to-death) in the next few years.

gravy 8y ago
I never thought about the negatives of open office areas.
- artemisyna 8y ago
  Even with all the negative articles about them on HN? ;) On a more serious note, I don't have any opposition to the open office layout in themselves... But they do have a feeling of "cows in a cowpin" that rivals the fields of cubicles of old.
HiroshiSan 8y ago
I'd love to hear more about your experience as a mathlete, as someone whose bad at math trying to be decent at it, I'd love to know how you got good at math. What sorts of things did you do (aside from just spending a lot of time doing math).
- artemisyna 8y ago
  To be honest, I've always been "good" at math (cue memories of learning how to cont to 100 as a 3 year old, being forced to memorize multiplication tables at age 6) so I never "got good". That said, years of math competition did teach me how to study. You don't just go through problems blindly - you have to first diagnose what is at the cusp of your knowledge and then do those problems over and over again, reading the answers if need be until you understand that "class" of problems. Sadly, the"over and over again" bit is the part that I seem to have issues with these days...

gravy 8y ago

I never thought about the negatives of open office areas.

artemisyna 8y ago
Even with all the negative articles about them on HN? ;) On a more serious note, I don't have any opposition to the open office layout in themselves... But they do have a feeling of "cows in a cowpin" that rivals the fields of cubicles of old.

HiroshiSan 8y ago

I'd love to hear more about your experience as a mathlete, as someone whose bad at math trying to be decent at it, I'd love to know how you got good at math. What sorts of things did you do (aside from just spending a lot of time doing math).

artemisyna 8y ago
To be honest, I've always been "good" at math (cue memories of learning how to cont to 100 as a 3 year old, being forced to memorize multiplication tables at age 6) so I never "got good". That said, years of math competition did teach me how to study. You don't just go through problems blindly - you have to first diagnose what is at the cusp of your knowledge and then do those problems over and over again, reading the answers if need be until you understand that "class" of problems. Sadly, the"over and over again" bit is the part that I seem to have issues with these days...