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I struggled to think about how I would answer the "Naughty" question. I thought about it for awhile and remembered something that happened almost 15 years ago.

I struggled to think about how I would answer the "Naughty" question. I thought about it for awhile and remembered something that happened almost 15 years ago. I hated high school with a passion that still surprises me when I look back on it. My high school allowed kids who got accepted to college to go and have school pay for it while getting credit for college and high school. This sounded great to me but getting accepted was going to be a challenge because I wasn't a great student and I was only 15 at the time. I met with the admissions officer at the college I wanted to attend and she wasn't sure at all about me. I had reviewed the course catalog before the meeting and made her a suggestion. I said "If I take a 400 level course and get an "A" would that prove to you that I'm up to doing college level work?" She said yes and I suggested that I take a course on the history of World War 2. World War 2 was a mild obsession of mine from 13-14 and I still to this day remember reading pages and pages of statistics about shipping losses during various times during the war. I knew every imaginable detail about virtually anything that had to do with World War 2. She didn't know this of course and warned me many times about what I was getting myself into in signing up for this course. I was accepted with the provision that we would review my grades after the semester was over. I received the highest grade in the class and the entire course catalog was open to me until I graduated from high school. This ended up working in my favor in many ways but the most obvious benefit was that I graduated high school with virtually all of my liberal arts electives done without having to pay anything for it. Not sure if this is the spirit of the question or not but it seems like it to me.

danilocampos 16y ago
Sounds pretty bad ass to me. Damn, nice work. I think it boils down to this: Do you tolerate bullshit or do you proactively stack the deck for personal advantage? In this case you leveraged the hell out of a unique personal quirk and created an opportunity for yourself that wouldn't otherwise exist. To use a poker analogy (Thanks, Tony Hsieh), you picked the table where you knew you could win. You knew you'd do better at the college level and you exploited information asymmetry with both the college administrator and your college-level peers. This is the very essence of how successful people and businesses work. You also showed some moxy and cunning with someone much older and more powerful than you, which is unusual at that age. You thought many moves ahead and won, reaping huge upside. That's 98th percentile at least, man.
iuguy 16y ago
I guess my answer to the naughtiness thing, was when I wanted something from a certain organisation. I looked at the organisation, looked at where their weaknesses were then made sure that I could find ways of addressing them. I then contacted said organisation, offered to fix their weaknesses, did so then asked for what I wanted, knowing that while it was a big ask, they'd have to say yes given what I'd put in, and that if they said no I'd scale back my support (which I think is not unreasonable). In the end they said yes because they wanted to, and felt that I'd put more than enough to justify it, although for me I just picked problems where I already had the solution, or was relatively close to having. On the one hand, it seems somewhat insincere to approach someone with solutions and not immediately make your wants clear, but on the other it's a win-win all round.

danilocampos 16y ago

Sounds pretty bad ass to me. Damn, nice work. I think it boils down to this: Do you tolerate bullshit or do you proactively stack the deck for personal advantage? In this case you leveraged the hell out of a unique personal quirk and created an opportunity for yourself that wouldn't otherwise exist. To use a poker analogy (Thanks, Tony Hsieh), you picked the table where you knew you could win. You knew you'd do better at the college level and you exploited information asymmetry with both the college administrator and your college-level peers. This is the very essence of how successful people and businesses work. You also showed some moxy and cunning with someone much older and more powerful than you, which is unusual at that age. You thought many moves ahead and won, reaping huge upside. That's 98th percentile at least, man.

iuguy 16y ago

I guess my answer to the naughtiness thing, was when I wanted something from a certain organisation. I looked at the organisation, looked at where their weaknesses were then made sure that I could find ways of addressing them. I then contacted said organisation, offered to fix their weaknesses, did so then asked for what I wanted, knowing that while it was a big ask, they'd have to say yes given what I'd put in, and that if they said no I'd scale back my support (which I think is not unreasonable). In the end they said yes because they wanted to, and felt that I'd put more than enough to justify it, although for me I just picked problems where I already had the solution, or was relatively close to having. On the one hand, it seems somewhat insincere to approach someone with solutions and not immediately make your wants clear, but on the other it's a win-win all round.