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You shouldn’t be condemned for life for not being elite material when you were 18. Disclaimer - I was not elite material when I was 18 and feel like I’m condem

You shouldn’t be condemned for life for not being elite material when you were 18. Disclaimer - I was not elite material when I was 18 and feel like I’m condemned for life when I read these posts.

saagarjha 8y ago
What makes you feel "condemned for life"?
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  I know I’ll never be able to match the accomplishments of people that got into Duke the year I didn’t, for example.
  - opportune 8y ago
    You shouldn't feel that way at all, there are lots of unsuccessful people from each year's class at those kinds of universities, you just don't hear about them.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Why not? The relationship between colleges and the accomplishments of the people attending them is tenuous at best. There are thousands of people at good universities that do essentially nothing, and wherever you are you have the opportunity to do better than them.
    - akhilcacharya 8y ago
      No, not really. People that get into Stanford or MIT did cool stuff when they were younger to get there. I still haven't done cool stuff!
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        I mean, you've still got quite a lot of time to do cool things?
        akhilcacharya 8y ago
        Not...really? I'm 22, turning 23. I know a bunch of people that got patents in high school, competed in math/informatics olympiads and have multiple published papers (of varying quality, but nonetheless). Never had any of that or knew how to do it.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        > I know a bunch of people that got patents in high school, competed in math/informatics olympiads and have multiple published papers (of varying quality, but nonetheless). For each of those people there are a hundred that haven't done anything like that. "Ability" is a continuum: there are levels between "not doing anything" and "at the top of everything". Join your local research lab, try some competitive programming, do some open source work–just try your best and see what you can do! Not everyone can be the very best (though, it's entirely possible that you can, if you work hard and get lucky, so I don't want to close that off to you), but that doesn't make you unable to do cool things. (FWIW, I'm in a middling undergraduate program, have no patents or papers in my name, and while I've competed in olympiads I have probably not done so at the level you're thinking of; I still feel that I've done cool things. YMMV, but if you want to chat personally feel free to shoot me an email.)
        com2kid 8y ago
        I helped design/write an embedded runtime when I was ~29. Got a lot of patents out of it. If I'd done it at 22, it'd have been a crappy OS. Getting software patents is easy. I used to take time to file one whenever I had a 6 hour or more flight. Boredom and all that. Also my employer's patent bonus paid for my airfare. You have decades of life left. One of my mentors had the time of his life programming in his 50s, putting his mark as a leader on multiple amazing products that sold in numbers ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions upon millions. Up until then? Rather uneventful. If I remember, lots of years working on test equipment.
  - asdff 8y ago
    Screw that. If you work hard people take notice, that's it. You can go to a CC, grind hard through your classes, transfer into a school with a better network, continue to grind hard, and land the job because anyone who sees your CV will see that you are a fighter who gives a shit. Some of the richest kids in my high school paid full tuition to ivy league schools, didn't come to play school, and ended up with a scrappy job anyone could have gotten from just about any school. Work hard.
    - akhilcacharya 8y ago
      I think there's a lot of inherent ability tied within ability to be accepted into an elite program (SAT score, etc) that I simply don't have. That doesn't help matters at all.
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        > there's a lot of inherent ability tied within ability to be accepted into an elite program Yeah, the ability to be accepted into an elite program. This often has little bearing in real life (honestly, how much do you really care about the ability to get a good SAT score anymore?).
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - strikelaserclaw 8y ago
        you can grind your way to a high SAT score (I know this personally because in a span of 2-3 months i went from mediocre to 'great' SAT scores just from grinding), you can grind your way to great grades, you can grind your way to an "elite" college. But ultimately, while those things may help you get ahead, they don't make or break you. What is needed to be successful is hard work, creativity,risk taking and luck. Your woe is me attitude is going to hold you back much more than your not attending an elite university.
        akhilcacharya 8y ago
  - pauljurczak 8y ago
    Perhaps you are focusing on a wrong sort of accomplishments. Do you really crave to be a highly paid Boeing PR drone, twisting the truth to protect their corrupt management from legal responsibility for 737-MAX screw-up?
povertyworld 8y ago
If you want to feel that condemned for life by the capitalist caste system feeling, read the part in The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz where people are trying to stop them from hiring Mark Cranney, even though he is apparently the best sales exec they have ever seen, because he went to "a weak school". They even admit he could be the CEO of IBM instead of a sales guy at a floundering startup if he didn't have "those things wrong with him".
anon12345690 7y ago
you argued that people who said some bad words in a youtube video and they should be condemned for life

saagarjha 8y ago

What makes you feel "condemned for life"?

akhilcacharya 8y ago
I know I’ll never be able to match the accomplishments of people that got into Duke the year I didn’t, for example.
- opportune 8y ago
  You shouldn't feel that way at all, there are lots of unsuccessful people from each year's class at those kinds of universities, you just don't hear about them.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Why not? The relationship between colleges and the accomplishments of the people attending them is tenuous at best. There are thousands of people at good universities that do essentially nothing, and wherever you are you have the opportunity to do better than them.
  - akhilcacharya 8y ago
    No, not really. People that get into Stanford or MIT did cool stuff when they were younger to get there. I still haven't done cool stuff!
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      I mean, you've still got quite a lot of time to do cool things?
      - akhilcacharya 8y ago
        Not...really? I'm 22, turning 23. I know a bunch of people that got patents in high school, competed in math/informatics olympiads and have multiple published papers (of varying quality, but nonetheless). Never had any of that or knew how to do it.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        > I know a bunch of people that got patents in high school, competed in math/informatics olympiads and have multiple published papers (of varying quality, but nonetheless). For each of those people there are a hundred that haven't done anything like that. "Ability" is a continuum: there are levels between "not doing anything" and "at the top of everything". Join your local research lab, try some competitive programming, do some open source work–just try your best and see what you can do! Not everyone can be the very best (though, it's entirely possible that you can, if you work hard and get lucky, so I don't want to close that off to you), but that doesn't make you unable to do cool things. (FWIW, I'm in a middling undergraduate program, have no patents or papers in my name, and while I've competed in olympiads I have probably not done so at the level you're thinking of; I still feel that I've done cool things. YMMV, but if you want to chat personally feel free to shoot me an email.)
        com2kid 8y ago
        I helped design/write an embedded runtime when I was ~29. Got a lot of patents out of it. If I'd done it at 22, it'd have been a crappy OS. Getting software patents is easy. I used to take time to file one whenever I had a 6 hour or more flight. Boredom and all that. Also my employer's patent bonus paid for my airfare. You have decades of life left. One of my mentors had the time of his life programming in his 50s, putting his mark as a leader on multiple amazing products that sold in numbers ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions upon millions. Up until then? Rather uneventful. If I remember, lots of years working on test equipment.
- asdff 8y ago
  Screw that. If you work hard people take notice, that's it. You can go to a CC, grind hard through your classes, transfer into a school with a better network, continue to grind hard, and land the job because anyone who sees your CV will see that you are a fighter who gives a shit. Some of the richest kids in my high school paid full tuition to ivy league schools, didn't come to play school, and ended up with a scrappy job anyone could have gotten from just about any school. Work hard.
  - akhilcacharya 8y ago
    I think there's a lot of inherent ability tied within ability to be accepted into an elite program (SAT score, etc) that I simply don't have. That doesn't help matters at all.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      > there's a lot of inherent ability tied within ability to be accepted into an elite program Yeah, the ability to be accepted into an elite program. This often has little bearing in real life (honestly, how much do you really care about the ability to get a good SAT score anymore?).
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - strikelaserclaw 8y ago
      you can grind your way to a high SAT score (I know this personally because in a span of 2-3 months i went from mediocre to 'great' SAT scores just from grinding), you can grind your way to great grades, you can grind your way to an "elite" college. But ultimately, while those things may help you get ahead, they don't make or break you. What is needed to be successful is hard work, creativity,risk taking and luck. Your woe is me attitude is going to hold you back much more than your not attending an elite university.
      - akhilcacharya 8y ago
- pauljurczak 8y ago
  Perhaps you are focusing on a wrong sort of accomplishments. Do you really crave to be a highly paid Boeing PR drone, twisting the truth to protect their corrupt management from legal responsibility for 737-MAX screw-up?

povertyworld 8y ago

If you want to feel that condemned for life by the capitalist caste system feeling, read the part in The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz where people are trying to stop them from hiring Mark Cranney, even though he is apparently the best sales exec they have ever seen, because he went to "a weak school". They even admit he could be the CEO of IBM instead of a sales guy at a floundering startup if he didn't have "those things wrong with him".

anon12345690 7y ago

you argued that people who said some bad words in a youtube video and they should be condemned for life