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It took me a long time to see the value of school. All through elementary school and high school I didn't give a shit, did what I needed to do to do well, never

It took me a long time to see the value of school. All through elementary school and high school I didn't give a shit, did what I needed to do to do well, never really cared about things going on at school and didnt really have many friends or anything. When I got to university it was different, I cared and tried and got involved with everything. It was a totally different experience. It made me regret the way i was in high school a bit and kinda made me wish I'd been more involved. It wasn't as pointless and ridiculous as I thought and there was no reason for me not to other than my unwillingness to. If I'd actually experienced these things, I might have gotten more out of high school and not been so hostile towards it all for so long, when in the end education only benefitted me and there's a kind of education you can only get by taking part in things with people around you. I know it's not the same, but I know there's lots of kids out there who didn't wait as long as me and know now, well before I did, what they get out of having other people around. As great as distance education can be, even if you've got your classmates there on video or something, it's still not the same as a group of students getting together and working on homework or studying, the ones that do I mean, and even for the ones that just get together, there's a lot of bonding and forming as people that happens that just can't really be replicated outside truly free interaction with other people. Even if you're all working on school work. It needs to be some kind of natural free setting. Something's missing otherwise. Again, it took me a long time to really get this.

cmrdporcupine 7y ago
You're lucky you got to university. In many systems screwing up in high school is the end for that, even the remedial programs are hard to get into. After really doing poorly in high school (and prior) I was lucky to crawl my way into a community college and get into an arts program and then transfer to a university for an honors BA philosophy path after -- but I really wanted to be in CS. But because of my high school math grades that was never open to me -- and will never be even now. I ended up dropping out of my BA in my 3rd year to go catch the .com boom wave and get my first programmer gigs, and I'm still doing it 24 years later. I work now at Google, surrounded by people who look at me with blank stares when I describe my troubles with school. This whole path is why I'm deeply suspicious of educational and career models which make excessive claims to be 'meritocratic.' Measuring humans is hard, and mostly we just measure the wrong things and pull the wrong motivational levers. University I think is better because you do mostly feel like you 'own' your own educational path, and there's more room for individual learning choices.

cmrdporcupine 7y ago

You're lucky you got to university. In many systems screwing up in high school is the end for that, even the remedial programs are hard to get into. After really doing poorly in high school (and prior) I was lucky to crawl my way into a community college and get into an arts program and then transfer to a university for an honors BA philosophy path after -- but I really wanted to be in CS. But because of my high school math grades that was never open to me -- and will never be even now. I ended up dropping out of my BA in my 3rd year to go catch the .com boom wave and get my first programmer gigs, and I'm still doing it 24 years later. I work now at Google, surrounded by people who look at me with blank stares when I describe my troubles with school. This whole path is why I'm deeply suspicious of educational and career models which make excessive claims to be 'meritocratic.' Measuring humans is hard, and mostly we just measure the wrong things and pull the wrong motivational levers. University I think is better because you do mostly feel like you 'own' your own educational path, and there's more room for individual learning choices.