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Adult work & social life has practically nothing in common with high school. Neither does college. The only times any of that looks even a little like high scho

Adult work & social life has practically nothing in common with high school. Neither does college. The only times any of that looks even a little like high school is when something's gone very wrong. From about 6th or 7th grade through graduation, school is a weird environment all its own.

convolvatron 5y ago
worse - when 'adult' situations go sideways, you can often take a sideways look - and damn if they aren't all acting like they are still in high school.
thegypsyking 5y ago
Jail is 100% like high school, from the experiences of the people I know who spent time in the can at least.
tailspin2019 5y ago
> Adult work & social life has practically nothing in common with high school. Some might say it is similar to being in prison though… At least for part of high school that’s what it felt like at times for me. The biggest issue being the forced labour - sorry, I mean “homework” - of which the burden was substantial and the benefits not at all clear. At the time I remember being very depressed that even when I was at home and away from the school that I often didn’t enjoy, instead of indulging in my hobbies (which, coincidentally, is how I learnt practically all of the specialised skills that I used to kick off my techology career) I was forced to complete endless hours of dull and unsurprising homework. I understand the benefits in moderation but the sheer amount assigned to me was actively detrimental to the point of robbing me of a big chunk of my free time as a teenager. I desperately wanted to continue teaching myself programming (this was in the early 90’s) but instead I had to complete some mindless essay about sedimentary fucking rocks. Not to mention that I had undiagnosed ADHD so the homework took me forever and created considerable stress. Having said that, it was so bad (and felt so pointless) that even though I was academically pretty strong and had wanted to go to University from quite a young age, I instead quit school at 16, immediately got a job in a business consultancy (using my self-taught programming/design skills) and was running small software projects for huge multi-national businesses within a year. By the time most of my peer group graduated University, I had about 5 years of a software development career under my belt and had already started my first business. In retrospect I don’t think I would have done anything different, apart from putting about 500% less effort into the sedimentary rock essays.
- handrous 5y ago
  Damn, you're me except I did finish high school. In hindsight I very much wish I'd gotten my GED at 15 or 16 and snagged an associate's degree by age 18. Turns out non-elite college gen-ed classes are easier and have way lower time requirements than the high school I went to (which was just, like, a totally normal high school, nothing special), so it'd have been a breeze. I had no clue about that, and just (reasonably, I think?) assumed it was even harder than what I was already doing. Could have put more time in at my tech job, which was hugely valuable to my future, too.
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    Although I say I wouldn’t have changed anything, I think it’s really tough to go back and reevaluate choices like this - you can never really know what alternative paths lay ahead, better or worse. I think we tell ourselves stories about how we got from A to B (like mine above) but in reality it’s never quite as simple. It’s always easier to rationalise and construct what feels like a meaningful narrative in retrospect. For all you know, the choices you made, even if they now feel slightly uniformed in retrospect may still have been 100% right for you! I suppose reflecting on my previous comment, the flip side of the situation is that I was incredibly lucky to go to a pretty good school (even though I didn’t always like it much) and the single biggest benefit I got was the utterly amazing life-long friends I made there, who are still great friends today. Those friends have had 1000% more positive impact on me than my schooling did, but I wouldn’t have met them without school.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  Hit close to home! At age 15 I was literally being paid 3x minimum wage by my friend’s dad to build an e-commerce site for his photography business. But my slavemaster (school, of course) took priority and I never had time to finish the project. Ended up failing out of college (undiagnosed ADHD as well) and enlisted in the navy as an escape hatch. The “real” experience of military life straightened out all my dysfunctional behavior, and makes me wonder how things might have been if I hadn’t been so depressed and hopeless and bored for so many years of my adolescence.

convolvatron 5y ago

worse - when 'adult' situations go sideways, you can often take a sideways look - and damn if they aren't all acting like they are still in high school.

thegypsyking 5y ago

Jail is 100% like high school, from the experiences of the people I know who spent time in the can at least.

tailspin2019 5y ago

> Adult work & social life has practically nothing in common with high school. Some might say it is similar to being in prison though… At least for part of high school that’s what it felt like at times for me. The biggest issue being the forced labour - sorry, I mean “homework” - of which the burden was substantial and the benefits not at all clear. At the time I remember being very depressed that even when I was at home and away from the school that I often didn’t enjoy, instead of indulging in my hobbies (which, coincidentally, is how I learnt practically all of the specialised skills that I used to kick off my techology career) I was forced to complete endless hours of dull and unsurprising homework. I understand the benefits in moderation but the sheer amount assigned to me was actively detrimental to the point of robbing me of a big chunk of my free time as a teenager. I desperately wanted to continue teaching myself programming (this was in the early 90’s) but instead I had to complete some mindless essay about sedimentary fucking rocks. Not to mention that I had undiagnosed ADHD so the homework took me forever and created considerable stress. Having said that, it was so bad (and felt so pointless) that even though I was academically pretty strong and had wanted to go to University from quite a young age, I instead quit school at 16, immediately got a job in a business consultancy (using my self-taught programming/design skills) and was running small software projects for huge multi-national businesses within a year. By the time most of my peer group graduated University, I had about 5 years of a software development career under my belt and had already started my first business. In retrospect I don’t think I would have done anything different, apart from putting about 500% less effort into the sedimentary rock essays.

handrous 5y ago
Damn, you're me except I did finish high school. In hindsight I very much wish I'd gotten my GED at 15 or 16 and snagged an associate's degree by age 18. Turns out non-elite college gen-ed classes are easier and have way lower time requirements than the high school I went to (which was just, like, a totally normal high school, nothing special), so it'd have been a breeze. I had no clue about that, and just (reasonably, I think?) assumed it was even harder than what I was already doing. Could have put more time in at my tech job, which was hugely valuable to my future, too.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Although I say I wouldn’t have changed anything, I think it’s really tough to go back and reevaluate choices like this - you can never really know what alternative paths lay ahead, better or worse. I think we tell ourselves stories about how we got from A to B (like mine above) but in reality it’s never quite as simple. It’s always easier to rationalise and construct what feels like a meaningful narrative in retrospect. For all you know, the choices you made, even if they now feel slightly uniformed in retrospect may still have been 100% right for you! I suppose reflecting on my previous comment, the flip side of the situation is that I was incredibly lucky to go to a pretty good school (even though I didn’t always like it much) and the single biggest benefit I got was the utterly amazing life-long friends I made there, who are still great friends today. Those friends have had 1000% more positive impact on me than my schooling did, but I wouldn’t have met them without school.
jkhdigital 5y ago
Hit close to home! At age 15 I was literally being paid 3x minimum wage by my friend’s dad to build an e-commerce site for his photography business. But my slavemaster (school, of course) took priority and I never had time to finish the project. Ended up failing out of college (undiagnosed ADHD as well) and enlisted in the navy as an escape hatch. The “real” experience of military life straightened out all my dysfunctional behavior, and makes me wonder how things might have been if I hadn’t been so depressed and hopeless and bored for so many years of my adolescence.