3 ms·

>Why did I do so poorly in school despite the tests? It was probably the tests. I was told I was so smart so many times that the effect mentioned in this articl

by chunky1994 15y ago

>Why did I do so poorly in school despite the tests? It was probably the tests. I was told I was so smart so many times that the effect mentioned in this article seems particularly germane. I didn't work hard, so I didn't do well, but I tested high, so I thought the system was broken, not me. I was already smart, so I didn't need that fact positively reinforced, but I did need instances of hard work reinforced. I had no work ethic coming out of high school, I simply did things that interested me and dropped things that didn't. That I think is the most essential point you've made, how did you get around that? If I know that then I certainly wouldn't be this depressed.

nl 15y ago
how did you get around that Get around what exactly? I don't think he is saying he got around anything - just that he dropped things he didn't like. If I know that then I certainly wouldn't be this depressed It probably doesn't sound useful, but there probably isn't a single simple answer to how. BUT - more usefully, there are simple answers to when. Things will get awesome in somewhere between 1 and 3 years - as soon as you find fulfilling things to do, with people who get you. This will happen. It will take longer than you would like, or seems reasonable, or be easy, but it is achievable.
- chunky1994 15y ago
  I meant how did he manage to stop doing that, unless he continues to do so, yet things are awesome for him now. I want to know how things managed to become awesome if he still continues to drop boring things, or how he managed to convince himself to work on boring things.
  - nl 15y ago
    Oh, right. Well I dropped boring things, and things turned out alright. Just make sure you aren't using that as an excuse for avoiding things that aren't as easy. I never found Math as easy as I'm sure some of the Math genius on HN find it, but I didn't drop it either, for example. I do agree that developing a good work ethic is important.
  - bane 15y ago
    I didn't drop boring things. I taught myself how to do them. Take history for example, in HS I found it excruciatingly boring. Later in college I challenged myself to take it again and ace it. All that stuff I thought was boring, I learned to see it as interesting. As an evolving system. Piecing bits of history together, seeing the evolution of tax systems, or military patterns, or whatever. Eventually, I got to the point where I could afford to travel a bit. And here's where the awesome part comes in. When I went to Athens, I could visualize Hadrian walking through his arch down to the temple of Zeus. Or in Florence, walk the exact same streets as Michelangelo and see exactly where Savonarola was burned to death. In Rhodes I could see the approach the armies of Salah ah-Din had to make to assault the fortress of the Knights of St. John. It wasn't just a wall, or a bunch of bricks, it was a living, breathing piece of history. And knowing the history of it, I felt connected to it. And now that I know that history can be so enlightening, I seek it out where I don't know it. In Korea I learned about King Sejong the Great and why he's great, and suddenly I find I'm interested in linguistics and invented writing systems (great site btw http://www.omniglot.com/ http://www.omniglot.com/). And I find connections between things everywhere! It's just history, but other things in life suddenly have a vibrancy and flavor I never saw, because I never knew how to see.
kevinalexbrown 15y ago
The how for me usually comes through a change in attitude. One such change is knowing that learning boring things now can pay off down the line, that what you're doing pays off. Once you accept that, you'll approach the mundane shit with new vigor. For me in high school, I hated history class - you learn some remote facts, you memorize them, you spit them out in an essay on a test. Who the hell cares? We had shitty weekly assignments where you literally just made an outline of the chapter you were reading. I remember very little of the actual content. But ... years later I'm really glad that I have the skill to quickly scan and digest mundane information. This ability didn't just happen - no one is born with a text filter that magically highlights important facts in paragraphs. Not all the mundane bullshit you have to do will be important later in your life. But you won't know beforehand what parts were good and what parts weren't. So you can sink into not caring, or you can believe that maybe 1/5 boring things will save your ass someday. Sure, you might be smarter than your teachers now, but knowing how to impress 'dumber' people is a really important skill that about 50% of smart people don't grasp. I've been through similar things, and I should emphasize that things do get better as bane says. Here's a comic that helped to remind me that at some point it wasn't just about learning bullshit, but that at the end of the day you can do really cool things with crap that seems boring and trivial now: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2125#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2125#c...
bane 15y ago
I had to finish up high school, and simply get out in the real world. I worked odd jobs, shitty manual labor and such for a bit. When that got old (or I got tired of being outside) I found a job doing tech support. After a couple years of that I came away with two things a) I had trouble doing tech support initially because communicating effectively with people is hard. I learned more skills related to handling people during that job than I have anywhere else, and it's the most valuable skill I've ever learned. b) I absolutely hated doing tech support. I applied for some other, better jobs, and couldn't get them. Doing support couldn't pay my bills, and I finally found myself in a situation where I knew that the best way forward for me was to just go to school and get it over with. I took a couple remedial classes at the local community college to get over my fears from K-12, simple things like Algebra. But I took those classes also to learn how to study. If learned to grind. And I also learned that even when I thought I knew something, I learned I hadn't mastered it. If a teacher assigned 20 problems, I'd do 40, and invariably I'd find one or two I couldn't solve, or had trouble with. I had to teach myself work ethic. Tell myself I was working hard, not that I was smart. After all, if I was so smart I wouldn't be 4 years out of High School taking Algebra classes at a Community College would I? I generally avoided distractions, I had friends I studied with, but I didn't put a whole lot into the relationships. I eventually found people who were also interested in studying and working hard and we became a regular study group throughout most of my undergrad. That helped satiate my desire for human interaction, without becoming a drag on my time or a distraction away from school. I met my wife through that group. But we got together knowing we'd support each other through our schooling and study. So it wasn't like the relationship was a huge distraction like it can often become. (We studied extra together instead of going on dates, cheaper and more useful in the long run). It wasn't easy. I still have work ethic issues that crop up. But I know how to spot them and work on working them out. Turns out these days, working in a more managerial position, most of the work is mindless grindwork, filling out paperwork, attending meetings, that sort of thing. But if I hand't taught myself to do it, I never would have made it. The thing is, I knew I was smart, so I considered everything I couldn't do, even grindwork, as something I knew I could figure out. I took everything as a challenge to my intellect, and that's seen me through pretty well.

nl 15y ago

how did you get around that Get around what exactly? I don't think he is saying he got around anything - just that he dropped things he didn't like. If I know that then I certainly wouldn't be this depressed It probably doesn't sound useful, but there probably isn't a single simple answer to how. BUT - more usefully, there are simple answers to when. Things will get awesome in somewhere between 1 and 3 years - as soon as you find fulfilling things to do, with people who get you. This will happen. It will take longer than you would like, or seems reasonable, or be easy, but it is achievable.

chunky1994 15y ago
I meant how did he manage to stop doing that, unless he continues to do so, yet things are awesome for him now. I want to know how things managed to become awesome if he still continues to drop boring things, or how he managed to convince himself to work on boring things.
- nl 15y ago
  Oh, right. Well I dropped boring things, and things turned out alright. Just make sure you aren't using that as an excuse for avoiding things that aren't as easy. I never found Math as easy as I'm sure some of the Math genius on HN find it, but I didn't drop it either, for example. I do agree that developing a good work ethic is important.
- bane 15y ago
  I didn't drop boring things. I taught myself how to do them. Take history for example, in HS I found it excruciatingly boring. Later in college I challenged myself to take it again and ace it. All that stuff I thought was boring, I learned to see it as interesting. As an evolving system. Piecing bits of history together, seeing the evolution of tax systems, or military patterns, or whatever. Eventually, I got to the point where I could afford to travel a bit. And here's where the awesome part comes in. When I went to Athens, I could visualize Hadrian walking through his arch down to the temple of Zeus. Or in Florence, walk the exact same streets as Michelangelo and see exactly where Savonarola was burned to death. In Rhodes I could see the approach the armies of Salah ah-Din had to make to assault the fortress of the Knights of St. John. It wasn't just a wall, or a bunch of bricks, it was a living, breathing piece of history. And knowing the history of it, I felt connected to it. And now that I know that history can be so enlightening, I seek it out where I don't know it. In Korea I learned about King Sejong the Great and why he's great, and suddenly I find I'm interested in linguistics and invented writing systems (great site btw http://www.omniglot.com/ http://www.omniglot.com/). And I find connections between things everywhere! It's just history, but other things in life suddenly have a vibrancy and flavor I never saw, because I never knew how to see.

kevinalexbrown 15y ago

The how for me usually comes through a change in attitude. One such change is knowing that learning boring things now can pay off down the line, that what you're doing pays off. Once you accept that, you'll approach the mundane shit with new vigor. For me in high school, I hated history class - you learn some remote facts, you memorize them, you spit them out in an essay on a test. Who the hell cares? We had shitty weekly assignments where you literally just made an outline of the chapter you were reading. I remember very little of the actual content. But ... years later I'm really glad that I have the skill to quickly scan and digest mundane information. This ability didn't just happen - no one is born with a text filter that magically highlights important facts in paragraphs. Not all the mundane bullshit you have to do will be important later in your life. But you won't know beforehand what parts were good and what parts weren't. So you can sink into not caring, or you can believe that maybe 1/5 boring things will save your ass someday. Sure, you might be smarter than your teachers now, but knowing how to impress 'dumber' people is a really important skill that about 50% of smart people don't grasp. I've been through similar things, and I should emphasize that things do get better as bane says. Here's a comic that helped to remind me that at some point it wasn't just about learning bullshit, but that at the end of the day you can do really cool things with crap that seems boring and trivial now: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2125#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2125#c...

bane 15y ago

I had to finish up high school, and simply get out in the real world. I worked odd jobs, shitty manual labor and such for a bit. When that got old (or I got tired of being outside) I found a job doing tech support. After a couple years of that I came away with two things a) I had trouble doing tech support initially because communicating effectively with people is hard. I learned more skills related to handling people during that job than I have anywhere else, and it's the most valuable skill I've ever learned. b) I absolutely hated doing tech support. I applied for some other, better jobs, and couldn't get them. Doing support couldn't pay my bills, and I finally found myself in a situation where I knew that the best way forward for me was to just go to school and get it over with. I took a couple remedial classes at the local community college to get over my fears from K-12, simple things like Algebra. But I took those classes also to learn how to study. If learned to grind. And I also learned that even when I thought I knew something, I learned I hadn't mastered it. If a teacher assigned 20 problems, I'd do 40, and invariably I'd find one or two I couldn't solve, or had trouble with. I had to teach myself work ethic. Tell myself I was working hard, not that I was smart. After all, if I was so smart I wouldn't be 4 years out of High School taking Algebra classes at a Community College would I? I generally avoided distractions, I had friends I studied with, but I didn't put a whole lot into the relationships. I eventually found people who were also interested in studying and working hard and we became a regular study group throughout most of my undergrad. That helped satiate my desire for human interaction, without becoming a drag on my time or a distraction away from school. I met my wife through that group. But we got together knowing we'd support each other through our schooling and study. So it wasn't like the relationship was a huge distraction like it can often become. (We studied extra together instead of going on dates, cheaper and more useful in the long run). It wasn't easy. I still have work ethic issues that crop up. But I know how to spot them and work on working them out. Turns out these days, working in a more managerial position, most of the work is mindless grindwork, filling out paperwork, attending meetings, that sort of thing. But if I hand't taught myself to do it, I never would have made it. The thing is, I knew I was smart, so I considered everything I couldn't do, even grindwork, as something I knew I could figure out. I took everything as a challenge to my intellect, and that's seen me through pretty well.