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As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from th

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sorts of anti depression drugs and amphetamines. Turns out I was just very unhealthy, from a basic lifestyle perspective. And the school was pushing that lifestyle. My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a decent state school), or maybe go into the "trades". These large scale school systems treat students like cattle, with zero regard for the long term effects. Many mental health concerns would disappear if people were actually healthy in the most basic sense.

solveit 4y ago
> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a decent state school) What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high schools? Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice?
- bigbillheck 4y ago
  I think I talked to guidance counselors twice during my entire high school career, and neither time came away satisfied, but had friends who were in and out of their offices on the regular without complaint beyond the usual ones you'd expect from teenage boys.
- screye 4y ago
  My cynical take is that someone who cannot figure out what career to be in themselves ends up a guidance counselor. The job isn't well paid. And anyone who can do large scale talent identification will likely be paid a lot more in the corporate world. So you end up with the least competent ones in public schools.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  Selection bias?
- seeEllArr 4y ago
  [dead]
- xypage 4y ago
  Because a guidance counselor doing a good job is really boring, they ask you where you want to go to school, get you links to those applications, and maybe walk you through the application/point you to a campus resource that'll proofread your essays before you submit them. None of these are particularly note worthy, no one's going to go home and write about that experience, so you don't hear about it. That's what my counselor did, they got me fee waivers too so I didn't have to pay a cent for any of my applications, it's just not something I raced to write about, like I would've if they told me I shouldn't go to college and then I did well or something.
  - geoduck14 4y ago
    I agree. My guidance counselor had 2 3-ring binders FULL of schools that fit some criteria I had, but were also aligned to my disabilities. My mom and I spent ~2 hours with the counselor looking through the schools and applying. It was pretty boring. They also arranged for schools to come and talk to us about them. That was rad because we got to skip class
  - clint 4y ago
    I'm often surprised that so many folks seemed to have "Guidance Counselors" at their schools. I went to a public science and technology magnet school in Kansas during the 90s and I don't think I ever saw a guidance counselor ever.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - astrange 4y ago
      I slept through most of high school because of the long commute, but vaguely remember a counselor coming around with a computerized career recommender at our magnet school, which told me to become a telecom linesmen because I liked computers.
  - plorkyeran 4y ago
    Yep, my HS guidance counselor gave me some great advice. I went to a school she strongly recommended for me and it was a good fit for exactly the reasons she said it would be. This isn't a very interesting story so I think this is literally the first time I've ever mentioned it anywhere in the nearly 20 years since then.
- mjhay 4y ago
  They have a strong tendency to steer high-performing students from lower-income families away from prestigious schools, despite the fact that those are often cheaper with scholarships.
- kcplate 4y ago
  I am not sure it’s necessarily bad advice in this case—community college or trade school route—I would consider that pretty good general advice for an underperforming but intelligent teen. However, I do know firsthand from an experience involving my son’s guidance counselor providing remarkably bad advice that at times the guidance isn’t beneficial to the teen, but more to the school.
- hd95489 4y ago
  Yeah I mean the guidance counselor is at best a failed therapist so why would you expect good advice
- Merad 4y ago
  Why do you think this was stupid advice? More than a few "normal" kids go off to college and crash and burn or otherwise fail spectacularly because they aren't prepared to be on their own. It sounds totally reasonable to suggest that a kid struggling with issues like the GP might consider community college so they can stay around family support structures, continue seeing the same doctors or therapists, etc.
- musicale 4y ago
  > just a community college Community colleges are the best deal in higher education, and often have faculty who are interested in teaching rather than research.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Most of them are really bad at their jobs, but the pay kinda sucks, so that's not likely to improve. And with all the glamour of telling burn-outs that they're not getting into Harvard all day long, and the low pay, you also get to be point person when a kid offs themselves or dies in a car wreck. Fun! You get what you pay for, and the pay's low. Also, the job sucks. That's a recipe for terrible service. [EDIT] Incidentally, you want consistently-great counselors, as far as the college planning side goes? Elite prep schools. Half of what you're paying for is an expert with insider knowledge & contacts to ensure your kid gets into the best possible school they can. They treat the position—at least as far as that side of it goes—very seriously, when hiring.
- giantg2 4y ago
  "What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high schools? Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice?" Because most of them couldn't get a "real" job. If they could they'd be making more money somewhere else. (yes, there are some great people doing the job for ideological reasons too)
- TylerE 4y ago
  That is excellent advice in many states. For instance, here in NC you can do the first 2 years of almost any undergrad degree (all the basic non-subject matter stuff) for a fraction of the cost, and every single credit transfers. Also, much much smaller classes.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Also also: generally better teachers, becaus they are there because they actually want to teach - many are retired former professionals. Whereas many college professors want to do research and do the academia dance, often fobbing off much of the actual teaching to TAs and the like.
- chasd00 4y ago
  > Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice? most people with insight on good advice do not become high school guidance counselors. why would they?
phillipcarter 4y ago
> These large scale school systems treat students like cattle I think that's by design, though, as school primarily exists as extended daycare so that parents can work.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
  I just think about how many people early in life are completely thrown off course because there isnt someone around to provide the basics. And it can happen in well off families.
  - jxramos 4y ago
    I wonder how the experience would have went if we were in on the design of it all. We had our suspicions but I wonder if some folks would have been more compelled to take things into their own hands than passively take all the crazy environments dished out on us. Sort of in the space of informed consent, I can react to that which I'm explicitly aware of you know? Youth frequently pay the price is these sorts of information asymetries.
thinking4real 4y ago
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exfatloss 4y ago
To steelman those school administrators/policy makers, we barely know how the human body even works and how to maintain it. These mechanisms like diet and sleep have feedback cycles of months, year, or decades. Sometimes even lifetimes. We're extremely bad at learning from them and often fall into short-term traps that cause much bigger long-term harm. I.e. do we, as a society, know what "a healthy diet" is? Or what "healthy sleep habits" are? I would argue we don't. If you were to survey the median person, they'd probably be pretty outdated and wrong on both. Same for doctors, who typically have their knowledge from med school and haven't kept updated much ever since. In my experience, the typical doctor doesn't know much about chronotypes besides maybe that they exist, and will recite diet dogma from the 80s or whenever he/she graduated. So while I do agree that the impact is terrible, let's not forget that the median person simply has no idea what works, even the leading frontier of science and researchers is only slightly better off. It's like being mad at medieval peasants for not knowing about electrons or ramjets: it was very unlikely they could've known better at the time.
peoplearepeople 4y ago
> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college Reminder to self, tell my children to ignore anything a 'guidance councilor' says
- krolden 4y ago
  "What do you want to do with your life" Me: "I dunno" "Ok, back to class"
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Should they take education advice from someone who changes correctly spelled words to incorrectly spelled?
- isk517 4y ago
  There's the old joke that if the guidance councilor was good at their job they wouldn't be working as a guidance councilor.
- Yoric 4y ago
  I never quite understood what the role was. Does anyone listen to them?
steve_adams_86 4y ago
Weird. My guidance councillor did the same. Well, I wasn’t accepted to a school at the point in which they encouraged me to settle for less, but it was a very heartfelt “don’t even try”. I left the room very confused and upset. Went in with ambition and excitement about my future and left feeling like I must be a complete idiot. I remember her saying “Let’s focus on being realistic. You aren’t actually going to do this. You won’t accomplish any of this”. Like you I was diagnosed with ADD, though long after this. I was inattentive, but succeeding wildly in technology classes and even went to some programming and animation “competitions” which I managed to win. She still told me to set my sights low and aim for trades or something. For what it’s worth I managed to trick everyone else into letting me become a programmer and I did well despite the advice. It still haunts me to think that kids are getting slapped in the self esteem with advice from people like that; people who are supposed to give them objective, constructive, actionable advice in order to begin setting up their academic and professional futures. I’d add though that unlike you, my diet more or less went the opposite direction and I feel much better too. I went completely plant-based with an emphasis on whole foods and as far as I can tell my entire body works better. I’m not saying you’re wrong because I absolutely believe you and agree that we were probably just extremely unhealthy before. Maybe any healthier diet would have sufficed. But yeah, this thing seems extremely variable from person to person. Plant based with heaps of carbs might annihilate your brain, but a bowl of barley with steamed tofu, broccoli, carrots, and peanut sauce is like heavenly brain food for me. Exercise was the other missing link. The more I exercise the better I feel. I’m like a dog that needs to be taken or runs and swims. When my owner forgets I turn into a needy, whining, anxious, lethargic little beast of a human.
- username3 4y ago
  Reverse psychology works if they’re wrong and true if they’re right.
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  We're all winners! Here is your sticker. World is a savage place and everyone will try to keep you down. There are lucky few that are surrounded by a support group that cares and safety nets at every corner.
beebmam 4y ago
> As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables This is contradictory. Vegetables are high in carbohydrates as a percentage of their calories.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Non-starch vegetable have almost no carbs and almost no calories.
  - jay_kyburz 4y ago
    But they have the fiber and other green goodness you need.
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  Betting here that "no carbs" = no bread or other grain products.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Spivak 4y ago
  We've ruined multiple generations by not explaining that our bodies don't care that much about what form our nutrients take. Getting the meat sweats from an Italian sub doesn't mean it was unhealthy, it's just your body's reaction to processing it which can be a desirable feeling (say on Thanksgiving) or not. People who switch to "healthy" and feel better pretty much fall into three categories. * Their new diet is less enjoyable and they simply eat less and burning fat feels good. * They accidentally switched to a FODMAP diet and associate the lack of "reaction" from food as a sign of health. * They have been criminally deprived of fiber and are now regular for the first time in recent memory.
- navierstokess 4y ago
  Low carb doesn't mean you can't eat food with carbs, it means most of your diet is protein and fat, and you restrict carbohydrate consumption. He can have a low carbohydrate diet while eating vegetables, as long as he eats less vegetables than meat.
the_third_wave 4y ago
> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a decent state school), or maybe go into the "trades". While I can only assume the people at that school to have been clueless as to your personal preferences and capabilities I do not see anything wrong with advising someone to skip college and learn a trade. College is not for everyone, college is not needed for many types of employment and college is all too often only used as a filtering device to reduce the number of interview candidates to manageable proportions. Add to that the fact that many colleges have ditched or are on the way to ditching objectivity and the scientific method to replace it with a post-modern portion of bullshit bingo in the name of D.I.E. and such and it suddenly becomes sage advice for many to skip this needless and needlessly expensive step. If you're aspiring to build bridges, heal the sick or raise the dead you'd better get yourself a degree, preferably one which actually means something. If you're planning to go into sales, start a small business or tend to a farm you don't need college.
alienalp 4y ago
This is the biggest issue with developing countries. Nobody really understand how important chronic diseases and a good diet is. In terms of this for majority of its population US is also just like an ordinary developing country. Very similar to Saudi Arabia. Majority of vegetables are also not very innocent. Maybe not comparable to processed junk food with tons of sugar but there is almost no developed country with high vegetable intake yet Vegetables are advertised as healthy and people in developing countries fall victim to it. Fortunately our body is very versatile but i don't think a sensitive organ like brain can keep its ideal condition over time.
_yb2s 4y ago
Modern psychiatry entirely ignores mechanism. All diagnoses are sets of symptoms, and treatments are drugs that reduce specific symptoms. It isn’t surprising that in many cases the causes would be obvious, but there isn’t any type of system for even trying to approach mental health that way. Another problem is the feedback loop of mental illness. A lot of people might feel better if they got exercise, ate healthy, got enough sleep, made some friends, took on some fun hobbies, etc. but most people aren’t willing or able to do any of that if they are stuck in a bad mental state.
- ck425 4y ago
  > Another problem is the feedback loop of mental illness. A lot of people might feel better if they got exercise, ate healthy, got enough sleep, made some friends, took on some fun hobbies, etc. but most people aren’t willing or able to do any of that if they are stuck in a bad mental state. I've found CBT super helpful for my ADHD because it focuses on the small steps to break that loop. I thoroughly recommend it for ADHD and mental illness, particularly for engineers as it's far more system based and obviously "logical" than any other form of therapy I've tried.
jermaustin1 4y ago
I was never diagnosed with ADD, but I had a long commute to school (2+ hours each way - I was closest to the bus barn, so first on in morning, last off at night). So I was on the bus at 5:15am, and not getting home until 5:45-6:30pm, just in time to eat dinner and go to bed so that I could wake up at 4:30am to get my shower, and walk a half mile to the bus stop. The fact that they would pull that shit on 13 year old kids, then tell them they are dumb and fail them is ridiculous. Thankfully I had a few teachers that would stand up for me, but most of them though I was a lazy burn-out and would never amount to anything, and almost no teacher had empathy for me. I should be doing my school work on the bumpy bus that spent more than half its time on rural dirt roads. When I got my first real job, I was glad to realize how wrong they all were. But it shattered my confidence.
rajin444 4y ago
I used to be really big on trust the experts, seek authorities for advice, etc etc. Especially for areas involving mental / general health. Specifics like fixing a broken arm I’m still on the experts side :) Decades later I’ve had many (eerily similar) experiences to what you detailed above. I’ve gotten the best results evaluating issues on my own / with the help of a few trusted sources. Expert advice is about as reliable as chatgpt (in the majority of cases). There’s too many devils in the details when it comes to complex issues like health. Find people who got results or find results yourself. I think the majority of modern healthcare exists to make a profit and curing patients isn’t really a good business model. Unfortunately they can use those profits to create an army of experts and studies.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  I don’t distrust modern medical community, but I think it often suffers from overconfidence that leads me to more carefully scrutinize (but not outright reject) expert opinion. I’ve been listening to a podcast called Sawbones where they talk through the history of medicine. It’s basically a tour of all the ways we got things wrong. My conclusion has been: and why are we so confident that this time we’re right? Seems like every generation is confident that finally, they’ve got it right.
  - waboremo 4y ago
    If we expect every day to be an improvement, the needle has been moved forward that much more, how else would history function except a retelling of mistakes, missteps, and wrongdoings?
  - taberiand 4y ago
    I think modern medicine suffers heavily from generalising patients - so much advice attempts to be so one-size-fits-all that it fits almost nobody. Like story of the fighter cockpit that was designed to perfectly fit the average dimensions of all pilots and was uncomfortable for everyone - no person is average in all dimensions. On top of that is the absolutist advice - "never do X, always do Y" (particularly when the result of doing X is not shared - it could be a minor inconvenience, or a fatal error, they seem to be treated the same) rather than a nuanced process of tradeoffs and balancing outcomes.
deleted 4y ago
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xupybd 4y ago
My high school math teacher told me I wouldn't make it to university. I ended up with a math heavy engineering degree. First class honours. I'm home schooling my kids . They will do better with their parents as teachers. My friends have done it and their kids were academically ready for university years before their peers.
deleted 4y ago
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westurner 4y ago
/? ADHD and sleep; REM / non-REM: https://www.google.com/search?q=adhd+and+sleep https://www.google.com/search?q=adhd+and+sleep Sleep hygiene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_hygiene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_hygiene https://www.google.com/search?q=sleep+hygiene https://www.google.com/search?q=sleep+hygiene - Enough exercise and water - Otherwise, limit calories and/or protein in the preceding hours Sleep induction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_induction Pranayama; breathing yoga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama 4-7-8 breathing: https://www.google.com/search?q=4-7-8+breathing https://www.google.com/search?q=4-7-8+breathing Attributed both to Army and Navy: https://www.fastcompany.com/90253444/what-happened-when-i-tried-the-u-s-armys-tactic-to-fall-asleep-in-two-minutes https://www.fastcompany.com/90253444/what-happened-when-i-tr... : > The Independent says the technique was first described in a book from 1981 called "Relax and Win: Championship Performance" by Lloyd Bud Winter. /? "Relax and Win: Championship Performance" https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Relax+and+Win%3A+Championship+performance%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Relax+and+Win%3A+Champion... https://archive.org/details/Relax-and-Win_Championship-Performance-by-Lloyd-Bud-Winter https://archive.org/details/Relax-and-Win_Championship-Perfo...
fooker 4y ago
>As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. I need carbs to think. If I do not have rice for 3-4 days, I can not do research work. I can write code, or read papers, but new ideas or brainstorming others' ideas don't happen as naturally. Could be a genetic thing, I guess.
- wyre 4y ago
  Maybe they mean no starch because vegetables certainly have carbs. For example, a cup of broccoli has 6g of carbs, a cup of kale has 1g, and about 5g in a tomato. Certainly a low-carb diet, but not no carbs.
  - thiht 4y ago
    Why the hell would you measure broccoli or kale in cups?
thomastjeffery 4y ago
The most effective methods of treatment for ADHD: * Medication * Exercise * Healthy diet * Healthy consistent sleep Is it possible that you weren't just unhealthy? Is it possible that diet, exercise, and sleep had exactly the positive effect that they are generally expected to have? I say this not to reinforce the "maybe" of your own personal ADD/ADHD diagnosis, but to open the door for empathy. You may indeed have been misdiagnosed. You may have a more mild case of ADHD than the mean/average case. You may have a relatively severe case, but experience significant enough relief from your current diet, exercise, and sleep to adequately manage it. Whatever the case may be, I want everyone here to know that it just isn't enough to say, "Just be more healthy." Life is more diverse and complex than that. The primary effect of ADHD is "executive dysfunction". If the best treatment for ADHD is to eat healthy, exercise more, and get consistent sleep, we must still recognize that that very treatment itself exists behind a wall of executive dysfunction. Even if "healthy lifestyle" is enough, we still need a way to bootstrap it. It's incredibly normal for anyone with an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, or lack of sleep to struggle changing any of those things. Someone with ADHD literally has a disorder that makes it incredibly difficult to even get started. While medication has an immediate and direct benefit, getting through that metaphorical wall to the rest of treatment is widely seen as the primary utility medication provides. --- Whatever your situation is, it sounds like you managed fine without medication. Lucky you. For a lot of us, life just isn't that simple. When I try to eat my vegetables, I can put them on a plate, hype myself up for them, and then sit staring while my brain shuts down. I am God, and broccoli is damned. When I decide I want to exercise more, I can get dressed, go outside, even get inside a gym, and pace around the weights or the treadmills, or the swimming pools, and get lost deciding what to do, while my brain screams, "I know! leave." When I decide I want to get to sleep on time, I can lie in my bed, breathe deep, relax, start thinking about more things than I can count, while the amount of hours and minutes slide right off the ledger. Medication doesn't solve any of that, but it makes some of it possible.

solveit 4y ago

> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a decent state school) What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high schools? Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice?

bigbillheck 4y ago
I think I talked to guidance counselors twice during my entire high school career, and neither time came away satisfied, but had friends who were in and out of their offices on the regular without complaint beyond the usual ones you'd expect from teenage boys.
screye 4y ago
My cynical take is that someone who cannot figure out what career to be in themselves ends up a guidance counselor. The job isn't well paid. And anyone who can do large scale talent identification will likely be paid a lot more in the corporate world. So you end up with the least competent ones in public schools.
vlunkr 4y ago
Selection bias?
seeEllArr 4y ago
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xypage 4y ago
Because a guidance counselor doing a good job is really boring, they ask you where you want to go to school, get you links to those applications, and maybe walk you through the application/point you to a campus resource that'll proofread your essays before you submit them. None of these are particularly note worthy, no one's going to go home and write about that experience, so you don't hear about it. That's what my counselor did, they got me fee waivers too so I didn't have to pay a cent for any of my applications, it's just not something I raced to write about, like I would've if they told me I shouldn't go to college and then I did well or something.
- geoduck14 4y ago
  I agree. My guidance counselor had 2 3-ring binders FULL of schools that fit some criteria I had, but were also aligned to my disabilities. My mom and I spent ~2 hours with the counselor looking through the schools and applying. It was pretty boring. They also arranged for schools to come and talk to us about them. That was rad because we got to skip class
- clint 4y ago
  I'm often surprised that so many folks seemed to have "Guidance Counselors" at their schools. I went to a public science and technology magnet school in Kansas during the 90s and I don't think I ever saw a guidance counselor ever.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - astrange 4y ago
    I slept through most of high school because of the long commute, but vaguely remember a counselor coming around with a computerized career recommender at our magnet school, which told me to become a telecom linesmen because I liked computers.
- plorkyeran 4y ago
  Yep, my HS guidance counselor gave me some great advice. I went to a school she strongly recommended for me and it was a good fit for exactly the reasons she said it would be. This isn't a very interesting story so I think this is literally the first time I've ever mentioned it anywhere in the nearly 20 years since then.
mjhay 4y ago
They have a strong tendency to steer high-performing students from lower-income families away from prestigious schools, despite the fact that those are often cheaper with scholarships.
kcplate 4y ago
I am not sure it’s necessarily bad advice in this case—community college or trade school route—I would consider that pretty good general advice for an underperforming but intelligent teen. However, I do know firsthand from an experience involving my son’s guidance counselor providing remarkably bad advice that at times the guidance isn’t beneficial to the teen, but more to the school.
hd95489 4y ago
Yeah I mean the guidance counselor is at best a failed therapist so why would you expect good advice
Merad 4y ago
Why do you think this was stupid advice? More than a few "normal" kids go off to college and crash and burn or otherwise fail spectacularly because they aren't prepared to be on their own. It sounds totally reasonable to suggest that a kid struggling with issues like the GP might consider community college so they can stay around family support structures, continue seeing the same doctors or therapists, etc.
musicale 4y ago
> just a community college Community colleges are the best deal in higher education, and often have faculty who are interested in teaching rather than research.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Most of them are really bad at their jobs, but the pay kinda sucks, so that's not likely to improve. And with all the glamour of telling burn-outs that they're not getting into Harvard all day long, and the low pay, you also get to be point person when a kid offs themselves or dies in a car wreck. Fun! You get what you pay for, and the pay's low. Also, the job sucks. That's a recipe for terrible service. [EDIT] Incidentally, you want consistently-great counselors, as far as the college planning side goes? Elite prep schools. Half of what you're paying for is an expert with insider knowledge & contacts to ensure your kid gets into the best possible school they can. They treat the position—at least as far as that side of it goes—very seriously, when hiring.
giantg2 4y ago
"What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high schools? Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice?" Because most of them couldn't get a "real" job. If they could they'd be making more money somewhere else. (yes, there are some great people doing the job for ideological reasons too)
TylerE 4y ago
That is excellent advice in many states. For instance, here in NC you can do the first 2 years of almost any undergrad degree (all the basic non-subject matter stuff) for a fraction of the cost, and every single credit transfers. Also, much much smaller classes.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Also also: generally better teachers, becaus they are there because they actually want to teach - many are retired former professionals. Whereas many college professors want to do research and do the academia dance, often fobbing off much of the actual teaching to TAs and the like.
chasd00 4y ago
> Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice? most people with insight on good advice do not become high school guidance counselors. why would they?

phillipcarter 4y ago

> These large scale school systems treat students like cattle I think that's by design, though, as school primarily exists as extended daycare so that parents can work.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
I just think about how many people early in life are completely thrown off course because there isnt someone around to provide the basics. And it can happen in well off families.
- jxramos 4y ago
  I wonder how the experience would have went if we were in on the design of it all. We had our suspicions but I wonder if some folks would have been more compelled to take things into their own hands than passively take all the crazy environments dished out on us. Sort of in the space of informed consent, I can react to that which I'm explicitly aware of you know? Youth frequently pay the price is these sorts of information asymetries.

thinking4real 4y ago

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exfatloss 4y ago

To steelman those school administrators/policy makers, we barely know how the human body even works and how to maintain it. These mechanisms like diet and sleep have feedback cycles of months, year, or decades. Sometimes even lifetimes. We're extremely bad at learning from them and often fall into short-term traps that cause much bigger long-term harm. I.e. do we, as a society, know what "a healthy diet" is? Or what "healthy sleep habits" are? I would argue we don't. If you were to survey the median person, they'd probably be pretty outdated and wrong on both. Same for doctors, who typically have their knowledge from med school and haven't kept updated much ever since. In my experience, the typical doctor doesn't know much about chronotypes besides maybe that they exist, and will recite diet dogma from the 80s or whenever he/she graduated. So while I do agree that the impact is terrible, let's not forget that the median person simply has no idea what works, even the leading frontier of science and researchers is only slightly better off. It's like being mad at medieval peasants for not knowing about electrons or ramjets: it was very unlikely they could've known better at the time.

peoplearepeople 4y ago

> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college Reminder to self, tell my children to ignore anything a 'guidance councilor' says

krolden 4y ago
"What do you want to do with your life" Me: "I dunno" "Ok, back to class"
hgsgm 4y ago
Should they take education advice from someone who changes correctly spelled words to incorrectly spelled?
isk517 4y ago
There's the old joke that if the guidance councilor was good at their job they wouldn't be working as a guidance councilor.
Yoric 4y ago
I never quite understood what the role was. Does anyone listen to them?

steve_adams_86 4y ago

Weird. My guidance councillor did the same. Well, I wasn’t accepted to a school at the point in which they encouraged me to settle for less, but it was a very heartfelt “don’t even try”. I left the room very confused and upset. Went in with ambition and excitement about my future and left feeling like I must be a complete idiot. I remember her saying “Let’s focus on being realistic. You aren’t actually going to do this. You won’t accomplish any of this”. Like you I was diagnosed with ADD, though long after this. I was inattentive, but succeeding wildly in technology classes and even went to some programming and animation “competitions” which I managed to win. She still told me to set my sights low and aim for trades or something. For what it’s worth I managed to trick everyone else into letting me become a programmer and I did well despite the advice. It still haunts me to think that kids are getting slapped in the self esteem with advice from people like that; people who are supposed to give them objective, constructive, actionable advice in order to begin setting up their academic and professional futures. I’d add though that unlike you, my diet more or less went the opposite direction and I feel much better too. I went completely plant-based with an emphasis on whole foods and as far as I can tell my entire body works better. I’m not saying you’re wrong because I absolutely believe you and agree that we were probably just extremely unhealthy before. Maybe any healthier diet would have sufficed. But yeah, this thing seems extremely variable from person to person. Plant based with heaps of carbs might annihilate your brain, but a bowl of barley with steamed tofu, broccoli, carrots, and peanut sauce is like heavenly brain food for me. Exercise was the other missing link. The more I exercise the better I feel. I’m like a dog that needs to be taken or runs and swims. When my owner forgets I turn into a needy, whining, anxious, lethargic little beast of a human.

username3 4y ago
Reverse psychology works if they’re wrong and true if they’re right.
waynesonfire 4y ago
We're all winners! Here is your sticker. World is a savage place and everyone will try to keep you down. There are lucky few that are surrounded by a support group that cares and safety nets at every corner.

beebmam 4y ago

> As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables This is contradictory. Vegetables are high in carbohydrates as a percentage of their calories.

hgsgm 4y ago
Non-starch vegetable have almost no carbs and almost no calories.
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  But they have the fiber and other green goodness you need.
tenebrisalietum 4y ago
Betting here that "no carbs" = no bread or other grain products.
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Spivak 4y ago
We've ruined multiple generations by not explaining that our bodies don't care that much about what form our nutrients take. Getting the meat sweats from an Italian sub doesn't mean it was unhealthy, it's just your body's reaction to processing it which can be a desirable feeling (say on Thanksgiving) or not. People who switch to "healthy" and feel better pretty much fall into three categories. * Their new diet is less enjoyable and they simply eat less and burning fat feels good. * They accidentally switched to a FODMAP diet and associate the lack of "reaction" from food as a sign of health. * They have been criminally deprived of fiber and are now regular for the first time in recent memory.
navierstokess 4y ago
Low carb doesn't mean you can't eat food with carbs, it means most of your diet is protein and fat, and you restrict carbohydrate consumption. He can have a low carbohydrate diet while eating vegetables, as long as he eats less vegetables than meat.

the_third_wave 4y ago

> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a decent state school), or maybe go into the "trades". While I can only assume the people at that school to have been clueless as to your personal preferences and capabilities I do not see anything wrong with advising someone to skip college and learn a trade. College is not for everyone, college is not needed for many types of employment and college is all too often only used as a filtering device to reduce the number of interview candidates to manageable proportions. Add to that the fact that many colleges have ditched or are on the way to ditching objectivity and the scientific method to replace it with a post-modern portion of bullshit bingo in the name of D.I.E. and such and it suddenly becomes sage advice for many to skip this needless and needlessly expensive step. If you're aspiring to build bridges, heal the sick or raise the dead you'd better get yourself a degree, preferably one which actually means something. If you're planning to go into sales, start a small business or tend to a farm you don't need college.

alienalp 4y ago

This is the biggest issue with developing countries. Nobody really understand how important chronic diseases and a good diet is. In terms of this for majority of its population US is also just like an ordinary developing country. Very similar to Saudi Arabia. Majority of vegetables are also not very innocent. Maybe not comparable to processed junk food with tons of sugar but there is almost no developed country with high vegetable intake yet Vegetables are advertised as healthy and people in developing countries fall victim to it. Fortunately our body is very versatile but i don't think a sensitive organ like brain can keep its ideal condition over time.

_yb2s 4y ago

Modern psychiatry entirely ignores mechanism. All diagnoses are sets of symptoms, and treatments are drugs that reduce specific symptoms. It isn’t surprising that in many cases the causes would be obvious, but there isn’t any type of system for even trying to approach mental health that way. Another problem is the feedback loop of mental illness. A lot of people might feel better if they got exercise, ate healthy, got enough sleep, made some friends, took on some fun hobbies, etc. but most people aren’t willing or able to do any of that if they are stuck in a bad mental state.

ck425 4y ago
> Another problem is the feedback loop of mental illness. A lot of people might feel better if they got exercise, ate healthy, got enough sleep, made some friends, took on some fun hobbies, etc. but most people aren’t willing or able to do any of that if they are stuck in a bad mental state. I've found CBT super helpful for my ADHD because it focuses on the small steps to break that loop. I thoroughly recommend it for ADHD and mental illness, particularly for engineers as it's far more system based and obviously "logical" than any other form of therapy I've tried.

jermaustin1 4y ago

I was never diagnosed with ADD, but I had a long commute to school (2+ hours each way - I was closest to the bus barn, so first on in morning, last off at night). So I was on the bus at 5:15am, and not getting home until 5:45-6:30pm, just in time to eat dinner and go to bed so that I could wake up at 4:30am to get my shower, and walk a half mile to the bus stop. The fact that they would pull that shit on 13 year old kids, then tell them they are dumb and fail them is ridiculous. Thankfully I had a few teachers that would stand up for me, but most of them though I was a lazy burn-out and would never amount to anything, and almost no teacher had empathy for me. I should be doing my school work on the bumpy bus that spent more than half its time on rural dirt roads. When I got my first real job, I was glad to realize how wrong they all were. But it shattered my confidence.

rajin444 4y ago

I used to be really big on trust the experts, seek authorities for advice, etc etc. Especially for areas involving mental / general health. Specifics like fixing a broken arm I’m still on the experts side :) Decades later I’ve had many (eerily similar) experiences to what you detailed above. I’ve gotten the best results evaluating issues on my own / with the help of a few trusted sources. Expert advice is about as reliable as chatgpt (in the majority of cases). There’s too many devils in the details when it comes to complex issues like health. Find people who got results or find results yourself. I think the majority of modern healthcare exists to make a profit and curing patients isn’t really a good business model. Unfortunately they can use those profits to create an army of experts and studies.

Waterluvian 4y ago
I don’t distrust modern medical community, but I think it often suffers from overconfidence that leads me to more carefully scrutinize (but not outright reject) expert opinion. I’ve been listening to a podcast called Sawbones where they talk through the history of medicine. It’s basically a tour of all the ways we got things wrong. My conclusion has been: and why are we so confident that this time we’re right? Seems like every generation is confident that finally, they’ve got it right.
- waboremo 4y ago
  If we expect every day to be an improvement, the needle has been moved forward that much more, how else would history function except a retelling of mistakes, missteps, and wrongdoings?
- taberiand 4y ago
  I think modern medicine suffers heavily from generalising patients - so much advice attempts to be so one-size-fits-all that it fits almost nobody. Like story of the fighter cockpit that was designed to perfectly fit the average dimensions of all pilots and was uncomfortable for everyone - no person is average in all dimensions. On top of that is the absolutist advice - "never do X, always do Y" (particularly when the result of doing X is not shared - it could be a minor inconvenience, or a fatal error, they seem to be treated the same) rather than a nuanced process of tradeoffs and balancing outcomes.

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xupybd 4y ago

My high school math teacher told me I wouldn't make it to university. I ended up with a math heavy engineering degree. First class honours. I'm home schooling my kids . They will do better with their parents as teachers. My friends have done it and their kids were academically ready for university years before their peers.

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westurner 4y ago

/? ADHD and sleep; REM / non-REM: https://www.google.com/search?q=adhd+and+sleep https://www.google.com/search?q=adhd+and+sleep Sleep hygiene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_hygiene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_hygiene https://www.google.com/search?q=sleep+hygiene https://www.google.com/search?q=sleep+hygiene - Enough exercise and water - Otherwise, limit calories and/or protein in the preceding hours Sleep induction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_induction Pranayama; breathing yoga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama 4-7-8 breathing: https://www.google.com/search?q=4-7-8+breathing https://www.google.com/search?q=4-7-8+breathing Attributed both to Army and Navy: https://www.fastcompany.com/90253444/what-happened-when-i-tried-the-u-s-armys-tactic-to-fall-asleep-in-two-minutes https://www.fastcompany.com/90253444/what-happened-when-i-tr... : > The Independent says the technique was first described in a book from 1981 called "Relax and Win: Championship Performance" by Lloyd Bud Winter. /? "Relax and Win: Championship Performance" https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Relax+and+Win%3A+Championship+performance%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Relax+and+Win%3A+Champion... https://archive.org/details/Relax-and-Win_Championship-Performance-by-Lloyd-Bud-Winter https://archive.org/details/Relax-and-Win_Championship-Perfo...

fooker 4y ago

>As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. I need carbs to think. If I do not have rice for 3-4 days, I can not do research work. I can write code, or read papers, but new ideas or brainstorming others' ideas don't happen as naturally. Could be a genetic thing, I guess.

wyre 4y ago
Maybe they mean no starch because vegetables certainly have carbs. For example, a cup of broccoli has 6g of carbs, a cup of kale has 1g, and about 5g in a tomato. Certainly a low-carb diet, but not no carbs.
- thiht 4y ago
  Why the hell would you measure broccoli or kale in cups?

thomastjeffery 4y ago

The most effective methods of treatment for ADHD: * Medication * Exercise * Healthy diet * Healthy consistent sleep Is it possible that you weren't just unhealthy? Is it possible that diet, exercise, and sleep had exactly the positive effect that they are generally expected to have? I say this not to reinforce the "maybe" of your own personal ADD/ADHD diagnosis, but to open the door for empathy. You may indeed have been misdiagnosed. You may have a more mild case of ADHD than the mean/average case. You may have a relatively severe case, but experience significant enough relief from your current diet, exercise, and sleep to adequately manage it. Whatever the case may be, I want everyone here to know that it just isn't enough to say, "Just be more healthy." Life is more diverse and complex than that. The primary effect of ADHD is "executive dysfunction". If the best treatment for ADHD is to eat healthy, exercise more, and get consistent sleep, we must still recognize that that very treatment itself exists behind a wall of executive dysfunction. Even if "healthy lifestyle" is enough, we still need a way to bootstrap it. It's incredibly normal for anyone with an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, or lack of sleep to struggle changing any of those things. Someone with ADHD literally has a disorder that makes it incredibly difficult to even get started. While medication has an immediate and direct benefit, getting through that metaphorical wall to the rest of treatment is widely seen as the primary utility medication provides. --- Whatever your situation is, it sounds like you managed fine without medication. Lucky you. For a lot of us, life just isn't that simple. When I try to eat my vegetables, I can put them on a plate, hype myself up for them, and then sit staring while my brain shuts down. I am God, and broccoli is damned. When I decide I want to exercise more, I can get dressed, go outside, even get inside a gym, and pace around the weights or the treadmills, or the swimming pools, and get lost deciding what to do, while my brain screams, "I know! leave." When I decide I want to get to sleep on time, I can lie in my bed, breathe deep, relax, start thinking about more things than I can count, while the amount of hours and minutes slide right off the ledger. Medication doesn't solve any of that, but it makes some of it possible.