I can't believe that five hours after this interesting essay was posted, none of the comments have yet mentioned Paul Graham's essay (also a commencement speech

I can't believe that five hours after this interesting essay was posted, none of the comments have yet mentioned Paul Graham's essay (also a commencement speech never heard at an actual graduation) "What You'll Wish You'd Known" (January 2005). http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html I like much of the advice of that essay, which is the second Paul Graham essay local friends recommended that I read. I have all my children read Paul's essay, as we are a homeschooling family precisely to get out of the rut of the usual school pattern of learning. ". . . . In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends. "Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good. "I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right." Great stuff, still good advice for young people almost a decade after it was first composed.