7 ms·

I remember high school. During class I hid whatever book I actually wanted to read at the time inside the class book and drowned out the teacher. If homework

• zrail 12y ago
  I've experienced similar, to a lesser extent (I never cheated, I just didn't do the homework). I also recently struck out on my own and so far I've been successful. In your case, you may want to just farm out all of the non-passion-inducing work. Accountants, book keepers, virtual assistance, all of these are there to help you succeed.
  • Sambdala 12y ago
    I'm hiring a CSP to handle all the paperwork/taxes/etc and an assistant to handle organizing my appointments/schedule. I'm hoping that will be sufficient for at least the first six months or so.
    • bytecoin 12y ago
      What is a csp?
      • hnriot 12y ago
        I think, although cannot speak for the person, they really meant CPA, they mention taxes and only a CPA would be legally able to do that.
        • chipsa 12y ago
          I think the "Corporate Services Provider" is a better fit. They would have a CPA on staff to sign off on the taxes.
      • Sambdala 12y ago
        Corporate services provider.
• pm 12y ago
  I had this problem at high school, and it's taken me years to undo the expectation that everything should be easy. It happened to my brother too, except if something's too challenging for him, he just quits. If you're gung-ho enough, expose yourself to the fire so you build up resistance. It's going to be rough once you start hitting walls.
  • skunkworks 12y ago
    Grit and determination is important for long-term success when your brilliance and creativity is less than world-class, and it requires honing and practice to build. Skating through school and gaming the system ends up short-circuiting that process. Hence, lazy smart guys.
• undata 12y ago
  Entrepreneurship will be a fantastic experience for you, succeed or fail. It's exactly what you need.
• totalrobe 12y ago
  What type of corporate jobs have you had? My experience has been quite the opposite...there is a ton of research, knowledge transfer, fire fighting, teamwork, meetings, writing, thinking, etc. I am definitely not able to coast...although I'm a product manager, basically involved in everything across the company.
• robbyking 12y ago
  I very clearly remember when I realized getting good grades was easy, but learning and getting good grades was tough.
• damon_c 12y ago
  I had a very similar experience and I have found that being independent/freelance is the way to go because your actual performance and productivity actually matter for once. You can still get by and even be very successful without applying yourself but if you want to do that, you need to find work that allows for such. That is a skill in itself and may itself require actual effort.
• nilkn 12y ago
  I know tons of high school students who attempt the strategies you just described. The great majority of them barely scrape by with Bs and Cs and they do indeed crash and burn in college. You are not even remotely a representative case.
  • ploxiln 12y ago
    Yeah, but isn't it annoying being told you're the equivalent of a representative case? When you're not?
  • seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    It actually depends more on what the college is and what the classes. Is it a party school and are the courses in a soft major? Or is it a tier one research university and the courses are weed outs for engineering or medical school? I was one of those students in high school, and I could see it going either way (thankfully, I took the hard classes and got my act together).
  • wavegeek 12y ago
    Agree. The guy who cruised though high school and even the early years of college only to crash and burn later on is so common it is a cliche. This is part of the price we pay for not challenging our brightest students. With dumbed down courses these days it may be possible to get a degree without actually learning much. I know I have met a lot of people with IT degrees who could not program the foobar 'challenge' to save their lives.
• yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Standardized tests even more so. Without any actual learning from the class itself, you can generally come close to ace'ing most high school tests by being moderately intelligent. How do you do this? I mean if a test asks you to solve 3x^2+5+2x=7, how do you solve it without know the quadratic formula or some such? There is a difference between gaming a test (in the sense of not knowing the material, but still passing) and simply learning the material very rapidly. If you actually know how to do the former, I'd love to hear a concrete explanation of the mechanics of it.
  • bsilvereagle 12y ago
    > Standardized tests even more so Standardized tests are almost always multiple choice. So, given four (or five) possible answers for x, plug them all in and see which one equals 7. That's arguably faster than using the quadratic formula to solve the problem.
    • dunder 12y ago
      So in the US, math tests are multiple choice AND teachers don't even require the student to write down the process by which they've come to the conclusion? Both of those seem unusual to me and I don't see how that method could possibly be beneficial in assessing knowledge.
      • rayiner 12y ago
        I went to school in the US and never had a multiple choice math test that counted for a grade. We'd also almost always get no credit for failing to show our work on tests or homework.
      • JoshTheGeek 12y ago
        The Florida standardized math tests and the SAT have fill-in math questions as well as multiple choice. Teachers themselves can choose whether the students must show their work for their tests. In my experience, most only check the answer, but some do check the work.
      • 12y ago
• treehau5 12y ago
  I can relate to this so much it's not even funny. Don't let your fear of failure get in the way. I currently struggle with the same -- applying myself to a difficult task. Staying focused longer than 10 minutes at a time was difficult -- so difficult I was even suspicious I may of had adult ADHD. Turns out that I don't. What I have is the fear of failing and rejection. The fear of exposing my weaknesses to others, and my coping mechanism is procrastination. My procrastination shields me from the possibility of ever failing because, hey, I never gave it my best shot anyway, right? Hopefully this wasn't too off base, Just thought I'd share as well because I related to this so much. I wish you all the best!
  • visarga 12y ago
    > Staying focused longer than 10 minutes at a time was difficult I found an unexpected solution in working with someone else - that is - not working alone on the project. The more social interaction is involved, the less I am affected by procrastination. You have to make yourself visible and accountable to other people, to feel shame if you slack off, to feel energized when you make progress and then discuss it with them. In other words, you need to have a person witnessing you as you work. Think back - in school and while being employed you always had a teacher or boss to witness your work, you had colleagues, but when you are alone with a project, then all this social stabilizing effect is gone.
    • Evolved 12y ago
      I've found that this can be applied to exercise as well. Not necessarily hiring a personal trainer but having someone who counts on you to meet them to go on a jog or meet at the gym and not wanting to let them down helps keep you accountable.
    • PhasmaFelis 12y ago
      I have severe ADD, and this is very much true for me as well. I look for reasons to "cross-train" with coworkers, having them sit in and comment on whatever I'm working on, because just having someone looking over my shoulder makes it so much easier to resist distraction. I'm hoping to develop more formal pair-programming practices.
• orky56 12y ago
  Similar situation and ventured on my own. Crashed and burned since the incentives are very much different. Lots of other issues too but best of luck. It's a wakeup call for sure and completely for the best.
• wavegeek 12y ago
  I am sure you're aware of Paul Graham's essays but this one is very pertinent to your situation. http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html
• ska 12y ago
  One thing that's missing here is that college really is a "you get out what you get in" situation. As a prof, you see people like this all the time, and hopefully you take the time to try and engage them more, but at the end of the day it isn't your responsibility if they choose to waste the opportunity. The "challenge" in college isn't to make a 4.0 GPA, it's to push yourself to find your own boundaries. Many profs will bend over backwards to help a student who is doing this, and (unlike high school) you can scale up your program to meet and exceed any persons abilities. Sure, maybe you can skate by and manage a decent GPA, but you aren't doing yourself any favors, your basically telling us that you half assed four years of personal development, and you should know that it is probably obvious to those you've worked with and for. The corporate world has its share of people too, skating just like they were. Typically they are the ones not being considered for rapid advancement and grooming for bigger things. Of course, you may just be exceptional. And it's not like you can't recover from this with hard work. But consider this as you head out on your own: Sometimes you just get lucky, but it's more likely that you will succeed or fail now largely on the back of hard work (and here's the tricky part) applied to the right places. Consider an alternative universe "you" who grabbed hold of college with both hands and squeezed until it gave up as much useful stuff as it could.... That guy would be eating your lunch right now. Not because of the college, per se, but because of the attitude and experience.
  • Sambdala 12y ago
    Well, I think that theoretical guy would just be succeeding in a different industry than the one I happened to succeed in so far. It's not like I didn't apply myself to anything, just not to schoolwork; except when I found a class interesting. As it turns out, the things I did apply myself to became my career rather than what I had gone to school for. There's a large difference between "half assed four years of personal development" and simply concentrating more on things that are unrelated to your official studies. In fact, one of the big reasons I'm striking out on my own (well, as part of a team) now is that I realized my day job was no longer providing me with nearly as much opportunity for personal development as it had during the first few years I worked there. Edit: And the fact that it's entirely what you make of it isn't what's told to the 18 & 19 year olds heading off to college (at least not in the circle's I was in). What's told to kids is that it's the piece of paper that matters in today's society. Once you get it, you can do anything you want, but make sure you get that piece of paper or all opportunity will shut down for you forever and for always. What causes these situations is the combined narrative that the piece of paper is what matters alongside the fact that getting that piece of paper is a highly gameable activity.
• tim333 12y ago
  There may be similar ways to game thing as an entrepreneur. There seems to be a lot of activity out there reminiscent of copying the other kids homework.
• nine_k 12y ago
  As one of my colleagues once told to one of people like you, "I celebrate your existence because it guarantees my job security". Do yourself a favor and study what you're actually interested in, seriously. Avoid places where you have to or even can coast, because it wastes your time and gets you used to wrong things. Also, such positions are usually dead-ends career-wise. /* To tell the truth, I spent little time in university classes because they were too slow. I learned the same topics, and some more, myself, and worked a lot with professors on actual research. So I had pretty high [equivalent of] GPA and graduated well without much 'coasting'. */