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> The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems I

> The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems I literally did the opposite of this. I went so far as to make deals with my teachers that if I got an A on every test, I wouldn't have to do any work outside of class. Maybe I figured it to be a challenge, maybe I was plain lazy. Whatever it was, that didn't prepare me for college.

clairity 12y ago
i hear you, but clever deal anyways. my laziness in high school definitely didn't prepare me for college. my high school geometry teacher started grading our homework after she found out i wasn't doing it, even though i was acing the tests. i still didn't do the homework, banking on the idea i'd get an A anyway. she changed the grading to make homework worth just enough to give me an A-. =\ short term thinking...
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I owe my career to not doing math homeworks. School math wasn't something I cared about, but I wanted to make games so I learned programming instead of doing math problems. Ended up catching up with the math through gamedev anyway - it was very easy to learn once I cared about it. In the end I had mediocre math grades throughout school, but learned a ton of skills I now use to create stuff.
allendoerfer 12y ago
Thank you for letting me feel represented. For me it always was about getting how the system works not the actual lesson. From that angle it is hard to be bad at anything at high-school level. Either you got it how school works and were good or you did not and were bad. For me there was no in-between and all the "people have different talents"-stuff. For me it was about a combination of people skills, short-term memory and keen perception. I took it to the extreme though and optimized for the amount of free-time, which forced me to change schools. > Maybe I figured it to be a challenge, maybe I was plain lazy. Whatever it was, that didn't prepare me for college. Exactly this. I study CS, in the end I lack the discipline to force me to do stuff I am not interested in. Taking tests without visiting the classes and learning for 3 days does still work for smaller conceptual classes, for math or practical ones not so much. It is kind of childish, but I still need the "beating-the-system"-incentive to learn complex stuff. Math always sounds mildly interesting to me and I get the concepts quickly, but i lack the discipline to really internalize it for a few months, especially bottom-up. For me it is easier to come from the other side, for example digging through scikit-learn and learning the math after I already got the big picture.
- jnbiche 12y ago
  >Math always sounds mildly interesting to me and I get the concepts quickly, but i lack the discipline to really internalize it for a few months, especially bottom-up. For me it is easier to come from the other side, for example digging through scikit-learn and learning the math after I already got the big picture. You probably already know this, but that just means you're an inductive learner, not a deductive learner. I'm also an inductive learner, but unfortunately the majority of math instruction is based on deductive learning.
  - allendoerfer 12y ago
    Also the abstract concept of "being useful in the future" is not enough to motivate me. "Getting better at a concrete task" is.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > It is kind of childish, but I still need the "beating-the-system"-incentive to learn complex stuff. I can relate. I had a few experiences like that in college. I once got a bit depressed and skipped a lot of classes; when I finally dragged myself to a numerical methods class I was told that I might be unlikely to pass it at all given all my absence. For some reason this made me so interested in the topic itself that I spent ton of time learning and internalizing the concepts, aced all the assignments and in the end I put the PhD that taught our lab classes in a very awkward position - he wanted to give me the best possible mark but he couldn't given my initial absence and the established rules (he actually did stick to the rules he set and gave me a reduced grade, for which I highly respected him and later choose him as my BSc advisor). Funnily, the momentum I gained actually transferred to other classes so I pretty much aced everything that year. I had a lot of other situations of the kind of "what do you mean this language doesn't even have functions? I'll hack it until it gains them." leading to the most crazy final project submitted; or "what do you mean I can't ace this class? I still have 24 hours left to do a project!". As long as I was feeling that I'm beating the system in a most overkill way possible, taking the doomsday scenario and sticking it back to the faces of naysayers, no task seemed like a chore. I was in perfect state of flow. Sadly nowdays it's very rare that I find myself in such scenarios. But when I do, I literally don't need to sleep at night.

clairity 12y ago

i hear you, but clever deal anyways. my laziness in high school definitely didn't prepare me for college. my high school geometry teacher started grading our homework after she found out i wasn't doing it, even though i was acing the tests. i still didn't do the homework, banking on the idea i'd get an A anyway. she changed the grading to make homework worth just enough to give me an A-. =\ short term thinking...

TeMPOraL 12y ago
I owe my career to not doing math homeworks. School math wasn't something I cared about, but I wanted to make games so I learned programming instead of doing math problems. Ended up catching up with the math through gamedev anyway - it was very easy to learn once I cared about it. In the end I had mediocre math grades throughout school, but learned a ton of skills I now use to create stuff.

allendoerfer 12y ago

Thank you for letting me feel represented. For me it always was about getting how the system works not the actual lesson. From that angle it is hard to be bad at anything at high-school level. Either you got it how school works and were good or you did not and were bad. For me there was no in-between and all the "people have different talents"-stuff. For me it was about a combination of people skills, short-term memory and keen perception. I took it to the extreme though and optimized for the amount of free-time, which forced me to change schools. > Maybe I figured it to be a challenge, maybe I was plain lazy. Whatever it was, that didn't prepare me for college. Exactly this. I study CS, in the end I lack the discipline to force me to do stuff I am not interested in. Taking tests without visiting the classes and learning for 3 days does still work for smaller conceptual classes, for math or practical ones not so much. It is kind of childish, but I still need the "beating-the-system"-incentive to learn complex stuff. Math always sounds mildly interesting to me and I get the concepts quickly, but i lack the discipline to really internalize it for a few months, especially bottom-up. For me it is easier to come from the other side, for example digging through scikit-learn and learning the math after I already got the big picture.

jnbiche 12y ago
>Math always sounds mildly interesting to me and I get the concepts quickly, but i lack the discipline to really internalize it for a few months, especially bottom-up. For me it is easier to come from the other side, for example digging through scikit-learn and learning the math after I already got the big picture. You probably already know this, but that just means you're an inductive learner, not a deductive learner. I'm also an inductive learner, but unfortunately the majority of math instruction is based on deductive learning.
- allendoerfer 12y ago
  Also the abstract concept of "being useful in the future" is not enough to motivate me. "Getting better at a concrete task" is.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
> It is kind of childish, but I still need the "beating-the-system"-incentive to learn complex stuff. I can relate. I had a few experiences like that in college. I once got a bit depressed and skipped a lot of classes; when I finally dragged myself to a numerical methods class I was told that I might be unlikely to pass it at all given all my absence. For some reason this made me so interested in the topic itself that I spent ton of time learning and internalizing the concepts, aced all the assignments and in the end I put the PhD that taught our lab classes in a very awkward position - he wanted to give me the best possible mark but he couldn't given my initial absence and the established rules (he actually did stick to the rules he set and gave me a reduced grade, for which I highly respected him and later choose him as my BSc advisor). Funnily, the momentum I gained actually transferred to other classes so I pretty much aced everything that year. I had a lot of other situations of the kind of "what do you mean this language doesn't even have functions? I'll hack it until it gains them." leading to the most crazy final project submitted; or "what do you mean I can't ace this class? I still have 24 hours left to do a project!". As long as I was feeling that I'm beating the system in a most overkill way possible, taking the doomsday scenario and sticking it back to the faces of naysayers, no task seemed like a chore. I was in perfect state of flow. Sadly nowdays it's very rare that I find myself in such scenarios. But when I do, I literally don't need to sleep at night.