8 ms·

Hard-Core Career Advice For A 13-Year-Old

84 points by h43k3r 11y ago

tfigueroa 11y ago
That idea has only ever been true during brief, unusually stable times.
vmarsy 11y ago
The current title is wrong (The idea that “Education leads to job” is not true anymore). The real one on the page is : Hard-Core Career Advice For A 13-Year-Old EDIT: ^ The title was updated The author says: And remember, there are zero formal education requirements for what I do. While this is true for the author, it is obviously wrong for any job in Engineering, Finance, Medical, Lawyer, ... So the idea that "Education leads to a job" is and will always remain true for these sort of jobs. What can change is How to obtain that education: Through the traditional college system or a different one.
- watershawl 11y ago
  Right, James Altucher, in his other writings on the subject, he specifically mentions those careers as the only reason to go to college.
k__ 11y ago
OT: Somehow this "tell the school what your parents doing" reminds me of a professor. He told me, when he was young, he worked as a developer at Siemens and could come to work late. So he always brought his daughter to school. Soon there was much buzz in the neighborhood about him being an unemployed deadbeat.
tw04 11y ago
Part of education leading to a job requires you to actively seek education in a field that's hiring. The amount of young people I hear proclaiming how screwed they got by the system because they went to college and couldn't find a job (then you find out their major was art history) makes my head spin. If you're going to school and majoring in something without a career path, don't whine there aren't businesses lining up at your door with 6-figure salaries just dying to hire you.
- samsolomon 11y ago
  I think the issue is that's just the accepted path. Get good grades in high school, so you can get into a good college. Get good grades in college to get a good job. At 18 most people don't have a clue what they are supposed to be doing. College is an easy choice—especially the stigma around those that don't go to college. There's also that ridiculous fact about how much college-educated people earn over their lifetime. What that doesn't take into account is the entire world changed after 2007. EDIT: Wrote a bit more about why people think they need to go to college a couple years ago. http://solomon.io/experience-deficiency/ http://solomon.io/experience-deficiency/
  - kenjackson 11y ago
    What happened in 2007? The iPhone?
    - Matachines 11y ago
      I think he means the recession (?)
      - pyre 11y ago
        While "after 2007" might be technically correct, most people associated the recession with 2008.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - ethanbond 11y ago
    It's not just that there's a stigma surrounding not going to college (which I think is exaggerated). It's that college, despite all of these problems and the obviously large amount of people getting screwed, is still the most sound investment a person can make in themselves. People have always, and will always, complain about terrible jobs. That doesn't mean they made a stupid mistake which had an obviously better path. It just means they have a bad job.
OhHeyItsE 11y ago
Altucher, eh? Out-of-character for the pretentious HN crowd.
Jun8 11y ago
This good article should be paired with pg's great essay http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html that has similar ideas. "One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can flog yourself through them. So I was surprised when, early in college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had no self-discipline and had never been able to deny himself anything, not even a cup of coffee."
- jotm 11y ago
  I think you could've chosen a better example. Wittgenstein was smart, but he never did anything focused precisely because of his lack of discipline. He just poured all his thoughts on paper for others to figure out. Every book on and by famous/rich/successful people I've ever read touches on the subject on discipline and it can all be summed up with this: motivation, curiosity and drive fade away - in the end, only discipline is left to get you through the hardest mile.
  - gooseus 11y ago
    I second this... if there is anything I regret in life it is my contemptuous attitude toward discipline through my younger years, which has lead to lots of bad habits in adult years. I'd be willing to bet that when all those failed startup people spend a good 5-10 years thinking some more about their failures, the number 1 reason won't be "product-market fit", it'll be a lack of discipline in one or more areas (development, spending, sales).
    - noobie 11y ago
      What exactly do you guys mean by discipline? Like, sticking to a studying schedule even though the process is repetitive and such?
      - gooseus 11y ago
        Discipline is the muscle that needs to be worked so that when shit gets heavy, you don't just drop it. Really it's about developing the behavioral pathways in your brain, your second nature if you will. For me, when something hard comes up, I automatically try to find a way around it or some way to accomplish the goal without dealing with the hard thing. This is great for my creative problem solving skills since I'm able to automatically think outside the box and find workarounds to hard problems that can't feasibly be worked through. However, when there is no workaround, actually convincing myself to do the hard work is extremely tough... my brain keeps automatically pausing and trying to find an easier way around and in those pauses I find it very easy to be distracted and a reason to put off the hard work just a little longer. So yeah, sticking to a studying schedule would be a good way to exercise that discipline.
normloman 11y ago
This is terrible advice. Self education, entrepreneurship, etc, does not come easily to everyone. For most people, getting an education and starting a career is a safe, stable path.
tmuir 11y ago
So, drop out of school, become an author, podcaster, and an accredited investor. Nothing inherently wrong with any of those professions, except very few people are successful at them. Not to mention the prerequisite of a high net worth to become an accredited investor. But maybe this is actually advice for a single 13 year old with a sizeable security net.
- webwanderings 11y ago
  Was about to say something similar. I think this is a terrible article mixed with some modern day and applicable wisdom. But given that it is on Techcrunch....oh well.
- a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
  I think this guy got a payday by working on a fund with Jim Cramer, who probably made all the money by way of insider trading. The moral of the story is ride the right coattails, don't be afraid to do some sketchy shit, and then if you luck out and get some money, then spend a bunch of time giving fairly dumb advice that has nothing to with your own success.
ucaetano 11y ago
Career advice for a 13 yo? No wonder there's a teenager suicide epidemic in the Silicon Valley...
brm 11y ago
Here's my hard-core career advice for a 13 year old. Be a kid. Be curious. Have experiences. Worry about a career later. Much later.
- everyone 11y ago
  Hear Hear!
jambox888 11y ago
Don't we actually need doctors, lawyers, researchers, critics, engineers? I realise he wasn't saying that everyone should become an entrepreneur like he is, but it's worth saying that grades are important. Won't bother sending this to my 15yo nephew.
- fuzzywalrus 11y ago
  Agreed, this is advice that's steeped in Silicon Valley culture. Not everyone has the same resources, nor does everyone need to be some sort of entrepreneur. Rather than add to the noise by podcasting/blogging, better advice would be to connect with most talented people who do what you do and learn from them. If you find that you have a platform and something to say, then do so.
angersock 11y ago
I couldn't help but think of Mel Brooks' History of the World, pt.1 when reading the initial answer to "What do you do?". Could've been summed up as: "What is the name of your occupation? What are the educational requirements to work in your career?" "So I am a writer (I write books and articles). I’m a podcaster (I’ve had 10 million downloads of my podcast). I speak occasionally. And I advise or invest in over 30 different companies." "Oh, so you're a bullshit artist."
learnstats2 11y ago
> What is the name of your occupation? What are the educational requirements to work in your career? Being filthy rich; none. -- Dr James Altucher, PhD.
everyone 11y ago
Writer comes off as a bit smug.. Also what domain do they work in? I'm guessing they already had family, other contacts, or just the social status that allowed them to attain this arrangement. Its hard to imagine a poverty stricken inner-city youth doing the same.
- dpritchett 11y ago
  I did some brief research and I'd call it a mixed bag. Looks like he definitely had a high-tech upbringing, but not necessarily a silver spoon. Wikipedia mentions he attended Cornell and CMU (PhD). Freakonomics blog says "He grew up in a middle-class family that lived beyond its means, in large part because his dad was about to hit it big with a computer business and the family was banking on that success. Then the success happened, and the family lived even larger — until the business suddenly fell apart, leaving everyone devastated. Years later, James struck out on his own and he, too, struck it big." http://freakonomics.com/2007/05/03/james-altucher-strikes-again/ http://freakonomics.com/2007/05/03/james-altucher-strikes-ag...
peter303 11y ago
I think he being too flippant toward teenagers. Unless he is going to give his daughter a large trust fund allowance to live off of (which he sounds like he could afford), she'll need to focus on a careers path or two to make money and give life meaning. A career doesnt have to be a 9-5 job or solely to make money, as I think he is trying to say in his essay. And a person could change paths every few years as opportunity affords. Plus I know a number of generally older adults who dont really have careers or jobs anymore. They managed to squirrel away enough savings or an income stream. Some may have major hobbies or projects you could call a vocation. Some just drift along.
superuser2 11y ago
Can we please take a second to notice that, almost by the definition of capitalism, "become an investor" is not career advice remotely helpful to anyone but the most privileged?
dothething 11y ago
What a fancy world some people live in.
codingdave 11y ago
There is a lot of survivor bias here - many people who try to make their own business just plain fail. People who try to do so without already having had some work experience and savings built up often end up just scraping by at or below the poverty line, just trying to make ends meet. Encouraging a 20 year old who is well educated, just without that final degree to quit and start their own thing is far different than telling your 13 year old daughter to quit school. And saying that multi-millionaires have a diverse set of income streams does not mean that their first million did not come from a more focused effort in one specific area. I'm not arguing that higher education is for everyone - clearly, it is not. But saying that nobody even needs a high school level of education is not a claim I am going to support. My advice to a 13 year old is more along the lines of, keep learning, keep having fun, enjoy your teenage years, make teenage mistake while you still have the support structure of your parents (whether you like it or not), and just enjoying being young without too many responsibilities. There is no need to rush teenagers into adulthood.
- zanny 11y ago
  Single point of failure here, but... > keep learning, keep having fun, enjoy your teenage years Didn't learn squat from 5-10th grade. 11th and 12th I got into AP curriculum with fantastic teachers. I still talk to them. But you need fantastic instructors, the kind who would have been professors if they were not so selfless to work in public education, to make that happen. It won't happen for 99% of children. I got incredibly lucky my last two years. But the inbetween? The monotony of public educators with tenure, in the years between when I had learned the "basics" (arithmetic, reading, national and global history) <aside, I do need to mention that home ec and cooking were amazing classes to have in 6th grade, and were an exception to a multi-year rule> was a void. I spent my days playing Neverwinter Nights and learning NWScript (and thus basic C) to build campaigns for a multiplayer persistent world I was constantly on. This was in the years before World of Warcraft, which consumed the later years, and with those an education in Lua and engine hacking. It is always incredibly harmful to assume schooling == learning. Even the social aspect is wrong - its an artificial setting. Bullying only exists as a pandemic when you are forced by law to be next to your bullies eight hours a day. The rest of us have the freedom to leave those people behind. You acquire no real world social experience in public education, just look at how out of whack everyone is their freshmen year when suddenly you are interacting with people voluntarily and can pick and chose your associations for the first time in your life. It was not fun. It was not enjoyable. It was a purgatory. And I now have a 12 year old brother whom I can see the exact same thing happening to. And it will happen to millions of children every year until someone puts their foot down with the authority to do so and say this machine we grind the creative spark and imagination out of the younger generation in needs to stop, because I was lucky, and most are not.
manux 11y ago
I don't have enough karma (I guess?) to downvote this but if I could I would. This article is terrible advice as has been pointed out already by many people in this thread but I just wanted to add my two cents. "Academic education", up to undergraduates imo, is not so much about what you actually learn, but about the learning aptitudes and social aptitudes that the experience makes you develop. I think we can all relate. This person seems to make massive generalisations from his (rather lucky I'd imagine) personal experience.
logfromblammo 11y ago
My advice to 13-year olds: - Don't get (yourself|your girlfriend) pregnant. - Don't get addicted to any drugs. - Don't wreck my car after you turn 16. - Take as many AP-prep classes as you can. - Play in the band or orchestra. - Take Spanish as your foreign language. - Read books that are not required. - Learn basic electronics. - Take as many credit-equivalent tests (AP|IB|CLEP) as you can. - Apply for all the scholarships. Yes, *all*. - Avoid loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy. - When in doubt, choose the major that requires more math. - Girls, don't get married before 22. - Boys, don't get married, ever. '- (Yes, I know this is incompatible advice.) - Skip the reception; spend it on the honeymoon. I decline to give much career advice, because the best jobs in the future probably don't even exist now. But whatever X is, the X Engineer will be paid more than anyone else in the X field.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Or, if your first language is anything other than English, take English as your foreign language. If you want a second foreign language, consider Mandarin. "Skip the reception; spend it on the honeymoon" implies that the boys aren't going to listen to "Boys, don't get married, ever". But that second one is bad advice anyway - getting married was incredibly good for me. Instead, I'd say "Wait forever rather than marry the wrong person."
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    Of course they aren't going to listen to it. It's only there to stop them from getting married until they are mature enough to make serious life decisions without relying on advice from older people. The full, implied text would be, "Boys, don't get married, ever, [until you are mature enough to ignore this advice]." And as in my observation, girls mature emotionally on a much more reliable schedule than boys, my advice to them is mostly to ward off the disaster that comes from trying to re-forge a boyfriend into a husband when he is clearly not ready for that yet. When he finally is ready, now he may need to get divorced before getting married. The implied advice is thus "Girls, don't get married before 22 [because it is extremely unlikely that any of the eligible men you have ever met before that time would be ready for the responsibility]." It's very US-centric advice. And if your first language isn't English, you'll have a bit of difficulty following it anyway.

84 points by h43k3r 11y ago

That idea has only ever been true during brief, unusually stable times.

The current title is wrong (The idea that “Education leads to job” is not true anymore). The real one on the page is : Hard-Core Career Advice For A 13-Year-Old EDIT: ^ The title was updated The author says: And remember, there are zero formal education requirements for what I do. While this is true for the author, it is obviously wrong for any job in Engineering, Finance, Medical, Lawyer, ... So the idea that "Education leads to a job" is and will always remain true for these sort of jobs. What can change is How to obtain that education: Through the traditional college system or a different one.

watershawl 11y ago
Right, James Altucher, in his other writings on the subject, he specifically mentions those careers as the only reason to go to college.

k__ 11y ago

OT: Somehow this "tell the school what your parents doing" reminds me of a professor. He told me, when he was young, he worked as a developer at Siemens and could come to work late. So he always brought his daughter to school. Soon there was much buzz in the neighborhood about him being an unemployed deadbeat.

tw04 11y ago

Part of education leading to a job requires you to actively seek education in a field that's hiring. The amount of young people I hear proclaiming how screwed they got by the system because they went to college and couldn't find a job (then you find out their major was art history) makes my head spin. If you're going to school and majoring in something without a career path, don't whine there aren't businesses lining up at your door with 6-figure salaries just dying to hire you.

samsolomon 11y ago
I think the issue is that's just the accepted path. Get good grades in high school, so you can get into a good college. Get good grades in college to get a good job. At 18 most people don't have a clue what they are supposed to be doing. College is an easy choice—especially the stigma around those that don't go to college. There's also that ridiculous fact about how much college-educated people earn over their lifetime. What that doesn't take into account is the entire world changed after 2007. EDIT: Wrote a bit more about why people think they need to go to college a couple years ago. http://solomon.io/experience-deficiency/ http://solomon.io/experience-deficiency/
- kenjackson 11y ago
  What happened in 2007? The iPhone?
  - Matachines 11y ago
    I think he means the recession (?)
    - pyre 11y ago
      While "after 2007" might be technically correct, most people associated the recession with 2008.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- ethanbond 11y ago
  It's not just that there's a stigma surrounding not going to college (which I think is exaggerated). It's that college, despite all of these problems and the obviously large amount of people getting screwed, is still the most sound investment a person can make in themselves. People have always, and will always, complain about terrible jobs. That doesn't mean they made a stupid mistake which had an obviously better path. It just means they have a bad job.

OhHeyItsE 11y ago

Altucher, eh? Out-of-character for the pretentious HN crowd.

Jun8 11y ago

This good article should be paired with pg's great essay http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html that has similar ideas. "One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can flog yourself through them. So I was surprised when, early in college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had no self-discipline and had never been able to deny himself anything, not even a cup of coffee."

jotm 11y ago
I think you could've chosen a better example. Wittgenstein was smart, but he never did anything focused precisely because of his lack of discipline. He just poured all his thoughts on paper for others to figure out. Every book on and by famous/rich/successful people I've ever read touches on the subject on discipline and it can all be summed up with this: motivation, curiosity and drive fade away - in the end, only discipline is left to get you through the hardest mile.
- gooseus 11y ago
  I second this... if there is anything I regret in life it is my contemptuous attitude toward discipline through my younger years, which has lead to lots of bad habits in adult years. I'd be willing to bet that when all those failed startup people spend a good 5-10 years thinking some more about their failures, the number 1 reason won't be "product-market fit", it'll be a lack of discipline in one or more areas (development, spending, sales).
  - noobie 11y ago
    What exactly do you guys mean by discipline? Like, sticking to a studying schedule even though the process is repetitive and such?
    - gooseus 11y ago
      Discipline is the muscle that needs to be worked so that when shit gets heavy, you don't just drop it. Really it's about developing the behavioral pathways in your brain, your second nature if you will. For me, when something hard comes up, I automatically try to find a way around it or some way to accomplish the goal without dealing with the hard thing. This is great for my creative problem solving skills since I'm able to automatically think outside the box and find workarounds to hard problems that can't feasibly be worked through. However, when there is no workaround, actually convincing myself to do the hard work is extremely tough... my brain keeps automatically pausing and trying to find an easier way around and in those pauses I find it very easy to be distracted and a reason to put off the hard work just a little longer. So yeah, sticking to a studying schedule would be a good way to exercise that discipline.

normloman 11y ago

This is terrible advice. Self education, entrepreneurship, etc, does not come easily to everyone. For most people, getting an education and starting a career is a safe, stable path.

tmuir 11y ago

So, drop out of school, become an author, podcaster, and an accredited investor. Nothing inherently wrong with any of those professions, except very few people are successful at them. Not to mention the prerequisite of a high net worth to become an accredited investor. But maybe this is actually advice for a single 13 year old with a sizeable security net.

webwanderings 11y ago
Was about to say something similar. I think this is a terrible article mixed with some modern day and applicable wisdom. But given that it is on Techcrunch....oh well.
a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
I think this guy got a payday by working on a fund with Jim Cramer, who probably made all the money by way of insider trading. The moral of the story is ride the right coattails, don't be afraid to do some sketchy shit, and then if you luck out and get some money, then spend a bunch of time giving fairly dumb advice that has nothing to with your own success.

ucaetano 11y ago

Career advice for a 13 yo? No wonder there's a teenager suicide epidemic in the Silicon Valley...

brm 11y ago

Here's my hard-core career advice for a 13 year old. Be a kid. Be curious. Have experiences. Worry about a career later. Much later.

everyone 11y ago
Hear Hear!

jambox888 11y ago

Don't we actually need doctors, lawyers, researchers, critics, engineers? I realise he wasn't saying that everyone should become an entrepreneur like he is, but it's worth saying that grades are important. Won't bother sending this to my 15yo nephew.

fuzzywalrus 11y ago
Agreed, this is advice that's steeped in Silicon Valley culture. Not everyone has the same resources, nor does everyone need to be some sort of entrepreneur. Rather than add to the noise by podcasting/blogging, better advice would be to connect with most talented people who do what you do and learn from them. If you find that you have a platform and something to say, then do so.

angersock 11y ago

I couldn't help but think of Mel Brooks' History of the World, pt.1 when reading the initial answer to "What do you do?". Could've been summed up as: "What is the name of your occupation? What are the educational requirements to work in your career?" "So I am a writer (I write books and articles). I’m a podcaster (I’ve had 10 million downloads of my podcast). I speak occasionally. And I advise or invest in over 30 different companies." "Oh, so you're a bullshit artist."

learnstats2 11y ago

> What is the name of your occupation? What are the educational requirements to work in your career? Being filthy rich; none. -- Dr James Altucher, PhD.

everyone 11y ago

Writer comes off as a bit smug.. Also what domain do they work in? I'm guessing they already had family, other contacts, or just the social status that allowed them to attain this arrangement. Its hard to imagine a poverty stricken inner-city youth doing the same.

dpritchett 11y ago
I did some brief research and I'd call it a mixed bag. Looks like he definitely had a high-tech upbringing, but not necessarily a silver spoon. Wikipedia mentions he attended Cornell and CMU (PhD). Freakonomics blog says "He grew up in a middle-class family that lived beyond its means, in large part because his dad was about to hit it big with a computer business and the family was banking on that success. Then the success happened, and the family lived even larger — until the business suddenly fell apart, leaving everyone devastated. Years later, James struck out on his own and he, too, struck it big." http://freakonomics.com/2007/05/03/james-altucher-strikes-again/ http://freakonomics.com/2007/05/03/james-altucher-strikes-ag...

peter303 11y ago

I think he being too flippant toward teenagers. Unless he is going to give his daughter a large trust fund allowance to live off of (which he sounds like he could afford), she'll need to focus on a careers path or two to make money and give life meaning. A career doesnt have to be a 9-5 job or solely to make money, as I think he is trying to say in his essay. And a person could change paths every few years as opportunity affords. Plus I know a number of generally older adults who dont really have careers or jobs anymore. They managed to squirrel away enough savings or an income stream. Some may have major hobbies or projects you could call a vocation. Some just drift along.

superuser2 11y ago

Can we please take a second to notice that, almost by the definition of capitalism, "become an investor" is not career advice remotely helpful to anyone but the most privileged?

dothething 11y ago

What a fancy world some people live in.

codingdave 11y ago

There is a lot of survivor bias here - many people who try to make their own business just plain fail. People who try to do so without already having had some work experience and savings built up often end up just scraping by at or below the poverty line, just trying to make ends meet. Encouraging a 20 year old who is well educated, just without that final degree to quit and start their own thing is far different than telling your 13 year old daughter to quit school. And saying that multi-millionaires have a diverse set of income streams does not mean that their first million did not come from a more focused effort in one specific area. I'm not arguing that higher education is for everyone - clearly, it is not. But saying that nobody even needs a high school level of education is not a claim I am going to support. My advice to a 13 year old is more along the lines of, keep learning, keep having fun, enjoy your teenage years, make teenage mistake while you still have the support structure of your parents (whether you like it or not), and just enjoying being young without too many responsibilities. There is no need to rush teenagers into adulthood.

zanny 11y ago
Single point of failure here, but... > keep learning, keep having fun, enjoy your teenage years Didn't learn squat from 5-10th grade. 11th and 12th I got into AP curriculum with fantastic teachers. I still talk to them. But you need fantastic instructors, the kind who would have been professors if they were not so selfless to work in public education, to make that happen. It won't happen for 99% of children. I got incredibly lucky my last two years. But the inbetween? The monotony of public educators with tenure, in the years between when I had learned the "basics" (arithmetic, reading, national and global history) <aside, I do need to mention that home ec and cooking were amazing classes to have in 6th grade, and were an exception to a multi-year rule> was a void. I spent my days playing Neverwinter Nights and learning NWScript (and thus basic C) to build campaigns for a multiplayer persistent world I was constantly on. This was in the years before World of Warcraft, which consumed the later years, and with those an education in Lua and engine hacking. It is always incredibly harmful to assume schooling == learning. Even the social aspect is wrong - its an artificial setting. Bullying only exists as a pandemic when you are forced by law to be next to your bullies eight hours a day. The rest of us have the freedom to leave those people behind. You acquire no real world social experience in public education, just look at how out of whack everyone is their freshmen year when suddenly you are interacting with people voluntarily and can pick and chose your associations for the first time in your life. It was not fun. It was not enjoyable. It was a purgatory. And I now have a 12 year old brother whom I can see the exact same thing happening to. And it will happen to millions of children every year until someone puts their foot down with the authority to do so and say this machine we grind the creative spark and imagination out of the younger generation in needs to stop, because I was lucky, and most are not.

manux 11y ago

I don't have enough karma (I guess?) to downvote this but if I could I would. This article is terrible advice as has been pointed out already by many people in this thread but I just wanted to add my two cents. "Academic education", up to undergraduates imo, is not so much about what you actually learn, but about the learning aptitudes and social aptitudes that the experience makes you develop. I think we can all relate. This person seems to make massive generalisations from his (rather lucky I'd imagine) personal experience.

logfromblammo 11y ago

My advice to 13-year olds: - Don't get (yourself|your girlfriend) pregnant. - Don't get addicted to any drugs. - Don't wreck my car after you turn 16. - Take as many AP-prep classes as you can. - Play in the band or orchestra. - Take Spanish as your foreign language. - Read books that are not required. - Learn basic electronics. - Take as many credit-equivalent tests (AP|IB|CLEP) as you can. - Apply for all the scholarships. Yes, *all*. - Avoid loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy. - When in doubt, choose the major that requires more math. - Girls, don't get married before 22. - Boys, don't get married, ever. '- (Yes, I know this is incompatible advice.) - Skip the reception; spend it on the honeymoon. I decline to give much career advice, because the best jobs in the future probably don't even exist now. But whatever X is, the X Engineer will be paid more than anyone else in the X field.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Or, if your first language is anything other than English, take English as your foreign language. If you want a second foreign language, consider Mandarin. "Skip the reception; spend it on the honeymoon" implies that the boys aren't going to listen to "Boys, don't get married, ever". But that second one is bad advice anyway - getting married was incredibly good for me. Instead, I'd say "Wait forever rather than marry the wrong person."
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Of course they aren't going to listen to it. It's only there to stop them from getting married until they are mature enough to make serious life decisions without relying on advice from older people. The full, implied text would be, "Boys, don't get married, ever, [until you are mature enough to ignore this advice]." And as in my observation, girls mature emotionally on a much more reliable schedule than boys, my advice to them is mostly to ward off the disaster that comes from trying to re-forge a boyfriend into a husband when he is clearly not ready for that yet. When he finally is ready, now he may need to get divorced before getting married. The implied advice is thus "Girls, don't get married before 22 [because it is extremely unlikely that any of the eligible men you have ever met before that time would be ready for the responsibility]." It's very US-centric advice. And if your first language isn't English, you'll have a bit of difficulty following it anyway.