Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit, thus the advice that comes from colleagues along the lines of "don't do the homework, it's really a waste of time" when everybody is actually doing it, could screw you over. It didn't mess up my life per se, but definitely had an impact on my grades when I was a naive freshman.

In the early 80's at Rice University my academic advisor steered me from computer science which I enjoyed (APL rocked!) to chemical engineering because "computers will be programming themselves in 20 years and comp sci isn't real engineering anyways". I hated chem eng but after a decade of detours final came back to coding. I didn't mind the detours but it was spectacularly bad advice and I was dumb enough to take it.

"It'll just happen when you least expect it."

It's just something people say to console, not actually anything that's remotely useful or true. Magic never happens on its own. You have to go out there and make it happen.

"You're smart." It took me five years of coasting on that presumption before I realized that being "smart" isn't nearly enough. I'm still working (after a few more years) to develop the habits that would have come from hearing "you're a hard worker."