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Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#121

Post by duskwuff »

kbhangui wrote: post #114
SapphireSun wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking a lot about this as around senior year of collage, I have felt that I've been wasting my time with every moment spent in class. What I don't understand is why people feel it is acceptable to say "If you don't finish X task, then you are not as good." The trick was that when I started working in a lab or on startup ideas, I get the same dopamine rush that was spoken of in a previous. Working on clas…

Can you remove the tag on your post, it's breaking the entire page.

Add this to your userContent.css (or equivalent):

  pre { white-space: pre-wrap; }
Works wonders. :)

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#122

Post by req2 »

Find something inconspicuous to work on during your classes. For me, this was usually math teasers of the sort you might find at a math competition. Copy some down, work on what you can. There are a lot of forums online that provide questions of all different levels of difficulty and all levels of accessibility. (I have unfortunately lost the link, but there is a particularly good site that tends toward puzzles that require little more than simple probability and logic.)

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#124

Post by pgebhard »

edw519 wrote: post #87
tracy wrote: post #56

My comment will get lost in the noise, but I'll give you an insight here that you will likely hardly hear again: You want a thrill of success. At the age you are in, your brain is hardwired to search for success. Programming gives you success, because when a piece of code compiles, you get that feeling of success. School is not doing so. So you will compulsively chase programming, trying to get your success fix. Turn…

Great advice. You don't realize it, but you have opportunities being handed to you now that won't come so easily later. I miss school (high school & college) for so many reasons. Having lots of peers right there to talk to. So many activites. A library full of books. Sports and clubs. A wide variety of subjects. A mentor once told me to take advantage of everything available to you on your "school buffet". That's wha…

In large cities, you're still surrounded by many peers. While they may be harder to interact with due to distances, you'll likely also have the means to reach them relatively easily (car, public transportation). Tech meetups are really easy to find in nearly all large cities.

Of course, there are more responsibilities (the changing diapers at night part) when you're older, but more freedom (no parents that are cramping your style). I say these things with my own time struggle as I try overcome the cubicle by day and masters degree classwork by night. I really do miss the college student schedule with relatively low amount of time in class and a lot of freedom and flexibility in setting my day-to-day schedule.

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#125

Post by pgebhard »

edw519 wrote: post #87
tracy wrote: post #56

My comment will get lost in the noise, but I'll give you an insight here that you will likely hardly hear again: You want a thrill of success. At the age you are in, your brain is hardwired to search for success. Programming gives you success, because when a piece of code compiles, you get that feeling of success. School is not doing so. So you will compulsively chase programming, trying to get your success fix. Turn…

Great advice. You don't realize it, but you have opportunities being handed to you now that won't come so easily later. I miss school (high school & college) for so many reasons. Having lots of peers right there to talk to. So many activites. A library full of books. Sports and clubs. A wide variety of subjects. A mentor once told me to take advantage of everything available to you on your "school buffet". That's wha…

In large cities, you're still surrounded by many peers. While they may be harder to interact with due to distances, you'll likely also have the means to reach them relatively easily (car, public transportation). Tech meetups are really easy to find in nearly all large cities.

Of course, there are more responsibilities (the changing diapers at night part) when you're older, but more freedom (no parents that are cramping your style). I say these things with my own time struggle as I try overcome the cubicle by day and masters degree classwork by night. I really do miss the college student schedule with relatively low amount of time in class and a lot of freedom and flexibility in setting my day-to-day schedule.

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#126

Post by pfisch »

You're basically suggesting that high school is to easy. I felt like hs was to easy too at the time. looking back I could've taken more AP's, but honestly, why would I have spent more time learning about things less useful to me when I had the option of learning about more useful things.

What I did was I just started bringing textbooks from any subject I was interested to all my classes and read them. If you are getting good grades no one will care. But really, unless your teacher is really awful they won't care anyway, because there are so many kids who do need help that they should be focusing on. Who gives a shit about the kid who probably could've passed the exam without taking the class when so many kids don't understand basic algebra, especially with no child left behind.

hs sucks, try to learn social skills by observing others and practice thinking about being in other peoples shoes to learn better empathy. Try to learn useful things like econ 101, programming, business stuff, math, etc.

Adolescence really just eats balls and there isn't much you can do about it.

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#127

Post by mechanical_fish »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #72
lpgauth wrote: post #16

Let's face it, the academic part of high school is not challenging enough for you, but what about the other parts? Are you on one of your school's sport team? Are you part of any clubs? Did you try to take on some kind of leadership position at your school? How big is your friend circle?

I recommend this highly. I felt more or less as you (the original submitter) do until the math club found me [1] at the end of freshman year. My freshman year is like a giant beige blur in my memory. It's like I was in a vaguely depressed stasis the whole time. But then it was math, trivia, and Drama Club stage crew for the rest of my high school career. Suddenly high school felt great. There's nothing wrong with bei…

P.S. -- my god:

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/index.php

Math club heaven. If only the Web had existed when I was a teenager.

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#129

Post by mkyc »

duskwuff wrote: post #121
kbhangui wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you remove the tag on your post, it's breaking the entire page.

Add this to your userContent.css (or equivalent): pre { white-space: pre-wrap; } Works wonders. :)

if this page is still broken, paste this into the url bar:

javascript: document.body.innerHTML=document.body.innerHTML+"pre { white-space: pre-wrap; }";

(Sorry, double comment, I think I messed something up while messing with this. Also, it kills most of the current style. Anyone have a better variant? Might be good to have as a bookmarklet.)

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#130

Post by Pipedreamergrey »

You may want to look into whether your state has a Dual Enrollment program. Many states, such as Michigan, allow students to complete their coursework at a University or community college of their choice while enrolled in a high school so long as the curriculum meets certain guidelines.

I got bored of high school my Junior year, and I spent my senior year at a community college. It wasn't that I disliked high school, I just sick of putting up with the other kids.

The upside of dual enrollment is that the state pays for the credits, which ends up drastically reducing the cost of your college degree.

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