Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?

Although I think there's a lot wrong with the education system, and though I am glad that I didn't graduate with a boatload of debt like my peers, I look back and regret not taking my education more seriously and working on ways to maintain focus. This is of course a function of getting older. When I was young, the prospect of finishing college and getting a career was overwhelming, often to the point where I couldn't handle it. Stress can be good, but for me it would hit a threshold where I just rationalized away my poor results by telling myself "I'm just not that good but I've got to go through this anyway because the consequences from my parents will be worse than otherwise." Being young, it's really difficult to understand the scope of your future adult life and to value the time you have during your youth to set all that up, especially when you have the impulse and focus disregulation of ADHD.

Ultimately, I became a programmer without receiving a CS degree. I'm torn as to whether I should have or not. My 30-something self wouldn't mind a CS degree, but good luck telling that to my 19 year old self.

> I'm a little sick of being told I am not good enough because I don't meet the metrics.

Welcome to the ADHD club. No doubt you've been also told that you're "careless" and all that. This says little about what you're capable of or how intelligent you are. Don't fall into the trap of feeling that you're broken. ADHD is a trait many people have, and I believe it's more of a disorder in modern society where individual roles have been largely homogenized into a few environments that don't suit everyone. Don't let the "you're not good enough" stuff to get to you. Most if not all people making you feel that way don't understand ADHD at all.

If you can, take as few classes at a time as you can get away with. When I was in college, I was encouraged to take at least 6 classes a semester so I wouldn't "fall behind" my peers. In retrospect, that was probably dumb. I'd have managed better grades if I could take 3 classes per semester instead and just spend a few more years in college.

Also, if you aren't on medication, I think you should consider it. I was prescribed methylphenidate way back in high school, but I stopped taking it because it made me feel lousy at first. Now that I take it as an adult, I truly regret not having just stuck with it when I was younger. You get over the negative effects but the benefits continue as long as you take the medication, even if you don't "feel it". It's not for everyone, but I went from not believing in it to believing in it. I think more people take Adderall and Vyvanse these days, but I have no experience being on them.

One thing that helps me in my career is going to bed early (around 9:30p), waking up early (5:30 or 6:00 am), jumping in the shower, and then starting work immediately. Nobody is around to distract me during those early hours, and I have a ridiculous amount of energy and focus-capacity, both of which diminish for me as the day goes on. By the time my team's standup happens, I've gotten enough done that the rest of my day can go much easier. Looking back, I wish this I would have taken my college classes as early in the day as possible. Taking 6+ classes a semester, sleeping in like so many young people, and cramming in my homework at night was very counterproductive.

Then I nearly failed out of engineering school (twice!) because all we did was tortuous math problems and we never designed or built anything, it was overwhelmingly disappointing. I came out of that program depressed and exhausted.

I graduated into a pretty terrible job market and managed to score a single offer for an entry-level engineering position. I finally had something real to do! I worked 60 hours a week teaching myself everything I had actually wanted to know, through a combination of digging up info on the internet and making a lot of rapid mistakes in classic "fail fast" fashion. And eventually I applied for a masters' degree program, which I did part-time (one class per semester) while working.

That was 20 years ago, these days I'm a "principal engineer" at a rapidly growing start-up. Still struggling with imposter syndrome from time to time.

It wasn't until I started a company with friends that my career took off, and now I'm semi-retired building a platform as a service for funzies.

Life is strange...

That's a feature. The fact that we expect kids to wake up at 7am, sit and pay attention in silence for hours is mindbogglingly absurd. For a decade after leaving school, I had residual semi-PTSD after getting home from work, with the feeling that I had to study or prepare homework for the next day. Our education system basically is long-term conditioning to create the perfect desk worker, the well-oiled cog for the Machine. I don't think I've spent more than 10 hours studying in my entire school career.

FWIW I got ADHD too. My crush once berated me by saying "you're so smart, why don't you put a little effort in your studies?" I dropped one year before graduation, so effectively I never finished high school and spent a sabbatical year smoking weed, chatting on IRC and writing a hobby OS. Good times.

https://github.com/1player/klesh

Fuck schools. Maths was alright, but the only class I truly loved was philosophy.