Ask HN: What to avoid in life?

Learning acceptance is the same as avoiding your, to this point, natural response :)

Some spiritual texts (stoic philosophy) place an emphasis on guarding your impressions to external events (e.g., deciding I have a flat tire, this is bad, my day is ruined) because if you solely restrict your judgement of good/bad to things in your control then you'll never fail to avoid what you want to avoid.

Personally, I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle: in general you should seek to embody Marcus Aurelius' "This doesn't _have_ to affect you" quote but there are also times where being affected by things is a natural and healthy human emotion and at those times you should not avoid feeling them and instead practice sitting with them, understanding them, and learning from them.

It's quite difficult to function avoiding all social media, people communicate via Facebook, developers talk on Twitter, it's just important to be in the space.

But it sure can take over. I've been blocking it at the router level at certain times of the day. Seems like an ok compromise for now.

>I know that university is largely to force people who don’t have enough discipline to self teach AND make social connections

To be fair, going to school was a lot more than that, at least for me. I know my schooling wasn't exactly typical, but I learned a ridiculous amount in a short time, many topics were things I didn't know existed before I went to school, or things I wouldn't even know where to or would be unable to begin alone.

Our teachers were professional biologists and ecologists with years and years worth experience and knowledge, my math teacher was a literal rocket scientist. I got to travel around my province and even down to Yellowstone. We worked on local, provincial an federal projects, worked with actual field biologists, trapping and tagging. We were in the field regularly.

We learned how to communicate and work with government and private organizations and manage large projects with multiple stakesholders. We learned how to play the 'get grant money' and 'get published' games.

Just the sheer amount of things I did and the people, equipment and honestly the school's vast amount of connections to a huge number of organizations are things I couldn't have done myself.

Through work we did in school, a class mate and I were even able to get grant money to start up a non-profit conservation/research project, that as far as I know, is still somewhat active, though both of us left years ago.

But, to finally get to the point, despite all of this...

>is that worth hundreds of thousands in debt?

To echo you..

>No.

Not even the tens of thousands I ended up with. School's not worth it unless you have the money.

OK, don't take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt. Very few people will ever be forced to consider doing that because 1) they can choose to go to a cheaper school or 2) even very "expensive" private schools offer generous financial aid packages that should make debt manageable.

If you choices are 1) take $30K in student loans to pursue a career you're interested in/go to a school that will set you up for a promising future, or 2) teach yourself how to become a software engineer even if you're not interested in it or well suited for it, then I'd advise people to go for #1 every time.

Things. Stuff. Collections of ... whatever, really. Don't get too attached to things and widgets and thingamabobs and artefacts and all the other man-made objects which supposedly are there to serve you but which end up needing service in some way or another, from simple storage service - where are you going to put it all - to actual upkeep. Just keep the minimal required to live your life in a way you find worthwhile and decide that anything more is optional. That doesn't mean you need to go out and actively get rid of stuff to lead some ascetic life of frugality, it just means you might want to dump it the next time you move without bothering to bring or replace it. Make sure whatever you have and keep around you is there to serve you and don't fall for all those gadgets which are being pushed upon you.