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Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

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Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#171

Post by eanzenberg »

rtl49 wrote: post #22

“I will never forget the feeling of walking into the lobby of Building 7, looking up, and then touching the pillars to see if they were real. I couldn’t believe I was at MIT. My life and my ambitions moved to another level at that moment.” I think this impressive achievement is more a testament to the role that aspirations acquired during childhood play in determining a person's success than it is a reflection of thi…

I will bet you any large sums of money that this kid will not accomplish anything extraordinary by the age of 40.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#172

Post by donmaq »

matheweis wrote: post #149
uhtred wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I had the drive / focus / interest that you sound like you had when you were at school. I hung around with the wrong people, didn't put enough thought into what I might like to do for a career, valued the wrong things, and as a consequence spent my twenties in lots of meaningless, unsatisfying jobs. I'm in my early thirties now and am lucky in that I've managed to change my circumstances and begin a career as…

> I feel I will never be able to achieve the success I could have if I had only... Learn from your past, take things from where they are today, and change the things that you can, now, going into the future. There are other people like you today; some of them will do that, others will only continue to live in regret. 10 years from now you can be the person that they will look at and say "if I had only..."

Awesome maxims from the aspirational side.

From the more practical side- the time you spent 'wandering' can pay big dividends over those who are more tightly-focused, when you get to a more strategic role. Having tons of varied experience makes you a better communicator, teacher, & leader...

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#173

Post by droopybuns »

I would love some guidance on how to take advantage of OCW w/ my kids.

I don't want to reproduce Ahaan's story. My father was a biology teacher and always had tons of text books we could just kind of grind through growing up. I'm not doing the same for my kids at this time- mostly for lack of resources.

Just skimming through the OCM content- I don't see material in physics or science that can be used to introduce kids to the scientific method. It mostly looks like baptism by fire.

Any tips?

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#174

Post by eddotman »

droopybuns wrote: post #173

I would love some guidance on how to take advantage of OCW w/ my kids. I don't want to reproduce Ahaan's story. My father was a biology teacher and always had tons of text books we could just kind of grind through growing up. I'm not doing the same for my kids at this time- mostly for lack of resources. Just skimming through the OCM content- I don't see material in physics or science that can be used to introduce kid…

If OCW is too advanced to start, try Khan Academy first. It's great for K-12 material.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#175

Post by thewarrior »

sopooneo wrote: post #168

To me, this exemplifies the true potential of online education: not to lift the masses, but to enable the geniuses.

Well Ramanujan only needed one textbook to enable him. The tru e potential is in allowing everyone to get atleast a momentary ,fleeting glimpse of the worlds that the geniuses have opened up for us.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#176

Post by umutisik »

It is better for the kids to praised about what they are doing rather than what they are getting. Personally, I don't care what prestigious thing he got. This kid is amazing for having studied so many things on his own.

The real aim here should be to be engaged and to be learning; which are things this kid seems to be have done plenty of. It is so cool that we now have all these learning resources accessible easily.

It's interesting how this kind of thing makes one think about their own life. I went to a talk by a computer scientist yesterday. He is studying cryptography. You could tell that he was so engaged, getting so much joy from his subject. People were interested in what he was explaining. You could tell that he is just loving every minute of his job. This is the kind of engagement level I am looking for. And by the way, I don't think one needs to be top-level at what they do to get there.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#177

Post by Swizec »

uhtred wrote: post #77
agentultra wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had been raised similarly. We wish we had been but we didn't live in the right time or place for an upbringing like this. I remember stealing my dad's college textbooks on mechanics and applied mathematics and sneaking them off to school; taking out Byte and Compute issues from the library when they were available... just starving for more all the…

I wish I had the drive / focus / interest that you sound like you had when you were at school. I hung around with the wrong people, didn't put enough thought into what I might like to do for a career, valued the wrong things, and as a consequence spent my twenties in lots of meaningless, unsatisfying jobs. I'm in my early thirties now and am lucky in that I've managed to change my circumstances and begin a career as…

> I hung around with the wrong people, didn't put enough thought into what I might like to do for a career

You say that like they're necessarily causal/correlated.

When I was in high school I was clinically depressed, smoked weed every day, shoplifted whenever I could just for the thrill of it, failed most of my classes, and in my afternoons, late nights, and sometimes up to 6am, I was contributing to opensource, writing phpBB mods that thousands of people were using in their bulletin boards. My most popular mod had over 10,000 downloads. They even accepted me into the official mod approval team for a while.

And despite my obsession with coding and working on my career, I was also an adolescent delinquent.

Life is funny that way.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#178

Post by TeMPOraL »

donmaq wrote: post #172
matheweis wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel I will never be able to achieve the success I could have if I had only... Learn from your past, take things from where they are today, and change the things that you can, now, going into the future. There are other people like you today; some of them will do that, others will only continue to live in regret. 10 years from now you can be the person that they will look at and say "if I had only..."

Awesome maxims from the aspirational side. From the more practical side- the time you spent 'wandering' can pay big dividends over those who are more tightly-focused, when you get to a more strategic role. Having tons of varied experience makes you a better communicator, teacher, & leader...

I had this conversation with a co-worker recently. I complained about how I avoided partying in university years and wasted a perfect opportunity to make friends with diverse people from all kinds of occupations. He said he regrets that he partied a lot instead of sitting like me and engaging in creative hobbies and/or learning career-relevant stuff.

We came to the conclusion that no matter the path of life you end up taking, you'll regret missed opportunities. I could have studied hard since 9 years old, skipped high school and be a PhD now or something, but then I'd probably talk with some people and start regretting that I haven't the time to read the books and watch the movies that could have shaped my imagination.

So the real advice is - instead of obsessing over the road not taken, focus on what comparative advantage you got from your experiences. Even if you "wasted" half your life drinking with random people, there's still a lot to learn and use from those experiences. The reason we have brains is to figure out how to make the best of what we have.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#179

Post by chris_va »

I went to college early (14, graduated 18). I've spoken with a lot of similar folks over the years, and the biggest takeaway for me was that everyone's experience and needs were different.

Some people were pushed by their parents, but mostly it was people who were bored with the normal experience and found an out. Out of that set, maybe about half regret it, and wished they had slowed down and enjoyed high school/childhood more.

People tend to assume that folks who go to college early would be socially awkward, but that was not my experience. The social/emotional intelligence distribution was pretty normal.

Out of everything, the common denominator was supportive parents.

Re: Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15

#180

Post by TrevorJ »

rtl49 wrote: post #22

“I will never forget the feeling of walking into the lobby of Building 7, looking up, and then touching the pillars to see if they were real. I couldn’t believe I was at MIT. My life and my ambitions moved to another level at that moment.” I think this impressive achievement is more a testament to the role that aspirations acquired during childhood play in determining a person's success than it is a reflection of thi…

Good point. Talent may be what separates the top 1% or performers from the top 5% (where that tiny edge matters) but for the vast majority of the bell curve, hard work counts for so much more than raw aptitude.

I think our view of this gets skewed by sports because it really is an edge case where you have to achieve a certain level of performance in a very specific time period because your body isn't in peak condition forever. Talent may mean you pick up those skills faster and hit that narrow target window. That constraint doesn't seem to be nearly as present in other areas to the same degree: if it takes somebody 5 extra years to become a superb programmer, that won't absolutely kill their chances of having a successful career at it even if they needed the extra time to get there.

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