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Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

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Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#81

Post by jasonkester »

I graduated from high school in 1989, at the very apex of 80's butt-rock heavy metal. My school had probably 200 guys with ratted out long hair, most of whom owned a guitar and dreamed of being a rock star.

Of that group, probably 50 played well enough to do a creditable "Eruption" solo, and there were half a dozen guys who could get on stage at an assembly and keep the entire school entertained for 10 minutes.

Lots of those guys, when asked what they planned to do after school would look you in the eye and tell you they were going to be a rock star. Lots of them tried, forgoing college to form bands and live the dream. At the time, there were so many stories of starving bands rising out of the LA club scene to land million dollar contracts that it seemed like all you had to do was show up. It was a lot like reading the tech press today about the Bay Area.

Anybody care to guess how many of the guys from my school actually became rock stars?

So here we are, 20 years later, seeing exactly the same pattern. We hear about the Twitters of the world, getting zillions of dollars for some trivial idea, and figure we can do that too. And just like the kid from my youth with the Judas Priest t-shirt, we ignore the overwhelming amount of evidence we see every day that there's pretty much zero chance of that happening.

Here's an idea for a reality check. Do a quick search for "Ask HN: Rate my startup" here. Count(*), then Count(millionaires). That's what you're up against.

If I were in school, I'd stick it out just to hedge my bet.

Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#83

Post by cynicalkane »

elblanco wrote: post #34
rumpelstiltskin wrote: post #11

There's just 2 problems with Vivek's position - a) Cost - In today's economic climate, I simply cannot justify an education that, on avg, costs over $100K. Especially when student loans are involved. b) Time - 4 yrs is an unnecessarily long amount of time for a bachelors degree, not to mention another 1-2 yrs for a masters. The opportunity cost of this time only compounds the first problem. Edit: Sorry, I should have…

Who the heck in their right mind spends $100k (on average) on an undergraduate degree?! My local state university offers a decent education for really matter where I get my Western Civ course credits?) you can shave another $12k off for a grand total of $32k. Hell, you can an A.S., a B.S. an M.S. and a PhD for less than $100k and have plenty of drinking money left over. $100k for an education...ridiculous.

Yeah, the Good Will Hunting fantasy about how you don't need a good education, just natural intelligence and motivation. Maybe that's true for some people, but to say that a good liberal arts school is worth the same as a community college is completely absurd. And it's more true, not less true, for a class such as "Western Civ".

Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#84

Post by luminarious »

jasonkester wrote: post #81

I graduated from high school in 1989, at the very apex of 80's butt-rock heavy metal. My school had probably 200 guys with ratted out long hair, most of whom owned a guitar and dreamed of being a rock star. Of that group, probably 50 played well enough to do a creditable "Eruption" solo, and there were half a dozen guys who could get on stage at an assembly and keep the entire school entertained for 10 minutes. Lots…

If you do the same thing everyone else is doing, you will fail.

If you work really hard, you will perhaps fail to a lesser degree than everybody else.

But the only way to win is to play your own game.

Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#85

Post by jasonkester »

luminarious wrote: post #84
jasonkester wrote: post #81

I graduated from high school in 1989, at the very apex of 80's butt-rock heavy metal. My school had probably 200 guys with ratted out long hair, most of whom owned a guitar and dreamed of being a rock star. Of that group, probably 50 played well enough to do a creditable "Eruption" solo, and there were half a dozen guys who could get on stage at an assembly and keep the entire school entertained for 10 minutes. Lots…

If you do the same thing everyone else is doing, you will fail. If you work really hard, you will perhaps fail to a lesser degree than everybody else. But the only way to win is to play your own game.

Play your own game, but stack the deck in your favor. It's no great feat to bootstrap a software business from within a company paying you $100k fresh out of school.

Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#88

Post by whopa »

idoh wrote: post #74
whopa wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of the 3 pursuits you mentioned explicitly, I think only one of them actually truly benefits from the education system: medicine. With finance, the fundamentals are easily learned by self study, and to excel really depends more on personality type and drive than stuff that's taught in school. Law you can absolutely self study, there's plenty who've passed the bar exam without a degree in the past, though it's har…

I think it would be hard to be a competent lawyer without going to law school. Good law schools change the way you think, and that's not something that you can get self studying. It is true that you can pass the bar without going to school. In fact law school does not prepare you for the bar exam. Most people take a supplemental course after law school just to prep for the exam. I am pretty sure that a reasonably bri…

I've heard this expressed many times from various people: law schools love engineers because they already know how to think analytically and don't have to be taught that. This is independent of whether they learned any form of engineering in school or not.

As far as the bar exam being a joke, if that's true, that's broken. If the more important thing is going to law school for 3 years, then why put so much emphasis on the bar exam t all? There are people who graduate to law school but never pass the exam, or the ones who try and try again and pass it on their 4th or 5th try, if they went to school why isn't that meaningful? Either the schooling isn't all that it's cracked up to be or the metric doesn't measure the right things, but either way there's an impedance mismatch which means the system is broken.

Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#89

Post by rythie »

jasonkester wrote: post #81

I graduated from high school in 1989, at the very apex of 80's butt-rock heavy metal. My school had probably 200 guys with ratted out long hair, most of whom owned a guitar and dreamed of being a rock star. Of that group, probably 50 played well enough to do a creditable "Eruption" solo, and there were half a dozen guys who could get on stage at an assembly and keep the entire school entertained for 10 minutes. Lots…

You don't say what eventually happened to those people, you learn the best by failing.

A teacher at my school was in signed band in the early 90s, released a couple of albums, travelled the world though ultimately their second album flopped. He still had time to train as a teacher before hitting 30. He got a lot of respect from the kids in class as a result of being in that band.

The former U.K. prime minister was in a band in his youth which failed, doesn't seem like he did too badly afterwards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_Rumours_(band)

Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#90

Post by DanielBMarkham »

The harsh reality is that for every Zuckerberg, there are a thousand who drop out of college and fail. Many get discouraged after their failures and move to other professions which require less skill and education.

So if this is the problem, the goal here should be to prevent folks from getting discouraged and doing things they'd rather not do, right? To keep on learning no matter what place they live in, right?

Or is the goal to self-validate the importance of colleges?

Yes, you are probably not Mark Zuckerberg, but that's okay. Mark Zuckerberg wasn't Mark Zuckerberg either until FB took off. As long as you work hard and keep learning you'll do as well as anybody else, college or not. In fact, it's better to work hard and keep learning than it is to get pieces of paper to hang on your wall. Many times you can get so enamored with the little bits of paper you forget the "work hard and keep learning" part.

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