Ask HN: How can I make the most out of high school?

Thank you for your advice. I really appreciate it. I remember showing a friend in my AP CS class the benefits of sum types for representing errors. (We use Java and I wanted to show a better alternative to its nulls and exceptions). He understood what I showed him and thought it was neat. I think that ties in with what you said about showing “the other person that there is something admirable, in morals and values or skills.” Most people probably don’t care about type theory because they’ve never heard of it, but I hope that if I show it to, say, someone else who is learning programming, they will see the same beauty in it that I do. I think that I will spend more time with this person to become closer friends with him.

Thank you for your advice. In the past, I didn’t care about joining other clubs and only cared about my programming hobby. Now, I think that I should be more well-rounded and pick up other activities, especially ones in which I am more likely to find companions. I will find an interesting club to join.

w.r.t being better than others - I go to a school with a strong academic culture. In absolutely no way do people put each other down, not at all, but I feel like there is an underlying motivation to have good ECs to make oneself attractive to colleges. In particular, you mentioned the debate team, which, at least at my school, seems to me like a highly competitive club that boosts college applications. I feel extremely cynical about the culture of people padding college applications, so I had decided previously to ignore clubs and only pursue my passion of programming to be “true to myself.” However, now I feel a desire to join a club out of genuine pursuit of happiness (as opposed to boosting an application). I hope that I will find a club with a passionate and genuine culture, without competitive people.

Before, my mother had told me that I should have activities outside school that I could show for. Part of it was for colleges, as I would have a hard time competing with others if I didn’t do much outside school. However, my mother also said that part of it was being a fuller person. I used to feel frustrated because I felt like she wanted me to do stuff just for college, a motivation that I felt was “phony,” but now I see what she meant about being more active in general.

I remember watching an anime called Erased! that elicited similar feelings for me, but it was centered around elementary/secondary school. I'm not sure I can answer your question, I wasn't that close with my highschool class. But two things I can say are: be your genuine self, and take a genuine interest in others.

To say anything more specific would really just be me trying to give advice to my past self, instead of trying to give you advice. Someone you know well may have more personal insights.

Random musings:

There are less rules than you might think, but you are right that developing close friendships takes time.

On the other hand college can be a nice ground zero, where you don't need to break into some weird existing cliques where everybody already has shared language based on years of in-jokes.

But my friendsip building wad reasonably low-effort, but over long time with consistency :-)

I went to bible-study and enjoyed the more personal setting than the "50 people sing hymn together in a church youth-meeting". I am order of magnitude less religious than I was back then, but I still remember the time fondly and keep in touch with some of the people I met there :)

I liked to go swimming with few friends that found the idea "swim from one end of 50m pool to the other for an hour" relaxing. Every 300m we stop at the end of the pool and chat. Then we swim again.

I had group of ~4 friends I played board-games together. Or we organized lan-parties from time-to time. 3 of us then went for a same programme at the same college and that helped me quite a bit when acomodating in college.

I joined for a few longer (several days) hikes with few people from my class. I don't keep in touch as much with them, but knowing there are few people I literally walked like hundred miles along-side is nice :-)

I learned a lot just by walking home with a friend of mine and talking Java design patterns and algorithms for path-finding through mazes. We did few projects together, and to this day (10y after we left hs) we still make point of getting a few beers together or going for Puzzlehunt every few months.

Close-ness is a difficult concept. I.e. with the friend I talked about I wouldn't call him at 3 AM if I am depressed. I think only one I would wake up like this might be my wife :) Over a beer we probably would discuss if I am burned-out at work or simmilar.

I might have few friends I would talk about my kids and raising them and the usual life-stuff. Former colleagues that I grew to know over hundred shared lunches and cofe breaks and later on beers in pubs, occasional hike or going bouldering.

I might have maybe one friend I might talk about more intimate stuff, like if I had problems in marriage. We have known each other for around 20 years and we literally met in middle-school.

I do wish you luck!