231–240 of 259 posts
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Correct, my wording was poor. You can go from Bachelor's to PHD but only if you achieve first class honours. Here honours is an additional year of study as well.
That's another big difference with the US. Honors are about GPA here, nothing else. The whole A-level system was confusing for a long time because of this kind of conflation of terms between the systems.
Pretty much most senior level/grad algorithm classes are like this. They introduce a framework for solution and then give you about 2-3 example lecture problems that they walk you through. 2-3 weeks after being introduced to 5/6 frameworks its Exam day. You are given unique word problems that, in the eyes of someone experienced like a prof or PhD student, is trivial. But you are struggling with 1 week of homework exp…
> But there are smart people who get all this stuff "easily" (previous practice, exposure). Or, simply by virtue of being more intelligent. Life is not fair, and some people do have it easier than others, without having to pay for it with extra study time. If you are pursuing a research career, and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things mo…
I had the opposite experience when I went through college. I was the one that was so far ahead of everyone else, and I realized that college was a complete waste of my time and my money (I was working and sold many of my things to pay for college out of my own pocket so I wouldn't take debt). I went and cold-sat three certification exams, started applying for contract jobs, and dropped out of college as soon as I had a reasonable offer.
I had originally intended to stay in academia and do research, but I realized it was going to be an absolute grind and I wouldn't be able to connect with my peers socially or intellectually. I found a place in industry, put myself out of my comfort zone and grew a lot, and I definitely do not regret ditching academia and going into industry.
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> But there are smart people who get all this stuff "easily" (previous practice, exposure). Or, simply by virtue of being more intelligent. Life is not fair, and some people do have it easier than others, without having to pay for it with extra study time. If you are pursuing a research career, and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things mo…
You're getting some flack for this comment, but others have said similar things: https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/_/__CnDwAAQBAJ?hl=en... "I took six undergraduate mathematics courses. Until my junior year I encountered no one who seemed to have a greater aptitude for mathematics than mine. It had always been my easiest subject in high school, and I had been chided there by a classmate for writing my final exa…
Being intellectually honest with yourself is still important, but if that’s what the parent comment was advocating, it did so poorly.
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You're getting some flack for this comment, but others have said similar things: https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/_/__CnDwAAQBAJ?hl=en... "I took six undergraduate mathematics courses. Until my junior year I encountered no one who seemed to have a greater aptitude for mathematics than mine. It had always been my easiest subject in high school, and I had been chided there by a classmate for writing my final exa…
What he’s describing here is quite a departure from “quit as soon as you notice your peers are better than you”. Being intellectually honest with yourself is still important, but if that’s what the parent comment was advocating, it did so poorly.
Additional reason is that if I hedged my opinion and tried to predict and answer to all possible critiques, the comment would be way too long and nobody would read it anyway, including the pre-written response to the point they made in reply.
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> For example, if I was a black man and the teacher was white, my essays about slavery would be not about if I learned the material but my trying to work around determining how racist a teacher might be. That would be a valid concern regardless or your or professor’s race. And even if we take into account that people are more biased towards opinions that elevate them, we should also take into account what an average…
That's an interesting take, one that I don't believe is backed up by the data. Show me an economics program in the US pushing Marxist theory throughout.
They'd probably also try to temper the enthusiastic incorrectness of freshman coming in as full-on 1930s-throwback "Stalin was awesome, actually" tankies, but there just aren't that many of those. The confidently-wrong freshmen tend to all fit a similar mold, and it's not leftist.
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Yeah, maybe when your younger than 16 or 18. If you're at Uni you're an adult and it's on you to study.
If so, why have teachers at all? Give those freshmen adults a syllabus in the beginning of the semester and conduct exams at the end. ”Those who are smart and motivated will get it, and heck with the rest.”
Pretty much most senior level/grad algorithm classes are like this. They introduce a framework for solution and then give you about 2-3 example lecture problems that they walk you through. 2-3 weeks after being introduced to 5/6 frameworks its Exam day. You are given unique word problems that, in the eyes of someone experienced like a prof or PhD student, is trivial. But you are struggling with 1 week of homework exp…
I've graduated in Eastern Europe, my experience might be different, but I CONSTANTLY heard my peer bitching&moaning about the materials to be hard. I found them to be "easy", as in easy to score 7/10 to get to 9/10 you'd have to apply yourself or be smart and to get to 10/10 you'd really have to apply yourself.
Granted, I did have "previous practice" -- meaning I was highly interested in programming and electronics. There were some infamous professors that made things "hard" for students -- those were the reaaaly boring, ultra-math-heavy-showoff-pricks I'm glad they had a car accident and died.
I still remember I didn't even bother going to the course of such a prick professor after course 3, just repeated the course the next year with a much more down-to-earth professor, and my blood still boils when I think how much fun I had just studying opams mathematical circuits with the second professor's materials and how bad the first prick-professor made us feel with his showoff maths. I didn't even go to the second professors in-person courses, I could tell from his study book he was a down-to-earth guy and his interest was conveying cool stuff to his students and not how much of math guru he was.
So when things were "hard" it was usually because the professor was an actual showoff prick and not because of an unfortunate missunderstanding on his part about our capabilities as students.
Those pricks know very well what they're doing and how scared students are about them and how many they are failing, they just get off on that stuff.
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What he’s describing here is quite a departure from “quit as soon as you notice your peers are better than you”. Being intellectually honest with yourself is still important, but if that’s what the parent comment was advocating, it did so poorly.
Note that I said “you should probably drop out”, not “you need to drop out as soon as you notice others are better”. This shows that there is hardly a way I could have advocated it better, as people like you, or others in this thread (read their responses to me and mine to them) will misread it anyway, and instead argue against a straw man. Additional reason is that if I hedged my opinion and tried to predict and ans…
It's the recommendation with no inkling of acknowledgement that other factors exist beyond a naive comparison of oneself with their peers.
The ethos of HN is generally to explore the depths of an issue in favor of making sweeping generalizations. This is one of the key things that separates discussion here from other places that shall not be named.
Knowing that many younger students and folks earlier in their careers participate here, that comment wasn't going to remain unanswered for long.
I don't think it would be terribly difficult to reframe what was written to provoke thought about intellectual honesty with oneself without unnecessarily leading others astray or losing all nuance in the process.
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Every child knows what things they like and are good at. It might not map exactly to a career path but it's not like career skills live in some sort of magical vacuum that you can never see until you try them.
The problem starts when things you enjoy/do well don't fall into "pay well"
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Hah! When I took the first steps on my career path I wasn’t good at anything , had no idea what I really liked because I hadn’t had the opportunity to try most stuff and the top paying jobs of today didn’t even exist. I know you are a smart person, but this advice will hold young people back. Try stuff. Don’t sweat it. You’ll fail and you’ll succeed and you won’t know which is which until years later when you tell a…
That's true - to draw a circle around what you enjoy, what you're good at, and what you get paid for, you have to actually try it for a while first
Everybody has activities that they enjoy.