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Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

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Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#151

Post by Drbble »

treenyc wrote: post #101
jes5199 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the no-grades aspect of it, but I'm pretty turned off by the way they pressure parents to avoid having computers and recorded media around children - and that they even delay learning how to read - and that the prohibition is for religious reasons that they don't usually discuss in public.

interesting, I know they explore much on spirituality, but I didn't realize wardorf school is religiously related. I do think reading and technology are not important in education. We people retain information far better through audio vs reading. See research from University of Regensburg http://www.linguatec.de/products/tts/references/uni_regensbu...

Did you listen to that page?

"The best results were achieved by experimentees who read and listened to a text simultaneously."

Also, that page doesn't cite the research its claims rely on.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#152

Post by Drbble »

jeffpersonified wrote: post #10

Let's be clear, though – hoop jumping isn't relegated to the university/educational system today. It's ubiquitous in hiring, promotion, and general staffing practices in corporations. It's typical in society. Rare are the people who constantly ask "why do we do what we do," and "how could we do this better."

Those rare people tend to be found in places like Stanford and other great universities and successful businesses like Apple and Google...

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#153

Post by ghshephard »

jcnnghm wrote: post #53

I went to school, then dropped out, and then went back. I finished my BS last week with a 4.0 GPA. I dropped out because I wasn't learning anything, and it was an incredibly time consuming grind that wasn't any fun. I dropped out to start a company, and probably learned more every few weeks doing that, than it would be possible to learn in years of classes. There isn't a guide and every problem requires actual though…

Well, perhaps college is a little more than 'just doing the work' - I grinded out calculus 2, actually went to all the lectures, did all the assignments - still only managed to get a C+ - integration by parts is just one of the elements that required more memorization of patterns, and speed than I could pull off. And we had a LOT of hard working, disciplined students flunk out of the EE program.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#154

Post by kitsune_ »

jcnnghm wrote: post #53

I went to school, then dropped out, and then went back. I finished my BS last week with a 4.0 GPA. I dropped out because I wasn't learning anything, and it was an incredibly time consuming grind that wasn't any fun. I dropped out to start a company, and probably learned more every few weeks doing that, than it would be possible to learn in years of classes. There isn't a guide and every problem requires actual though…

People hire college graduates because they have demonstrated that they can be given a list of work, and a criteria for how their work will be judged, and complete the work. That's it.

I have a question about this observation. How is this different from someone with years of work experience, who demonstrated in practice that he or she was able to finish large software projects on time, on specification and on budget as a lead developer?

I'm asking this because I dropped out of college because of money constraints. I had a three hour commute each day, had a job next to my studies, and slowly but surely piled up debt in order to cover my basic expenses (food, rent, insurance, books). I had zero support from my family or the government.

I make the same observations as you, it seems to me that many doors will remain closed to me. Not all, mind you, over time you get to know people and build a network of sorts.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#155

Post by Tsagadai »

skittles wrote: post #19
maeon3 wrote: post #7

95% of people are sheep, just look around you. Clothing fashions all change with eachother according to what the others are doing. Church: just tell me What to believe. Bars, drinking toxic liquids and smoking radioactive smoke because it's cool. Resumes which plead for others to make us worthy members of society. It takes a special kind of defiance to say no thank you to What the world expects you to be.

I'll go a step beyond. Most people look to others for cues. Some others bend over backwards to not conform (like the "I wake every day at 4:54 am" weirdo--just say 4:55 man!). Much more rare is the person who just does exactly what they want.

> Much more rare is the person who just does exactly what they want.

Arseholes aren't particularly rare.

What is rare is the person who does exactly what they want without ruining life for everyone around them while actually improving the world in some way.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#156

Post by ballooney »

dlo wrote: post #148
Drbble wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called X Duck Syndrome at every school X :-)

Out of curiosity, I typed "duck syndrome" into Google. The only relevant links on the first page pertain to "duck syndrome" at Stanford. Maybe the term is beginning to catch on elsewhere?

You're flirting with the assumption that something must exist on the Internet in order to exist at all. Or even that there's a strong correlation. That's a bit scary!

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#157

Post by lmm »

tensor wrote: post #110
jcnnghm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My major was computer science. It's still just a list of work. The math largely isn't as difficult as it is poorly explained and tedious. It's possible to obtain an intuitive understanding of most topics, and when you do, it's practically trivial to derive the underlying equations.

There are a great many areas of computer science that are incredibly difficult. There are a lot of long standing open problems that some of the smartest people on earth cannot solve. Further, a university gives you some of the best access to resources around: lots of domain expertise in various areas and access to nearly every worthy journal article in the world. It astonishes me that you could come out with the atti…

I did a year of computer science at what is supposedly the second best university in the world. While you do have access to journals, you don't really have time to use them; your time is filled with tedious exercises - exercises that often require only a basic understanding java syntax, yet, apparently, that were beyond half the students. After a year I switched into mathematics; either I'm less good at it or the problems are harder, but either way I was less bored, and the faculty seemed a lot more willing to talk about things beyond the immediate course. I wish there had been a route into theoretical CS - those big open problems - but I couldn't have stood another year of the undergrad course. If this is the best institution in my country, I dread to think what the subject's like elsewhere.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#158

Post by lmm »

rfurmani wrote: post #21
maeon3 wrote: post #7

95% of people are sheep, just look around you. Clothing fashions all change with eachother according to what the others are doing. Church: just tell me What to believe. Bars, drinking toxic liquids and smoking radioactive smoke because it's cool. Resumes which plead for others to make us worthy members of society. It takes a special kind of defiance to say no thank you to What the world expects you to be.

I agree that the typical person can be a sheep, however: * the church callout is unnecessary, it can be a type of self-analysis * Alcohol is not toxic and in reasonable quantities does not have a purely deleterious effect. * When needing to make personal connections (which one always will since you learn a lot from others, not to mention the benefits of having connections and even just social interactions) it is good…

Alcohol is toxic in the strict, technical sense (as are many things).

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#159

Post by gutnor »

kitsune_ wrote: post #154
jcnnghm wrote: post #53

I went to school, then dropped out, and then went back. I finished my BS last week with a 4.0 GPA. I dropped out because I wasn't learning anything, and it was an incredibly time consuming grind that wasn't any fun. I dropped out to start a company, and probably learned more every few weeks doing that, than it would be possible to learn in years of classes. There isn't a guide and every problem requires actual though…

People hire college graduates because they have demonstrated that they can be given a list of work, and a criteria for how their work will be judged, and complete the work. That's it. I have a question about this observation. How is this different from someone with years of work experience, who demonstrated in practice that he or she was able to finish large software projects on time, on specification and on budget a…

The doors will remain closed unless you provide an experience the guy making the hiring understands and values. Problem is that there are a lot of people involved, each with veto power.

First is that except for college, you have almost nothing in common with HR people that are filtering the CV, so they may undervaluate your experience.

Then there is the generation gap with the middle managers that have risen to their position before the big waves of outsourcing by following the now mythical career path. They will overvalue college degrees vs experience.

Then there is the prestige of the company: lot of companies only hires people with college degree as a policy, period. Other companies have implicit policy: nobody has ever been fired to hire a Stanford graduate.

Finally there is bias - if you paid a lot for your education, or are paying a lot for your kid education - you will have a positive bias toward people with education (and sometimes, negative bias against people that dropped out)

The sad conclusion is - having a degree is never perceived as something negative, at worst, it is ignored. Not having a degree is never a positive thing, at best it is ignored.

Re: Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep?

#160

Post by adrianhoward »

I don't think it's a Stanford problem, or a university problem, or even an academic problem. It's a people problem. I've seen just as many industry sheep as I have academic ones :-)

The sort of folk who are going to just jump through the academic hoops and nothing else are exactly the same sort of people who jump through similar industry hoops. They do what they're supposed to do and not a lot else.

The people who see the degree certificate as the goal are the same sort of folk who see the promotion or the parking space or the corner office as the goal. They see the what, but not the why.

People seem bent towards that particular approach to life long before they get to work or university.

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