Code as much as you can.
Programming is hardly the most important activity in life.
It's a way of learning and creating that lends itself well to individual study when more collective forms of study are not designed for learning and creativity.
Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
91–100 of 145 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
#92[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
#93I had similar grudges about my school, but money and location didn't favor me, so I just bore it grudgingly. From what I have heard about the US, I am assuming the following might actually be possible:
- Convince your school to miss classes if you demonstrate great scores and promise to keep them
- Convince your parents to let you take a year off, promising to continue where you left off later and use the time to pursue your interest of study. You will either confirm your suspicion that school is a waste of time or gain completely different perspectives. Either case is a win
- Homeschooling. I am surprised your parents haven't come up with this option yet. I am not familiar with the US educational system, but can't you just study on your own and appear for qualifying exams that you would have normally taken after high school?
Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
#94Ok, I'm going to try to help you out a little bit here with what I went through.
I left school after the 11th grade for what appear to be the exact same reasons. In the twelfth grade, I was 'homeschooled', I did a lot of independent study (AP English, AP Computer Science, Science-Fair, I attended the National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology), and I took three college courses every quarter. (Physics, Chemistry and Engineering).
It was an immensely challenging year, and I had a lot of free time to learn what I wanted, and work an interesting challenging job on the side. When I applied for college, my parents wrote a letter saying what I did, and I had college transcripts to back it up. In my state, if you take college classes as a high school student they call it 'Post Secondary Enrollment Options Program' and the taxpayers pick up the tab.
I also only spent three years in college for the same reason; I started feeling like I was wasting my time. That may or may not have been true, at college I could have applied myself more and used more of the resources around me (most professors are professors because they are very good at what they do...learn from them, not necessarily from what they teach in class).
Some of it is probably you, and some of it could be the place/people you're around. This is very hard to look at objectively.
People aren't unreceptive to high school and/or college dropouts. People are unreceptive to slackers, and underacheivers. Honestly for me it just doesn't come up much, unless people ask 'Where did you go to school?' and by then they've usually made up some sort of decision about what to think of me anyway.
Dropping out of school has not closed one opportunity to me. At least not one opportunity that I would have pursued anyway (probably some big corporations have restrictions on that sort of thing).
What it comes down to is this: Do what you want. When your guidance counselors tell you "If you had all the money you would ever need, what would you do?" Don't mistake that to mean, 'after high school, after college, after this certain point in your career'. That means "right now, what are the steps that I need to take to make that happen" and doing them.
Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
#95There's a lot of excellent advice in this thread, but I think I can sum most of it up by saying that the primary thing you need to do for yourself is spend more time way outside your comfort zone. It's fine to be learning geeky hobbies, coding, reading hacker news, etc... but that alone is not enough to be successful in life. You need to broaden your experiences and learn about things that seem to have nothing to do with what you think you're interested in. It allows you to recognize new trends and opportunities. I guarantee this will come in handy some time down the line. I always think of the story that when Steve Jobs dropped out of college, he went and sat in on a calligraphy class. Why on earth would a geek need that? Well, years later when Apple was building the first Macintosh he was able to draw on that knowledge when they were figuring out how to support fonts (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html). I experienced this in my own life. I wanted to be a biologist, so I really got into my science courses taking extra biology classes my senior year. On the side, I dabbled in various computer-related activities, but I always felt like that was taking away time from my important biology stuff that would eventually be my career. When I got to college the field of bioinformatics started to emerge, and I realized I could use my biology skills with my computer hobby. Suddenly, all that time I thought I had "wasted" playing around with computers became my career. You just never know what the future holds.
Finally (and this is major), speaking as a fellow (reformed) introvert: you have a huge, gaping problem to address. You need to be able to easily and freely communicate and socialize with people. This is not some warm, fuzzy BS. It's a real life skill you have got to master. It's hard. It's painful. It's embarrassing at times. But, you have to do it. In "Hackers and Painters", Paul always talks about having the wind at your back in startups. Mastering social skills is an awesome hack that gives you the ability to make your own wind. People who can really network and socialize get things other people don't. That's a fact of life. Many introverts complain that this isn't fair. I always did. The reality is, social interaction is a pretty easy hack to get what you want in life compared to most other methods. It's worth the time and effort required to build up the skill. If you're hopelessly clueless how to interact with people, you could start off by reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People".
Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
#96Why do teenagers think they have it all figured out? I certainly did, and I was certainly wrong. Don't think of the monotony. Think of the things that differ from day to day. You find something that interests you that isn't related to monotony and you focus on that. For me, it was girls; not to get laid, but to practice my game before I went to college. If you focus on the monotony you're going to kill yourself. Life…
Good point. There are generally two ways of thinking about this. Find your calling or learn to be happy no matter what you do. I think there is wisdom in both and they are not necessarily self excluding.
Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
#97I'm a high school student myself (senior). I skipped massively (like 50% of the time I wasn't in class) in 10th grade, and after 10th just went to do Running Start. It's a form of dual enrollment and I'm going to community college now; I haven't set foot in HS (except to get authorization forms) in two years. College is different from high school. Try something similar. High school is a massive, pointless waste of ti…
Having worked in a number of research labs, I would add to this that you should also try contacting professors at the nearest college. Very rarely is there something structured put in place for high school students to work at universities, but that said, many professors will work around/through/over the bureaucracy so that you can work with them. Often times all that is needed is a bit of initiative and some personal…
I actually got my first solid programming experience by contacting a professor at university and interning with him.
Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
#98It is perfectly normal (and sane) to hate school. Protest, but don't whine. And do your work anyway.
Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is, to be perfectly blunt, utter nonsense of the highest degree. - You can't make something interesting when your time is controlled minute-by-minute. If you were stuck in India for the next four years, you could find some way to make it interesting because you have freedom. You simply can't make, say, prison interesting if it's not already, because everything is so rigidly controlled. - High school is NOT there…
I think you are being too extreme here. 'For another, your friends are chosen by accidents of age and geography, and not by you.' this seems patently false to me, you hang out with the people who energize and care about you whether you are 16 or 25... I mean, yes it's true that high school is boring and has many flaws, but it really doesn't take up that much time, and you can get a lot out of it. Classes can be borin…
"this seems patently false to me, you hang out with the people who energize and care about you whether you are 16 or 25..."
The sample of such people is MUCH smaller in high school than it is in the real world (easily five orders of magnitude smaller).
"but it really doesn't take up that much time,"
Four years full-time is a lot, especially when you're young. The average job lasts less than three years.
"but I would argue that going to college without at least calculus isn't the best idea if you plan to have a lot of time to learn all the cool math you want/need."
Agreed, but you don't need high school for calculus, and high schools usually do a terrible job of teaching it (how many people know what a derivative is five years later?)
Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?
#100My comment will get lost in the noise, but I'll give you an insight here that you will likely hardly hear again: You want a thrill of success. At the age you are in, your brain is hardwired to search for success. Programming gives you success, because when a piece of code compiles, you get that feeling of success. School is not doing so. So you will compulsively chase programming, trying to get your success fix. Turn…
Great advice. You don't realize it, but you have opportunities being handed to you now that won't come so easily later. I miss school (high school & college) for so many reasons. Having lots of peers right there to talk to. So many activites. A library full of books. Sports and clubs. A wide variety of subjects. A mentor once told me to take advantage of everything available to you on your "school buffet". That's wha…
I like your advice but I think there is much more potential in college than high school.
In college I have resources available to me that were previously unknown to me, covering every profession, even startups and business.
College was definitely the right choice for me, you should try it and see if it is for you.