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Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking a lot about this as around senior year of collage, I have felt that I've been wasting my time with every moment spent in class. What I don't understand is why people feel it is acceptable to say "If you don't finish X task, then you are not as good." The trick was that when I started working in a lab or on startup ideas, I get the same dopamine rush that was spoken of in a previous. Working on clas…

Can you remove the tag on your post, it's breaking the entire page.

Can you remove the
 tag on your post, it's breaking the entire page.

It's not a

 tag, it's an automatic format that HN applies to indented text. That's why indenting is not the preferred way to show quoted text. I use quotation marks to show text quoted from a submitted article, and the HN convention of an asterisk immediately before and after a block of text quoted from the parent comment (as above, here) to show text quoted from a comment.

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#132
A friend directed me to this post, and here is what I have to say. The best decision I ever made was to quit high school when I was fifteen. I read Grace Llewellyn's "The Teenage Liberation Handbook" and, despite it being written a little simply, the ideas resonated with me. Compulsory schooling is about control, busy work, and, as Foucault points out, a type of discipline based on the penal system. School made me view education as an abominable chore, and it was only once I left that I was able to begin exploring academic disciplines in a comprehensive and meaningful way. If you love erudition for its own sake (as I truly believe most people are prone to do--it's only after years of schooling that we eschew the notion of pleasurable learning experiences), you have what it takes to educate yourself.

I recovered from the trauma of compulsory school, and I am now a college honors student with a 4.0 GPA. While there are still serious problems regarding "education" in the world of academia, college is significantly better than high school. A GED, well written essays, and outstanding SAT/ACT scores will get you into some of the most prestigious institutions without a diploma. Most people think that you have to be miserable for the next few years because they were forced to be miserable and they think it's the only way to find success in the future. I believe that they are entirely wrong about that. Research "unschooling", Paolo Freire, and Summerhill school and decide for yourself.

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#133
post #23

Dude you have plenty of time, how about getting some friends and enjoying yourself a bit.

I agree with the first part. As much as I disliked school, the best thing about it was all the free time - I've never had as much free time since then.

So my advice is if you really dislike the schoolwork, just ignore it and do the bare minimum to pass, and spend your free time on more interesting things. You can't really quite school because you are still too young and immature.

But don't feel guilty about skipping schoolwork as long as you are spending your time on something productive and worthwhile.

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#134
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I guess I have a pretty skewed view of high school because I went to a fairly good one, where at least the math/science classes were worthwhile. When I was talking about how much time it takes up, I meant on a day-to-day basis. It's something like 8:00AM to 3:00PM, and another maybe two hours for homework (max, its usually much less) and then the rest of the time is yours to play sports, do programming, read, work, etc...

All I'm saying is that though high school clearly isn't perfect, I have trouble agreeing with the apocalyptic pictures some people paint.

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#135
Two paths spring to mind;

1) If you're sublimely self confident and prepared to deal with the intense difficulty of this option, just leave. Strike out completely on your own, hit the garage, make the Next Big Thing(tm).

2) Kill all the pieces of yourself that make you an anomaly amongst your peers. Drug yourself out, develop an addiction to something that will numb your mind and dull the ennui of the existence you find yourself in. In short, destroy every piece of you that makes it uncomfortable for you to go with the flow.

The world is pulling you down because the world is, as often mentioned here, not designed for people like us. Your solution will be to address this discrepancy in some fashion. It is orders of magnitude easier to change yourself than it is to change the world, and I say this in full knowledge of how utterly stupendously hard it really is to change yourself, especially in this way that you know to be deeply wrong.

I'll spend the rest of my life in obscurity changing the broken things in the world before I spend an hour on my knees trying to figure out how to fit in, but this is not anywhere near as heroic as it sounds. Simply, this is because I am stupid and stubborn, and probably if I were less so (and maybe you are?) I would be able to see this path for the folly it is. Leave the hard stuff to the martyrs and spend your life in dull throbbing comfort in some easy and meaningless pursuit like law or politics, and snort cocaine off hookers for the occasional buzz.

Alas, some of us are simply not this way constructed.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#137
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

markbao and DaniFong are two HN readers with stories you may be able to relate to. Look up Hans Reiser [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser ] and Niniane Wang [ http://niniane.org/ ] - they are early dropouts in the tech industry. It's not totally insane to fast-track your career.

Hans Reiser ended up a murderer too. Be careful not to follow his path too closely :)

Indeed. YMMV! :)

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#138
I'm in grade 12 now, almost done, only a few months left. I was in basically the same boat as you in Grade 10, i completely hated it. Now, i still don't like school, but i am still loving life. Well my first piece of advice is to slack off in school, if you can. DO all of your homework, but only due the minimum. Just aim to get above 75% in all of your classes. You may not be able to get amazing scholarships with this mark, but you can graduate and get into College. Now what i would recommend to make your life more enjoyable: Find something to do that you love and do it I co-founded a web design company (Kerplunc.com) with a friend of mine in the UK, i run a successful web hosting company (KerpluncHosting.com) and run a blog/webcomic with a bunch of my friends (ExplodingWumpus.com). I'm not sure if your loves are going to be anything similar to that, but that's what i love to do. If you want someone to talk to about this kinda stuff, or just someone to discuss nerdy shit with, feel free to email me (matt@kerplunc.com) and i can give you my MSN etc.

Oh and don't start doing drugs or partying

Re: Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

#139
post #28

You sound like a smart kid. I hated most of school up to college as well, because 95% of it was just a pure time waste. What are your Ruby skills like? Do you want a job? ;-) (Only 50% joking...)

I don't know Ruby (right now my favorite scripting language is Python), but that sounds like a good language to learn over the summer, thanks :)
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