I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#131

Post by caffeine » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 11:14 PM UTC

dubcomesaveme wrote: post #124

nostrademons wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of startups also don't stick with anything beyond the initial thrill. That's something you have to learn for yourself: no external organization is going to hand it to you. When I started actually completing projects (and I was older than this guy is), it was largely because I'd tried a bunch of things in superficial depth and found that they weren't all that satisfying. I bounced from a physics major to…

ha, myself a physics to economics to cognitive science major early in college, now settling in on Computer Science to sit down, gear down, and actually MAKE some stuff. In the short term, it's a financial drain to spend extra time during your college years to try everything that interests you. But in the long run... WHO CARES. Better to spend a couple years finding yourself in your early 20s than having a mid-life cr…

I hate to tell you this but ... most people do both :) Don't think of them as crises, though, because they're not - they're just what it feels like to outgrow your life. The more often it happens, the more you're growing, so take heart in that.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#132

Post by ido » Thu, Oct 29, 2009, 9:49 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #61

pg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say about life expectancy at birth is true, but it's also true that people who made it to adulthood didn't live nearly as long. I'd guess the average life expectancy of a 23 year old in 17th century England was under 60.

You don't have to guess if you're willing to move a little forward in time: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html So the average 20 year old in 1850 could expect to live an additional 40 years, to roughly age 60. The curve started flattening after WW1 and continued doing so until around the 70s and 80s.

England in 1850 was already industrialized.

I suspect there were significant differences in life expectancy between the 17th century and 1850.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#133

Post by skinnymuch » Sat, Oct 31, 2009, 7:13 AM UTC

xcombinator wrote: post #125

skinnymuch wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People that had enormous problems in school, became presidents of big companies, made their own restaurants chains,got political power, became famous as scientific researchers..." I doubt this very much.

Well, maybe it sounds like when I say "had enormous problems" that they didn't pass courses, or were stupid, they passed(with great pain through) and they were not, but I'm talking about boarding school with military discipline(and physical punishments) in Europe. I think is difficult to understand this, specially for american people. The fact that some people don't quite understand is that making a successful restau…

Americans understand your last line. In America, money is far more important to the vast majority of people than education. I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons Euros use to feel above Americans. Education starts becoming important to how people perceive you when you're near upper middle class or above. And even then your success is more important.

When you say all these people have done all those successful things, are you talking about the entire history of your school? I couldn't understand if that is what you were talking about or if you were saying all those accomplishments happened with people who were in school as the same time as you (this is what I doubt).

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#134

Post by xcombinator » Tue, Nov 17, 2009, 7:25 PM UTC

skinnymuch wrote: post #133

xcombinator wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, maybe it sounds like when I say "had enormous problems" that they didn't pass courses, or were stupid, they passed(with great pain through) and they were not, but I'm talking about boarding school with military discipline(and physical punishments) in Europe. I think is difficult to understand this, specially for american people. The fact that some people don't quite understand is that making a successful restau…

Americans understand your last line. In America, money is far more important to the vast majority of people than education. I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons Euros use to feel above Americans. Education starts becoming important to how people perceive you when you're near upper middle class or above. And even then your success is more important. When you say all these people have done all those successful thi…

No, it was not my schoolmates, it was my father's ones, as I wrote before.

Yeah, american people are different to european, here and in asia education (and specially memorization) is very important. Some american people will find it difficult to understand that in Spain you could get to be public worker(and can't be fired) just making an exam.