31–40 of 145 posts
I went to college when I was 16 at http://www.tams.unt.edu/ Most states have these now. Look into it.
If I hadn't done the dual-enrollment program, I would have probably taken the proficiency exam and gone to a community college. Instead, I'm graduating with the rest of my class and going to an Ivy League university. I can't emphasize how great dual-enrollment is.
Failing that, I'd say stay in school and while you're still young use all that free time to network, meet people with similar interests, and make things. In short, "Get Excited and Make Things", as the poster says. You have tons of free time (or at least way more than I have now at 23), so run with it. Don't discount the value of highschool. You'll realize later in life how much it meant.
Some of the most influential and successful people I know, I met in highschool. Two of which are currently engaged in running their own business, which I helped bootstrap one summer whilst in college.
Don't drop out. Finish. Learn to finish things, even if you hate them. Accept them as challenges.
1. You aren't interested in school because you're not making your time at school interesting. 2. You are naive. Highschool is a mechanism to socialize you and a filter for colleges. Nothing that goes on there is a waste of time. 3. Start acting like a Gr. 10 student.
I think a very important point is in danger of being buried in glibness here: > Highschool is a mechanism to socialize you and a filter for colleges. Nothing that goes on there is a waste of time. Being able to effectively interact with other people is an extremely important skill in life, and will become more so in the future as the world gets more crowded and less wealthy. There's an old aphorism: it's not what you…
Well said. I have started to meet many people who aren't super smart but they get things done because they don't paralyze themselves by analyzing why things won't work and just get things started. And by corollary, their confidence makes other people believe they can do it (even if they don't know how they will do it)
Recommended essay to ponder: "I ain't good but I got guts"
http://iggychaos.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-aint-good-but-i-got-...
what do you want us to tell you? drop out? startup? sucker up and go to college? do as your parents say? just do whatever makes you happy, and fuck the rest.
"do what makes you truly happy for the longest amount of time".
That implies some thinking about the future instead of blindly following something that may lead to short-term but not long-term happiness. Also, it requires that you figure out what makes you truly happy, not just surface-level happy.
It's a lot more difficult to accomplish, but so very much more rewarding.
Even if you have no connection to literature for the whole of your post-high-school life, my guess is that you'll get something valuable from those hours.
What you should not do:
1) Dropout. 2) Make bad grades. 3) Skip classes.
If you find school boring, at the very least make sure you dominate it. You're at an age where you have infinite possibilities before you- Kick school completely in the ass to make sure you don't close off all those opportunities.
The kids who drop-out/make terrible grades in school because it was "too easy" for them end up creating more obstacles for themselves. Yes, you might not need a HS Diploma to get a cool comp sci job, but it is certainly much easier to get a startup job if you graduated summa cum laude from Stanford than if you dropped out of high school.
The truly smart, great, inspirational people are good at multiple things- they often say that the best programmers are also the best communicators. They also great grasp of their underlying subject matter (which might not matter if you're working at youtube, but would be relevant if you're working at a bioinformatics startup, etc.)
You're going to want to be good at multiple things. As much as you love programming now, you don't know what might happen in the future. When I was in 10th grade, I still wanted to be a doctor! So, don't close off any doors by throwing in the towel. If it's too easy for you, just dominate it.
If you still understand what I'm saying, let's make a sports analogy. Imagine LeBron James in H.S. He's head and shoulders ahead above the competition. There's no reason he should be playing. He probably could have turned pro at 15; however if he had been bored, tanked through games, not tried, he would have been labeled as a "me-first" player who didn't play his heart out, and he wouldn't have the same opportunities he had today.
So, play your heart out in high school. Life exists beyond books. As I've said in my other posts, achieve your genetic potential- not only academically, but socially, and physically as well. Develop habits that will last you a lifetime: self-discipline. strong character and ethics. stand up to the bullies. support the other geeks. build loyalty and true friendships. identify your insecurities, and blast them away.
Treat high school as an experience, not as a place to go to learn- you've mastered the learning part (at least you better by getting rockstar grades), make a good effort to master the rest.
If you think high school is boring, wait till you enter the real world. For 95% of us, the boring 9 am lecture is replace by the boring 9 am meeting. At least your class is over in 45 minutes, and if you're lucky, you can pass notes to the cute girl sitting next to you. My 9 am meetings sometimes last 2 hours and its a room of all males.
Even if you're in a startup, you'll face tedium. Fights with your board. Fights with your investors. Accounting (bleh). Trying to protect your IP by filing a patent. A lot of that stuff is tedious and boring.
A lot of times in life, you'll be faced with tedious, repetitious tasks. Having the self-discipline to power through these, as well as making lemonade from lemons- I learned these skills in high school!
You want advice? Graduate, bang hotties, and hack the systems until they work for you. If you can't stand HS, you're going to hate a real job. Use your time now to learn how to manipulate your environment to your liking.
Your life will change more than you can ever know in the next 5-10 years. The best reason to do well in high school is to get into a great college. You will meet people who share your interests in college. But in order to get there you need to do well in high school. You can find your way into an awesome job with hacker skills and a crappy GPA, but not so with an awesome college. The people you will find in college w…
If you really do love learning, good classes can really expand your understanding of - and interest in - the world.