11th grade

by mapleoin • 18 years ago

117 138 18 years ago

jackowayed6• 18 years ago

When I saw this, my first reaction was "Randall is stalking me." I'm in 11th grade. It's Ruby, not Perl, and regular, not just a weekend, but it's basically my life. All the school work I have leaves me not enough hacking time. I wish I could get sucked into a startup so I'd have a reason to drop out.

Oompa• 18 years ago

I stopped doing homework to program. I'm not sure I'd advise the same to others, but because of all the extra-curricular activities I did with programming, I feel it was worth it.

jackowayed6• 18 years ago

yeah, I've contemplated that. doubt I'll do it though. I just do my homework quickly and code some still.

jimbokun8• 18 years ago

I remember never taking any homework home from any class, I just finished it all in study hall. And still had time to write Basic programs on the school computers, during the school day (not all of it in computer class).

Reading some of these comments, I suspect that the amount of homework has gone up, and that is the reason for much of the frustration. Not just that there is busy work, but the sheer quantity of busy work.

My kids are going to a Catholic elementary school, and a parent who transferred to their school from the public school said that the amount of homework is much less in the Catholic school, and her kids actually like school now. Frankly, I find the idea of lots of homework in elementary school bullshit. I don't believe elementary kids really benefit from multiple hours of homework every night, and believe that it could lead to burnout by middle school. My son in 1st grade gets homework, but it seems more to get him comfortable with the idea, rather than to consume 2 more hours that he could spend doing other things, including reading things that personally interest him.

That puts a lot of the complaints here in a different perspective for me. If there is so much homework that it doesn't leave time for Perl hacking, that's a big fail on the part of the school system.

mattmaroon• 18 years ago

Do you live in Ohio? I know a great startup looking for Ruby hackers there :)

jackowayed6• 18 years ago

sadly not.

aneesh• 18 years ago

Somebody needs to give you the other side of the story.

Don't even think about dropping out of high school to do a startup. Statistically, you have a ~99% chance (okay, I just made up that number) of failing and then you'll just be a high school dropout. Stay in school, and do something on the side.

There will always be opportunities for cool startups in the future, and probably after you finish college, you'll be much better equipped to go after those opportunities.

jackowayed6• 18 years ago

oh, I know that. I just am tired of school and wish I could code instead. I am actually considering taking a year off to do a startup or something before college. But I have every intention of graduating college (maybe even getting a masters in CS).

GHFigs6• 18 years ago

All the school work I have leaves me not enough hacking time.

Turn on noprocrast and get back to hacking. The constraint of school is useful, in that in terms of productivity, feeling like you don't have enough time is better than feeling like you have plenty of time. You just have to learn how to make the most of the time that you do have--which isn't easy or intuitive--because you'll need that skill no matter what you do later.

sown3• 18 years ago

Don't drop out for a startup. You could do what I did and drop out to go to college early. But you got to keep your eyes on the goal of finishing.

markessien• 18 years ago

When you first start coding, it's very addictive, because it gives you frequent 'success bursts'. All you're doing is chasing endorphins, you are likely not actually writing anything useful. You think it is, but it's rather rare that people of that age actually code any good.

You're physiologically addicted to this, if you drop out of school, you'll have a lot of company in all the other people who are addicted to other things that give them those moments of pleasure.

Raphael8• 18 years ago

Wow, that explains how I can code all the time but just tread water except for a few weeks a year.

GHFigs6• 18 years ago

Ah, 11th grade. That's the year I both failed English (with an A average in classwork and a B on exams, because of an F in homework) and taught myself enough Perl to create a sample-based text-to-speech system inspired by Evolution Control Committee's "Rocked by Rape".

Call me crazy, but I still think being able to make Dan Rather say "wild and wooly Nazi war criminals hooked on drugs and drinking binges bug out on fire" is more important and valuable than any essay I could have written about symbolism in Huckleberry Finn.

david9272• 18 years ago

> Call me crazy Ok, you're crazy.

The problem is, learning Perl allowed you to essentially get a fish for a day. Perl is not going to last. What you learned was essentially how to get a Rube Goldberg contraption to do what you wanted.

The symbolism in Huck Finn, however, is eternal. You can then read any great book, or look at any work of art, and understand it at a better level. What you've done is learned how to fish for yourself.

Raphael8• 18 years ago

It's not inherently less enriching, just a different skill. Learning Perl can allow him to understand code and algorithms at a deeper level.

Putting extra effort into high school English can be totally worth it, but it is a personal preference that shouldn't be pushed on the unwilling.

GHFigs6• 18 years ago

I said nothing about not appreciating or recognizing the symbolism in the book. I just didn't see any point in writing an essay on it when it would in fact be the same essay that everyone who'd ever been assigned the task had written. Lest you dispute that, remember that the grading of such essays puts less weight on unique insight or original thinking or even writing skill than it does on inclusion of the bleedingly obvious.

And so it seems to me that anyone capable of completing the assignment will have succeeded in little other than demonstrating how unnecessary it was for them to do it, and those that can't produce passing results will have gained no better understanding in the process of their failure.

The weight is in fact so biased to the side of redundancy that students routinely compose satisfactory essays without having read the book or understood it's symbolism or learned any skill but deception. And what does that say about the value of the assignment?

As a writing exercise the typical English essay may have marginal value, but significantly less than it would were the style subject matter not always so constrained to literary criticism, a genre which does not carry over well into others. The end product itself is practically worthless--the symbolism is as you said eternal and available to all at any time by reading the book. The only demand for English essays comes from people attempting to shirk creating their own.

I really don't think it's crazy for someone confident in their ability to succeed at such a task to regard it as less important than the challenge of developing a new skill and a tangible end product that is new to the world. I mightn't have have had the words to justify it at the time, but I certainly did feel that I was doing the right thing.

Perl not lasting is irrelevant. Perl was just the medium. Programming was the task, the art, that I got my practice in by wrangling that contraption. And it was practice I would not have gotten if I had relied on external rewards as motivation.

Raphael8• 18 years ago

Of course, Huck and Tom are the ultimate in mischief and going against establishment, so it's ironic that it has become the study material of forced assignments.

gamache2• 18 years ago

Tom is the anti-establishment, mischievous one -- he's set up with a family, so he has the room for mischief. Huck has no family, no one other than a drunk bum dad. He's interested in Tom's mischief, and that's his strongest connection to childhood, but mostly he's grown up beyond his years because he needs to take care of himself all the time.

GHFigs6• 18 years ago

Oh, the irony of the assigned reading was not lost on many, teachers included.

What does it mean when freshmen are assigned things like 1984 and Brave New World, Lord of the Flies and Les Misérables for sophomores, The Catcher in the Rye for juniors, and Catch-22 for seniors?

All are great books, worth reading, and worth assigning as the object of study, but it's sad that the curriculum is so focused on shallow analysis.

markbao8• 18 years ago

Currently in 11th grade. Can highly relate. I've been working on a few startups for a couple years, exited a few things (not for a lot), working in PHP and now Rails, and it's far more exciting than hs.

http://markbao.com (old, somewhat crappy stuff there, new stuff http://files.markbao.com/newstuff.jpg)

I'm not thinking about dropping out, though. The risk is too great to just drop out and work on startups. I'm trying to make the most out of my little time left as a teenager socially and educationally (albeit the subject matter is relatively less useful than I'd like), go to college with a business focus (if I can get in with my low-ball GPA), and see where it goes from there.

I'm mostly in the startup game now to make connections, understand a foundation of startup business and entrepreneurship, and then move on in the future with that knowledge as an advantage.

For any other high school people on HN: there are three laws to follow when you're attending a strict-time institution like HS:

  - Bust your ass.
  - Manage your time correctly.
  - Being under 18 doesn't make you special if you don't do special things. i.e.,
    have credentials and work to back yourself up, and forget about age for a bit.

Learning how to manage my time and bust my ass (both of which are like hand in glove) have helped me highly in managing schoolwork plus a few startups (Avecora/Avecora OnDemand/AdSocial, Ramamia, TickrTalk, DebateWare, Classleaf.)

In fact, school gives you an interesting time constraint and advantage. 37signals, who used to be a consultancy, had just 10 hours a week to work on Basecamp. And you know what they did? They busted their ass. And what came out of it was how to use time efficiently, embracing constraints. (Source http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/constraints_breed_bre...)

And with the last one, don't get arrogant because "ZOMG, I CODED AN APP, @web2personality WRITE ABOUT ME BECAUSE IM UNDER 18." You're not special if you're under 18. You've developed an application, and you've developed coding skills a few years before people generally do. What separates you from the general young entrepreneur press and YOU is a few years. Don't kid yourself into thinking you're all special because you can code @app, because in the long run, without actual skills and knowledge you're hurting yourself. There are some people who put on the façade of "Wow, you're a high school entrepreneur, that's so awesome. So what do you do?" but see through that and it's not really genuine most of the time. It took me a bit of time to figure out that nobody really gives much of a shit, so learn that. That's what I've noticed and stand by–your mileage may vary.

(I'm always glad to meet new high school entrepreneurs and people in general. My contact details are in my profile.)

trevelyan• 18 years ago

No Mark. Take advantage of college to do things you'll never have the chance to if you lock yourself into a software-only world. Show up for lectures on music theory, astrophysics, history. Try to learn a foreign language that works completely differently from English, like Chinese. You can audit most of these courses without signing up for them: just show up and never ask for permission unless it is a small course where you're personally noticed by the professor. And if nothing catches your curiosity, repeat the process again with different subjects the next semester. Get a healthy extracurricular life, since you'll learn a lot that way, especially about the importance of respecting your own value judgments and dealing with other people.

Never sell yourself short (i.e. "most likely") and don't form preconceptions of things because those are often self-fulfilling. Even if you do end up creating software, some of the most interesting coding work is solving specific challenges no-one else runs into because it is specific to a problem you and no-one else has. Find problems that interest you and you'll be driven to learn ways to handle them.

markbao8• 18 years ago

I know what you're getting at. Although I agree that it's very important to find extracurricular and extracareerular interests as well (and I am seeking other interest areas), I'm (although this must sound naïve) certain that entrepreneurship and business is my passion and thus I set it as my focus. I find drive, excitement and motivation in nothing else than startups.

I think college will be a great and eye-opening experience, which is why I'm not dropping out before college.

By the way, 你好。 I'm a native of China, born in Harbin, China.

thomasmallen2• 18 years ago

I'm looking over your stuff at http://markbao.com/ ... it looks like you're more concerned with appearing to be an entrepeneur than with the work itself and product quality. These sites are simply fluff.

Also, I'm not sure how you can really create quality small business collaboration tools without having been in the working world. Just an observation.

Making $10B is not a very admirable life goal: http://markbao.com/lifegoals . Not to mention that $10B will be today's $200M in fifteen years.

Good luck with what you're doing, and be sure to focus.

markbao8• 18 years ago

Thanks for the feedback.

>These sites are simply fluff.

The sites on there are pretty old, which is why I linked a newer list (incl http://ramamia.com) The third isn't an open site, fourth and fifth just experiments.

>Also, I'm not sure how you can really create quality small business collaboration tools without having been in the working world. Just an observation.

You're right, though I'm not really saying AOD is the best in the world while there are many more. It was something I wanted to manage my work, and it worked for me. Hopefully it helps others. If it doesn't, then so be it.

>Making $10B is not a very admirable life goal: http://markbao.com/lifegoals . Not to mention that $10B will be today's $200M in fifteen years.

It's a goal and an aspiration, that I'd like to meet. Care to elaborate on why it's not an admirable goal?

Again, thanks.

kirse• 18 years ago

I thought the same, but then I realized I did the exact same thing when I was his age. At that age, you're just starting to get your name out there and want to be noticed, so it's not a bad thing. Besides, that website just looks like a resume.

$10bn is an admirable aspiration, but it's not quite a goal (or even a stretch goal). Usually I see the aspiration as the end of the race, and the goals as the individual, clearly-defined steps taken to reach the finish line. In the case of gaining a $10bn net worth, chances are there's going to be a ton of goals along the way =) The whole SMART acronym for goals really is useful here:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2313828_write-smart-goals.html

Most importantly though, don't ever confuse net worth with self worth.

coryrc2• 18 years ago

A website is not a startup. A startup company can have its main business revolve around a website, but you seem to have confused the issue. You have played coder with some websites, but where is the revenue? the marketing? all the non-fun things?

p.s. Poolify -- you have to change the name. Poo-la-fi is how I read it.

markbao8• 18 years ago

I pretty much finished AOD before I figured out that it wasn't revolutionary or anything (and in that area, pretty much have to revolutionize to win.)

Poolify was an experiment.

It's a process, still figuring things out. My newest does have plans for the aforementioned.

zack• 18 years ago

This is so true. In fact, I'd wager that my perl skills are ultimately the most valuable component of my resume. I learned perl in 10th grade by hacking on AIM robots, messing around with the Net::AIM module I found on CPAN.

Then I got a job [still in 10th grade] writing a robot for some woman in Canada. This was fundamentally a huge thing, because it opened my eyes to the possibility that I, despite my lack of formal credentials, could generate income based on my skillset.

Honestly I haven't touched perl in years, and now most of my hacking is in PHP/JavaScript, and honestly I'm happy that I don't have to deal with perl anymore...but it definitely gives me some cred.

Llama book 4 lyfe!

tptacek4• 18 years ago

Putting it in a poorly-drawn web cartoon doesn't automatically make a trivial observation funny. Isn't this the topic of, like, 438973489 blog posts and essays?

mattdennewitz2• 18 years ago

sprinkle in a little "oh my god i had sex with a real girl look guys look at me she was real and we had actual sex im a god" and you've summarized my opinion of xkcd. thanks for the help.

tptacek4• 18 years ago

I have exactly this problem with xkcd too --- girls apparently make hackers feel slightly squicky --- hilarity ensues! Let's have sex in a room-sized ball pit! Awwwww!

ivank2• 18 years ago

xkcd was great back when it was http://xkcd.com/144/ or http://xkcd.com/123/

But no good things last forever.

falsestprophet• 18 years ago

This well drawn cartoon tells the story more completely and succinctly than any blog post. And yes, it is funny.

tptacek4• 18 years ago

There's a spectrum running from Bill Watterson to Jim Davis, and I'm entitled to my opinion about where Randall Munroe falls on it. :P

tome• 18 years ago

This sums it up well for me: http://plover.net/~bonds/asdf.html

Raphael8• 18 years ago

That'll put Munroe in his place.

mantas• 18 years ago

My 11th grade:

Coding at night Sleeping at school :p

Hoeworks? I thought they dont give any after 8th grade..

Raphael8• 18 years ago

Homework is at the discretion of the teacher, and is also highly correlated to subject. For example, math might be every day, history once a week or so, and a couple gym class health assignments the whole year. But it seems to have nothing to do with what grade you're in. I thought that writing assignments would gradually get longer, but my final essay senior year was half the length of my 7th grade science report on the human body, so I was clearly mistaken.

I always thought the whole sleeping at school thing was pretty lame. I can't say I haven't nodded off a few times, but it seems disrespectful to your teacher and peers. Although, it is a pretty funny break from material when the teacher creatively awakens or badgers the offender. (Or, best of all, let's them sleep through to the next period and awake to utter confusion.)

jimbokun8• 18 years ago

"I thought that writing assignments would gradually get longer, but my final essay senior year was half the length of my 7th grade science report on the human body, so I was clearly mistaken."

I remember my college freshman year class where every writing assignment could not exceed a single page. The professor's explanation: "You have spent several years learning how to put more things into your writing. Now you will learn to take things out." It was a very important lesson in writing concisely.

Not that this reflects your case, but it reminded me of this and thought I'd share.

timr12• 18 years ago

Ugh. Why is it that self-professed "nerds" are always so blatantly anti-intellectual? It's such short-sighted nonsense; nothing but pandering to the immaturity of every 16-year-old throughout history who day-dreamed his way through the classes that he didn't like, and justified it by whining: "when am I gonna have to use this?"

You know what? Sometimes you have to learn things that you don't think you'll "use in real life". Sometimes you have to learn how to read and write, and make persuasive arguments to something other than a machine. Sometimes you have to eat your vegetables. Sometimes you have to go to bed early, brush your teeth, and pay your bills. Life is full of hardships. Deal with it.

To all the high school kids who are reading this and thinking about dropping out, with visions of startups dancing in your heads: don't. Just don't. If you're truly the brilliant, self-guided whiz-kid that you imagine yourself to be, you'll dispatch with the homework quickly (it's easy, right?), and use the rest of your prodigious free time for more enjoyable tasks. If I could do it, so can you.

PieSquared6• 18 years ago

Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but you seem to think that high-school kids who are reading this are arrogant and stupid. I'd be willing to bet that most aren't, and most know that the long-term gains of staying in high school will outweigh the short term losses due to boredom.

As for learning things you won't "use in real life"? I agree, it's good. But I'm sorry, some classes don't just teach you things you won't use - they just don't teach you. How much good will it do you to analyze dozens of books in essays about their arbitrary qualities, eh? Not that much. Maybe English would be more useful if the high schools didn't have to cater to the lowest common denominator. But public schools have to, and the end result is that many classes are slow-paced, repetitive, and thus, boring.

And please. Please, please, please, can you stop considering high school nerds as anti-intellectual, narrow-minded, arrogant idiots? The amount of people who share your view make tolerating being one very difficult at times, especially when your administrators or teachers refuse to comprehend the idea that maybe it is possible for people to learn things on their own and not have to repeat them in class.

I'm sorry if this response sounds feels overly acrid or acidic, but honestly, as a "self-professed nerd", I find your comment extremely insulting, probably because I've had to deal with many people who base their entire opinions of me on such ideas.

timr12• 18 years ago

"Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but you seem to think that high-school kids who are reading this are arrogant and stupid."

You are. I'm talking to the people who see stuff like this, and think about dropping out. Clearly, that set doesn't include all high school kids.

"As for learning things you won't "use in real life"? I agree, it's good. But I'm sorry, some classes don't just teach you things you won't use - they just don't teach you. How much good will it do you to analyze dozens of books in essays about their arbitrary qualities, eh? Not that much."

...and when I was in high school, I said the same stuff. "Why do I have to learn about Keats?" "Why must I write structured essays about James Polk?" "What will I ever gain from knowing the rules to basketball?" "Why can't I just learn more about programming?" On and on.

But you know what? I was an idiot. Back then, I didn't have the perspective to know what was important and what was unimportant (for that matter, I'm still learning what to value). Had people let me study whatever I wanted to study in the 10th grade, I would have missed out on exposure to a lot of stuff that I find very valuable today. I would have turned out to be a very one-dimensional person.

Try not to find this advice condescending, and see it for what it is: one nerdy guy who has been there, telling you that you don't know everything, and don't have enough experience to make good judgments about what knowledge is valuable in life. In the meantime, you can learn something from every situation -- just so long as you want to learn.

sown3• 18 years ago

When I was in HS I recognized it as a waste. I didn't really learn much. The people around me didn't care and it mostly felt like day care. It all was mostly busy work. The only way to get a "challenging" education was to jump through a bunch of hoops, such as joining Key Club, marching band, AP everything, extracurricular this and that, all of it just a way of padding a college resume. Now those are things you will never use in real life. I did not want any of that.

So I dropped out early and went straight to college. No one cares what you did in high school. No one ever asks.

I don't know what kind of HS teaches about Keats but It did not appear in my enriched English classes (between normal and honors); 5 paragraph essays did, though. The few highlights of high school were the calculus class I had to fight tooth and nail to get into and of course programming. But I didn't just want to learn more about programming I also wanted to learn more about automata, AI, security and so on.

I also do appreciate the finer arts. I went to New Mexico Tech and learned a great deal of engineering but also humanities. It was only then that it was presented in a rigorus manner. What do you think will appeal to "nerds" like us? Memorizing a list of kings and dates? Or learning about the strategics and logistics of geo-politics?

As for your "life is full of hardships" quip, as if that tells me anything, that's a great story. It really is.

timr12• 18 years ago

You're talking to someone who not only went to a public high school (and not a particularly great one), but had to fight to take college courses, as well as the few AP classes the school offered. I was just as bored as you writing five-paragraph essays; I winced my way through such winning courses as "Home Economics" and "Typing", as well as a chemistry class where everything was taught as a fact to be memorized, without context or theory. When I went to college, I was convinced that I hated biology, because in high school it had been taught as a simple matter of memorizing nomenclature (I went on to get PhD in biochemistry, so I guess I was wrong about that).

So yeah, high school sucked for me sometimes, too. But I think the difference is this:

"The only way to get a "challenging" education was to jump through a bunch of hoops, such as joining Key Club, marching band, AP everything, extracurricular this and that, all of it just a way of padding a college resume."

Ya know what? I did a lot of that stuff because I enjoyed it. I didn't pad my resume by playing in the band; I absolutely loved to play (still do). And I took the AP classes because I learned more. I'll give you that Key Club kind of sucked, but then again, I never really joined -- I was too busy with the debate team and the newspaper. And my knowledge of Keats? Occasionally useful on trivia nights down at the bar.

You can see these things as hoops, or you can see them as opportunities. I'd rather know the guy who does the latter.

brk• 18 years ago

I enjoyed the Key Club in high school. But then again, that's how we referred to our lock-picking training sessions.

jackowayed6• 18 years ago

This seems like somewhat of a reply to my comment, just more general.

I actually am very intellectual. I kind of want to drop out, but that doesn't meant I have any intentions of doing so. I know that learning to write and such will be useful once in awhile in my adult life. And more importantly, I know that good grades will get me into a good college (and hopefully also get me a good scholarship).

I'm #1 class rank at the 42nd-highest-ranked public HS in the US. So just because nerds like coding more than school and wish they could trade school for coding doesn't make us all unintellectual

timr12• 18 years ago

I really wasn't targeting my comment toward you. This rant was a long time coming.

jey• 18 years ago

Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work? I fully support learning/reading/studying, but formal education only includes those things obliquely as an accidental side effect. High School is mostly about babysitting and obedience -- your success is measured by your willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops specified by authority figures. Sure, the ones who take an interest in the material will learn something, but that has a lot more to do with the individual than the school system.

I still think going to school and college is the right decision for well over 99% of students, but I think it's a big mistake to treat formal education as a one-size-fits-all panacea.

Retric5• 18 years ago

It's been 15 years (eep), but 11th grade was not a total waste of time. My public school was large enough to have the full remedial, general, advanced, and honors class spectrum so I could avoid the dumbest elements of society. Granted honor classes where still boring but least they tried to speed things up and my classmates where mildly interesting.

Anyway, I was classified as Exceptionally Gifted (IQ 160+?) / Learning Disabled which basically meant they had no idea what to do with me. I did the whole state science, math, and chess thing so I spent time around people who where focused and intelligent in high school most of the extreme cases seemed broken. I don't feel that having children jump through more and harder hoops leads to a happy healthy life. I would have have loved a shorter more focused school day, but I don't see the value of trying to cram more facts into high school. Adding a course in investing, speed reading, or other useful skills would have been nice.

PS: I don't know if I fear success, but I don't know how I could have coped if I was profoundly gifted and everyone around me had seemed even dumber.

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/underserved.htm

timr12• 18 years ago

"Er, what exactly is intellectual about 1300 hours of busy work?"

I don't grant your premise. There's busywork in everything, and I never found high school to be worse than anything that has come later in life. We've all got to wait in the same line at the supermarket.

When I read nerd complaints about formal education, I get the feeling that the prevailing sentiment is one of entitlement: "if I have to do anything I don't like to do, then the system is broken." Smart kids seem to have this sense of entitlement worse than many people -- probably because they're so easily bored.

Trouble is, you're always going to have to live and work with people who are slower than you are. You can skip out on high school in an attempt to avoid it, take college classes early, rush into graduate school, whatever. Eventually, however, you run smack into the wall of society, and you've got to work within its framework. The ability to persevere through busywork is an extremely valuable skill in that context.

pasbesoin2• 18 years ago

Slightly off-topic, but

s/high school/corporate life/

Some of the same social structures apply to both, as well.

The cartoon applies to my comment, as well. "The way we've always done it" can be a mercilessly rote and inefficient path. The bit of Perl I picked up (along with a hodgepodge of regex, SQL, VBA -- I know, but I had to use the tools at hand -- and whatnot) boiled a five person department down to one person, all the while handling significantly increased complexity with greatly improved accuracy.

If I hadn't taken the initiative and taught myself, none of it would have happened.

Of course, the ex-jock brought in from the outside to CEO, and his team whacked it, anyway. Just like high school.

But I walked away with a better skill set, to a better job.

steveblgh• 18 years ago

11th grade for me seemed quite intellectual. In those 1300 hours of busy work I learned about infinite series, analytical geometry, differential calculus, basic group theory, basic linear algebra, and this is just maths. While I had to relearn most of this in college in more rigorous format, most of my intuition in maths I have from this time.

lallysingh• 18 years ago

11th grade was when I read Applied Crypo & Practical Internet Security within a few weeks of each other... Spent the next few years incredibly paranoid...

It's mostly under control now.

petercooper• 18 years ago

Why is it that self-professed "nerds" are always so blatantly anti-intellectual?

Anti-intellectual is the wrong term. Anti-system or anti-academia would be better. The nerds you refer to generally believe strongly in learning and becoming smarter (indeed, knowledge and intelligence are measures by which many nerds brag) but not so strongly in the system of academia, "qualifications" and systems of education.

jimbokun8• 18 years ago

I believe the argument is that claiming that a weekend hacking Perl is of greater value than an entire year's worth of academic school work undervalues skills like reading and writing, history, even math and the sciences. Maybe if you are arguing that you knew the entire curriculum from front to back before entering the 11th grade then one weekend of Perl might be of greater value. But if there are even a few things in each subject you didn't know before hand then claiming that a weekend of Perl is more valuable is just hyperbole.

rmobin• 18 years ago

I definitely agree with the point that some drudgery (with benefits that aren't immediately obvious) is necessary in schools, but the state of public education in the US is pretty bad, and in many cases this cartoon is spot on.

GHFigs6• 18 years ago

I wholeheartedly reject the notion that a person of school age is inherently unable to determine when his time is being wasted. Frankly, I think your argument is a crass generalization.

For starters, it's ridiculous to think that a person supposedly capable of learning what is taught by the system is incapable of learning how to accurately identify inefficiencies and failures in the system. This ought to be an acknowledged fact in any system that claims to respect it's students or has any faith in their ability to succeed.

Furthermore, it would be downright ignorant to suggest that these inefficiencies didn't exist. They are widely acknowledged as existing in the quality of the curriculum, the teaching, the educational environment, the materials, and in the bureaucracy which surrounds it all. Schools have problems. It's absurd to think that the very people for whose benefit this is all said to exist should simply grin and bear them. In fact, I can't think of a more dangerous attitude to instill in the workers and voters of the next generation than "deal with it". Likewise, giving them the idea that learning is supposed to involve large amounts of pain and hardship is absolutely counterproductive to the goal of education.

Learning is not a hardship. It can be a challenge, sometimes a very large one, but by and large it is an autotelic activity that people are born quite enamored of, and I believe depicting it as an unfortunate fact of life for the sake of making people tolerate their own suffering is "short-sighted nonsense" that most often puts people off of the whole activity. That students find their schooling a hardship worth avoiding ("Math is hard, let's go shopping!") has considerably less to do with the nature of the subject itself or immaturity on the part of the student than it does the excision of most of what is pleasant and motivating about learning in favor of imposing artificial constraints and quantifiable metrics of dubious meaning.

That it is entirely possible to graduate from school as an oaf and ignoramus is indicative of a problem, and for those that both detect that and are not motivated by the extrinsic rewards on offer, it renders the value of obtaining those rewards dubious. In short, if you care about learning more than you care about graduating, modern public high school may not be a good place for you. It may even be harmful.

It's not uncommon for highly intelligent students with passionate interests and a willingness to expend great effort in pursuit of those interests to have an inordinately difficult time with the work they're assigned, being unmoved by the extremely abstract and distant goal of graduation or the threat of punishment so often delivered to underachievers. Those that "deal with it" may wind up with poor or highly inconsistent academic records, which further erodes what value the experience might have had toward achieving their goals by constraining their options for higher education. I think it's a terrible shame that we tell these students that they are wasting their talents, while simultaneously requiring that the majority of their time and attention during the years of their lives where they are most capable of developing those talents be devoted to a system which is at best inefficient and at worst actively damaging.

Make no mistake--I would agree that given the circumstances of inexperience, lack of leverage, and an education system that is at times ferociously resistant to dissent, it can be extremely difficult for a person in that position to make such a large decision with a high degree of confidence, and that errors in judgement are not rare. But I also think that anyone attempting to make it through life without risking such errors is best advised to kill themselves post-haste.

Deciding to drop out is not a decision that should be made lightly or without a sufficiently better alternative readily available, but to dismiss the option entirely on the grounds that suffering is inevitable is foolish and arbitrary.

timr12• 18 years ago

"It's not uncommon for highly intelligent students with passionate interests and a willingness to expend great effort in pursuit of those interests to have an inordinately difficult time with the work they're assigned....those that "deal with it" may wind up with poor or highly inconsistent academic records, which further erodes what value the experience might have had toward achieving their goals by constraining their options for higher education."

You probably don't want to hear this, but even straight-A students are bored by some of what they learn. The difference is that the straight-A students have learned to persevere through boredom, while the smart-but-underperforming students often haven't. It's a useful filter, and the people who discriminate against the latter group aren't simply being capricious.

(For the record: I was always one of the latter group. I'm coming at this from the dirty side of the filter.)

strlen• 18 years ago

I don't see how being opposed to doing busy work in high school (and consequently day dreaming through less interesting classes and coding until 4 in the morning in place of doing homework) makes one anti-intellectual.

I was the stereotype for this comic: in 11th grade I got cold-called by a recruiter who didn't know my age, but saw my resume after seeing my post on a LUG mailing list. I took the job (a jr. sys admin position) essentially drove the grades for most of my classes (except two, where I got A's -- that I'll mention later) down to D or C level.

Sounds like a typical anti-intellectual nerd: barely passing classes just to skip out after lunch to go work a sys-admin job and code Perl, right? Well, out of the two A's the first A was fairly easy to guess: AP Computer Science. The second A was AP US History (complete with a 5 on the exam, highest grade in the class, excellently written essays).

Senior year wasn't much different (except s/Computer Science/Calculus/ and s/US History/Biology/). In the end my GPA wasn't good enough to compete in freshman admissions so I ended up enrolling in a community college. I ended up getting a near 4.0 gpa there and transfering to a to a private university after just a year.

To transfer I needed to write a personal statement. I wrote it on my whole experience: of getting poor grades in most courses, but enjoying the AP program and taking on "adult" work while still a school student.

In community college and university I took courses in philosophy, history, political science and literature all in addition to my major courses.

After college I only interviewed at two search engines and only for mid to senior level positions. I'd think most of my class mates who worried about having a 4.5 (yes, that's possible with AP courses) GPA in high school, Key Clubs and sports teams weren't nearly that lucky (the CS majors amongst them are likely still stuck trying to make their way out of doing QA/support or writing business logic in Java), nor did they end up developing as broadly interested in the intellectual sphere (choosing to concentrate on making their transcripts look good vs. on learning).

That's my story but it's not the only one like this. There are plenty of nerds who may be poor performers in high school but who are very well rounded intellectually and who ultimately end up shining in college (they get in by hacking" their way in: either through extra-curricular like robotics teams [only extra-curricular that I really regret not joining in high school; one member of that team ended up at a UC school with a 1.7 gpa] or by transferring from a community college, or through a alumni recommendation from a boss/coworker).

Problem is: high school instruction generally is poor, teachers coming from bottom of the college class or as a "last resort" option for not getting into med-school/grad-school (while there are many great exceptions, e.g. my calculus and AP US history teachers being the ones who influenced my the most); it's easy to cram one's way into college (and high schools are pressured to become cram schools) and there's too much emphasis on mentally dull labour (physical education classes, sports, busy work) in school.

I agree with one thing: don't drop out of HS to work (I didn't) -- either for yourself or for someone else. Also, don't drop out of college to work for someone else. Do, however, consider doing your senior and junior years of high school at a community college (another regret I have: not taking advantage of such a program offered by our HS/CC district).

danw• 18 years ago

Not HN material

vaksel• 18 years ago

the problem is that our school system wastes WAAAAY too much time. Why? Because they need to coddle to the slow and dimwitted, instead of hurting their feelings and sending them to remedial classes.

They could probably teach the K12 material in half the time if they tried.

nomoresecrets• 18 years ago

Wow. I'm in the UK, and the main reaction I'm getting from reading all these comments is "Wow, is US education really that bad?"

Seriously, High School is 1300 hours of 'busy work'? Or just memorising lists of facts?

The equivalent period of my education in the UK could in no way be described in this way.

It's not really this bad, is it? It's just people dissing studying things they don't want to study, right?

PieSquared6• 18 years ago

It's hard to tell without being in both. I think it's both busywork and just whining combined.

jbjohns• 18 years ago

The pre-college education in the US really is that bad (pg references it in one of his essays). I took a typing class in 9th grade (closest thing we had to computers in my "backwoods" school). I was typing up to around 115 wpm or so, maybe faster, but the teacher was so awful I didn't take any of her classes again until 12th grade. By then, for some reason my speed had lowered and after years of touch typing I've never got the speed back to what it was.

Lots of people remember some specific quote a teacher said that effected their life in some way. The quote I remember from this teacher was "I don't know and I don't care, I'm just here to get a paycheck".

charlesju• 18 years ago

On a completely unrelated note: I thought Perl was a girl, haha.

(I actually build a AIM bot in Perl when I was in High School, so don't judge me -- I can be nerdy too)

tokenadult2• 18 years ago

Obligatory Paul Graham essay link, which I think I added the last time this same cartoon was submitted to HN:

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

nazgulnarsil• 18 years ago

save two years off your life by taking the GED and attending community college for credit if your parents will let you. when your friends are graduating high school and becoming freshmen at universities, you'll be a transferring junior. the lower division stuff at college is what high school courses should be.

Raphael8• 18 years ago

Ha. My mom told me to do exactly this, but I wasn't ready to abandon my friends and safe, familiar school.

It seemed daunting faced with yet another 4 years of school, college, and I had fantasies about dropping out in the middle when a business starts to take off. But the first 1/12 went by in the blink of an eye, so this is looking actually doable. Plus, many at this age would much rather be in college than working a boring job, so it would be short-sighted to run away from such an appealing community.

jamii• 18 years ago

Thinking back over my entire secondary education this is what I learned:

History: Very little stuck.

English: I guess I got a lot of practice writing. But at no point did we ever discuss useful things like how to write clearly and effectively. Instead we spent 5 years deconstructing literature, a process which consists of skimming over half the text and then making up flowery rubbish.

Geography: Simple physical geography. Weather, volcanoes etc

Science: Actually quite a lot. My science teachers seem to have done a fairly good job.

Maths: Nothing. Whilst I passed all my exams I didn't really understand anything and left school incapable of constructing simple proofs. I now have a masters in maths so its not like I didn't have the ability either, but most of my first year at university was spent correcting misconceptions I had gained at school.

Computing: After 7 years of school I knew roughly how a computer worked but still couldn't write a simple program.

Now that doesn't strike me as 7 years worth of education. Most of the counter-arguments on this page seem to come down to the necessity of learning things you don't want to learn. The problem is that I didn't. I, like most people, cannot be made to learn something by fear of examination. It has to be made interesting or useful otherwise I will memorise it, write it down in an exam and promptly forget it.

The problem with school education is that it's just not very efficient. I don't think that there's some grand conspiracy to keep the downtrodden masses in their place. It's just that our theories and methods of education are out of date and ineffective. Schools have worked more or less the same way since the 17th century.

Even in university I went to lectures where I spent 4 hours every morning for 6 days a week imitating a human photocopier. Mass lectures don't make sense in the modern age. It would be far more effective to just video the top lecturers and let the rest spend their time actually talking to the students, rather than at them.

I could rant as well about education being taken over by exams. How often at school did you practice working in groups, collaborating on joint essays, learning to function in a team? I would guess almost never. Because it makes it too difficult to grade an individuals contribution. Did you ever do original research or experiments? Were you given free rein to choose projects? Did you ever see an exam question that made you stop and think? It sometimes seems like the entire education system is built around the fear of cheating.

I know its easy to sit around and complain. Its certainly a popular thing to do in geek circles. But we have to recognise that there is a problem in order to fix it.

Progress is being made, slowly. The rise of open courseware means that educational materials are no longer being treated as commodities that universities have to protect and keep secret. Once its out in the open artificial selection will take hold and material will begin to improve. The best lecturers now have audiences of tens of thousands rather than just a single room.

ivanzhao• 18 years ago

before we all argue this with our own experiences, we need to first put the "human variability" into account...

hooande• 18 years ago

If it hadn't been for that weekend I spent messing with perl in 11th grade, I wouldn't have gotten into ycombinator

11th grade

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