“What is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so BORING.” ~Sherlock
That was my life through high school. I broke the IQ test as a freshman. My SAT scores were in the 99th percentile. I had to carefully limit my vocabulary of words and ideas, even with the high school prize pupils.
Worse, I could not afford University straight out, and had to work for a couple of years.
Going to University was *wonderful*. I seldom had to edit down my vocabulary. I went to all kinds of symposiums (in and outside my majors) – whatever sounded interesting. My major was Physics. I ended up in two research projects (in AI) as an undergraduate – simply as it was fun!
(Only much later did I realize that was unusual.)
This was all in the late 1970’s. Today we have the web, and connections are possible now that were not remotely possible then.
Still, we are human, emotional creatures, at base. To be physically in the company of your peers – possibly for the first time in your life – is powerful.
To be physically in the company of your peers – possibly for the first time in your life – is powerful.
You had a great intellectual experience in college. That’s fantastic. You worked on a couple of research projects. Great.
People sometimes misunderstand my view… maybe I communicate it poorly. I do not tell young people to avoid college. Depending on your career objectives, it is undeniable that college can be a useful too.
This being said, the majority of college graduates are unhappy regarding their career.
My advice, and it applies to people of all ages, is to take charge of your own education.
As for your view that there is no substitute for meeting really smart people in person… I agree with that… but college may not be the best place for that in 2016.
Go to something like meetup.com. You will find that the smartest hackers in your part of the world are probably holding regular meetings on all sorts of cool new ideas. Typically these meetings cost nothing. Because there is no prestige in these meetings, the people who show up are there to learn, really learn…
Now, I am not actively encouraging people to attend such meetings, but if your goal is to learn through physical interactions with smart people… you probably want to learn at alternatives beyond “let us do homework 3 together”.
You missed an important, perhaps the most important advice for John. Learn to be less introverted.
I understand that this is difficult for some and runs counter to their nature, indeed I struggle with it myself, but from a purely mathematical perspective it makes sense.
Every interaction you have with another person increases the number of potentially beneficial introductions, (to both people and their ideas), by the number of people that person knows.
If you actually make a connection that lasts beyond one interaction, it is likely that through that person you may meet another person.
So crossing that threshold of sociability, the ability to extend a connection beyond one meeting, has the potential to open connections to all of the connections of all of that persons connections, you just went from logarithmic to geometric progression.
So when people say that someone like Edison or Ford was “in the right place at the right time”, bullshit. A chain of interactions in which they were open to meeting others and listening to them led them inexorably to that exact place and time where genius became not just thinkable but possible.
Great advice!
Great! It shed a light on many problems I’m also facing right now.
Yeh. I am going to push back on this, a little.
Do you watch the “Sherlock” series on BBC?
“What is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so BORING.” ~Sherlock
That was my life through high school. I broke the IQ test as a freshman. My SAT scores were in the 99th percentile. I had to carefully limit my vocabulary of words and ideas, even with the high school prize pupils.
Worse, I could not afford University straight out, and had to work for a couple of years.
Going to University was *wonderful*. I seldom had to edit down my vocabulary. I went to all kinds of symposiums (in and outside my majors) – whatever sounded interesting. My major was Physics. I ended up in two research projects (in AI) as an undergraduate – simply as it was fun!
(Only much later did I realize that was unusual.)
This was all in the late 1970’s. Today we have the web, and connections are possible now that were not remotely possible then.
Still, we are human, emotional creatures, at base. To be physically in the company of your peers – possibly for the first time in your life – is powerful.
@Bannister
To be physically in the company of your peers – possibly for the first time in your life – is powerful.
You had a great intellectual experience in college. That’s fantastic. You worked on a couple of research projects. Great.
People sometimes misunderstand my view… maybe I communicate it poorly. I do not tell young people to avoid college. Depending on your career objectives, it is undeniable that college can be a useful too.
This being said, the majority of college graduates are unhappy regarding their career.
My advice, and it applies to people of all ages, is to take charge of your own education.
As for your view that there is no substitute for meeting really smart people in person… I agree with that… but college may not be the best place for that in 2016.
Go to something like meetup.com. You will find that the smartest hackers in your part of the world are probably holding regular meetings on all sorts of cool new ideas. Typically these meetings cost nothing. Because there is no prestige in these meetings, the people who show up are there to learn, really learn…
Now, I am not actively encouraging people to attend such meetings, but if your goal is to learn through physical interactions with smart people… you probably want to learn at alternatives beyond “let us do homework 3 together”.
Useless narcissist.
You missed an important, perhaps the most important advice for John. Learn to be less introverted.
I understand that this is difficult for some and runs counter to their nature, indeed I struggle with it myself, but from a purely mathematical perspective it makes sense.
Every interaction you have with another person increases the number of potentially beneficial introductions, (to both people and their ideas), by the number of people that person knows.
If you actually make a connection that lasts beyond one interaction, it is likely that through that person you may meet another person.
So crossing that threshold of sociability, the ability to extend a connection beyond one meeting, has the potential to open connections to all of the connections of all of that persons connections, you just went from logarithmic to geometric progression.
So when people say that someone like Edison or Ford was “in the right place at the right time”, bullshit. A chain of interactions in which they were open to meeting others and listening to them led them inexorably to that exact place and time where genius became not just thinkable but possible.