What you’ll wish you’d known as a high school student.
Do you have people you have never met who teach you a lot?
For me, Paul Graham is one of them. Highly unlikely I would ever meet him.
Of all the exceptional things he blogs about, one thing I highly recommend is his ‘almost given speech to high school students’ –
“What you’ll wish you’d known”
He talks about how when adults asks kids the question, ‘what do you want to be when we grow up’, it is usually a conversation starter to get you talking.
Predictably, I always said the things I knew would make my parents proud. That I want to top every class and become an engineer or a doctor.
*Upwind*
He says that instead of us deciding what we want to be in 20 years time and what we should do now to get there, one doesn’t commit to anything in the future, “but just look at the options available now, and choose those that will give you the most promising range of options afterward”
“It’s not so important what you work on, so long as you’re not wasting your time. Work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you’ll take.
The best protection is always to be working on hard problems.
Hard means worry: if you’re not worrying that something you’re making will come out badly, or that you won’t be able to understand something you’re studying, then it isn’t hard enough”
It is something I think about as we raise our (very opinionated) 6 year old.
It is also something I think about every time there is this constant sinking feeling in my stomach when working on hard things.
Do check out his article and his blog. Maybe it helps your kid. Maybe it does you.
Paul Graham’s blog – http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html
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