Never, never, not in a million years, listen to a single word of advice uttered by someone who isn't happy with their life. They have absolutely nothing to teach you. This is strong stuff, granted, but I think it is tremendously important.
Every single piece of bad advice I have ever received was from someone who didn't like their life. If you're unhappy, you have two basic options. You can do something to make yourself happier, or you can rationalise a reason why happiness isn't possible. The former is generally a steady upward slog. The latter is like quicksand - the longer you're there, the more solidly you become stuck.
All the bad career advice I got was from people who didn't like their job. Some believed that jobs were just inherently unpleasant, so you might as well go for the unpleasantness that pays the most and gives the best pension. Some believed that good jobs were just inaccessible for 'the likes of us', so there's no point getting you hopes up. Some were so uncertain of their employability that they took the first job offered to them and never dared do anything to jeopardise it. I heard rationalisations dressed up as philosophy, as ethics, as macroeconomics, but they were rationalisations all the same.
Learning from the mistakes of others is useful and productive, but an unhappy person can never provide any insight into how to be happy. Either they don't know what would make them happy, or worse, they do know but won't do it. Never underestimate how hard someone will work to rationalise why they just can't go back to college or start their own business or visit Europe or leave their awful wife.
When seeking advice, ignore status, intelligence and experience. Seek out the happy people, they're the only people who can help you.
I completely and profoundly disagree. Why do you think many great philosophers, intellectuals, and achievers have struggled with depression? Because they made bad decisions? There are plenty of idiots dispensing awful advice while wearing a smile on their face, as well. If you want to feel good, talk to a happy person that will tell you what you want to hear. If you want the truth, talk to a thinker.
I don't agree. As already point, many philosophers, scientists, programmers have been bitter people, largely unhappy with life.
Some people are bitter by design. No matter what I do, I will always have many complains to be unhappy about. Right now, I am trying to boot-up my startup. If it doesn't work, I will be bitter. If it works out, I will be bitter about my other pet peeve - schools killing creativity and I would like to contribute towards making it better. If it too is sorted out, I would be bitter about people being bitter about each other owing to religious, regional or some other non-rational biases. I am bitter about Government corruption and lack of infrastructure in my country. I am bitter about common man's rights not implemented in spirit. I am bitter about morons dividing people on religion and reason, and worse, people listening to them.
All of these isn't going to change(some might) in my lifetime. And the only way to be happy about it is to turn a blind eye. If happiness is ignorance, I don't seek it.
This would be blatant generalization, but many happy people I have met are blissfully ignorant. They have accepted life as is, and are happy with the current state of thing.
I generally listen to all advice, and ignore most of it - the adviser being happy or not doesn't figure in my criteria.
> Never, never, not in a million years, listen to a single word of advice uttered by someone who isn't happy with their life. They have absolutely nothing to teach you.
"You're smart." It took me five years of coasting on that presumption before I realized that being "smart" isn't nearly enough. I'm still working (after a few more years) to develop the habits that would have come from hearing "you're a hard worker."
"Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts."
tl;dr: Praise kids for their hard work, not for being smart.
I always cringe a bit when I come home for the holidays and get praise from family on my purported intelligence and achievements. I feel as though this mentality kept me intellectually fat and happy for most of my teenage years, inhibiting the drive to constantly grow that I've fostered since entering college.
I hate to say me too, but definitely me too. I'm convinced that I procrastinate more because of being told how smart I was as a kid, as opposed to being petrified of not working hard enough.
Even worse is when people are told they are smart when really they might just be about average or a little above and really need to put the hard yards in rather than coasting.
"You should buy a house - it's the best investment you can make!" This was the advice I was given countless times when I lived in Nebraska in the early 00's, at my first job out of college. Thank God I didn't listen.
It just didn't make any sense: I was 23 years old, had plenty of talent, and could't wait to get out of Nebraska, but I was supposed to buy a house? I couldn't think of a worse way to spend my money, time, and freedom.
Instead of spending my evenings fixing up my "house," I was blogging and learning to code. Instead of spending my money on a mortgage and property taxes, I bought GOOG & AAPL.
After a few years, a startup in Silicon Valley found me, liked my blog, and moved me out to California. Once I was done working for other people, I had enough of a stock portfolio to fund starting my own business.
If I had followed that advice, I would still be in Nebraska, would owe more than my house would be worth, and would hate my job/life.
"The best investment you can make" is always in yourself.
+1 I think many people like houses as investments because they FEEL so "real" and tangible - you can touch them! Feelings are not a good way to decide what to invest in, however.
I'm not exactly sure how to word it, and I'm not aware of a single source who advised me on it, but it seems like there's a pervasive feeling in society that "If I want to learn something, I need a teacher." I outgrew this mental model around 14, and now in college I feel so much further ahead of many of my peers who are lucky to have taken a HS programming course once before choosing a programming degree. I wish I had outgrown it much earlier, I feel like there was a lot of lost potential in my earlier years that I wasted because I had no interest in teaching myself things. Who knows how devastating this "cultural advice(?)" is to people who still haven't outgrown it.
I can definitely echo your feeling of lost potential in my earlier years. I too am a current college student and wish I could go tell my 15-year-old self to learn Python instead of spending most of my free time playing Counter-Strike.
The truth isn't that you don't need a teacher. You may be able to learn everything from a book or solitary practice, like yourself. But others probably can do that sometimes, may sometimes need a teacher, may sometimes need to discuss with peers, etc. And I don't mean that some people are visual learners, or readers, etc. I mean that people learn different topics in different ways, on different days, with different contexts, etc.
I think the cultural norm should be that if one way of learning isn't working for you, try another way. Practice, read it yourself, ask a friend for help, get a tutor, whatever you need.
A related assumption is that the best way to learn is through classes or lectures. I can learn faster by reading, experimenting, and asking questions when I'm stuck. Forums are your friend.
There's a big difference between and teacher and an advisor. Teachers are absolutely a dime a dozen, and the capable student can teach themselves anything a teacher might. However, my research advisor (and more informal "advisors" who I've come across in open source contribution, TAing, etc.) have been absolutely invaluable. You can absolutely teach yourself to program, but you'll never be heads and shoulders above the rest without seeking out people who really know what they're talking about and absorbing the best they have to offer.
True, being able to teach yourself is a hugely valuable skill. But I think you also shouldn't underestimate the value of a mentor (as in someone to guide your self teaching) - I've been teaching myself guitar for years and finally got around to getting some lessons. It's been an eye opener seeing the obvious things I missed by just relying on myself.
I somewhat agree. You dont need a teacher to learn anything, but you do need a mentor. To me mentors have changed my life, career and the way I approach everything. They usually enlighten you with their own experience and help guide you when you are lost.
In 1987 or 88, when I was a teenager, my parents, noting my emerging passion for coding, tried to sign me up for a Explorer Scout "post" whose focus was programming.
This should have been good, but I came back from the first meeting not wanting to go back. I just didn't click with the group, and the language/environment they were using (Fortran on an IBM System/3x0 variant, I think) were of no interest to me.
This upset my father, in particular, because he was convinced that the programming I was doing in my bedroom (C, on a Commodore Amiga) was of no value. Programming a personal computer was fine for a kid, but making a career in software meant doing "serious" work, which to my (very non-tech) parents, meant programming IBM mainframes.
In retrospect, their career advice was about as bad as it could have been. I was learning exactly what I should have been learning. I was completely right to ignore them and continue doing what I was doing.
Except I could never shake the idea of "serious" vs. "not serious" software development. So while I continued to learn C, then learned C++, when I finished college in the mid-90s I went into a "serious" industry . Despite living within walking distance of Netscape's old headquarters, I completely missed out on the dot-com era, justifying it by telling myself that I was doing "serious" work. And while I've never been unemployed, until this year, I can't say I ever did anything remotely notable, or fun, either.
And worse of all: it became obvious within the last 3-4 years that my industry was a career dead-end. If I stuck with it, I'd eventually be one of those stereotypical unemployed, and unemployable, 40-something developers.
But there is a silver lining: over the last couple of years I started playing around with some new technologies and ended up reinventing myself. Earlier this year, I quit my old job and am now working for a startup that's doing stuff that's nowhere near my Dad's old idea of "serious". But I've treated my new job seriously, working harder than at any time in my career. And I'm happier now than I've been in nearly a decade.
"Quit your job and start a company" - Yep, that totally didn't work out as I had hoped. Stuff that are easy to do when there is no pressure suddenly become impossible. Thinking about it as walking on a board one foot wide on the ground, easy right. Now, put that board one thousand foot up in the air now try walking on it, not so easy now that your life depends on it. For some bootstrapping after your normal work hours is a better path to startup.
"Change the system from the inside" - If you are apart of a system that encourages physical and mental abuse of its members, don't try to change it, leave. Systems include: Fraternity, Brotherhoods, Cults, Gangs, Churches, Country, Jobs and the like. In general don't try to change systems, just move to a better one.
In the early 80's at Rice University my academic advisor steered me from computer science which I enjoyed (APL rocked!) to chemical engineering because "computers will be programming themselves in 20 years and comp sci isn't real engineering anyways". I hated chem eng but after a decade of detours final came back to coding. I didn't mind the detours but it was spectacularly bad advice and I was dumb enough to take it.
Variations of "you'll just meet someone" and "dating will get easier in your 30s" and "the important thing is you do well in school, and everything else will follow". Fuck that. Someone should have shaken the shit out of me when I was 18, forced me to go to a school with a normal gender ratio, and gotten me to strike while the iron was still hot while I still had some sexual attraction to women, and never take for granted any time a woman is vaguely interested.
When people ask me about "computers" I often remind them that it's the only skill that will allow you to work in just about any industry. Art, hard science, medicine, whatever...
If I were a blacksmith in a mediaeval village I would make sure my kids knew that they were tool makers, not blacksmiths. People will always need tools weather they are made in a forge or a factory.
Similar scenario -- though I admit, a lot of what I was doing on the computer during those years was probably 'deadend'. A lot of my formative years were spent digging into MUDs, building computers & just random nerdery as a whole.
Despite a lot of it simply consisting of mucking around, a lot of generic information and knowledge stuck consistently. Despite being told frequently I was 'wasting my life away', in the process I was slowly sponging in information that would later assist me in launching a startup that nowadays employs even my father. :)
I do wish that early on my parents were more supportive of my passions and interests, and it's a mistake I hope not to make with my own children. When you see passion in someone, be it with any topic, it shouldn't matter whether or not it's something that can generate financial stability. These days with the sheer size of the internet -- there's a market (rule 34 I think ;)).
Do what you love, find interesting ways to fuel others with your passion and you can make just about anything pay the rent.
Parents still to this day share this sentiment. Although my Dad has come around a lot in recent years when I've explained how some internet startups have done and the types of jobs available in programming.
Plus it's easier to see now, Dad uses the internet every day now so it's easier to see how much job opportunity is there.
It didn't mess up my life, but when I was in high school the conventional wisdom was that being well rounded helped you get into good colleges. I spent a lot of time playing team sports and the saxophone; neither of those are hobbies of mine today. I wish I had spent some of that time doing something that would still be relevant to me today, like programming (there are a LOT of successful founders that started programming in their early teens; I didn't start until college).
It's just something people say to console, not actually anything that's remotely useful or true. Magic never happens on its own. You have to go out there and make it happen.
I'm honestly not sure I'm understanding you properly, but if I am, this is true up to a point. We like to believe in a world where everyone's results are directly correlated with how much work they've done, but that's just as much a fantasy as it is to believe that all you have to do is sit around and wait for the right opportunity to magically appear.
I hate to break it to you, but the most successful people in society usually got there not only from hard work but from being in the right place at the right time.
I wouldn't go quite as far as "messed up" but between 2003-2007 I was frequently hassled by people to "buy a house" because it "never goes down (much) in value."
I argued that that was a nonsensical claim, although over the previous 30 years it was pretty much true (the UK dip in the early 1990s was quite short and localized). In mid 2007 I noticed prices continuing to go up and up and bit the bullet. Naturally, I exchanged contracts the very month before prices started to go down. Out of principle, I'm stuck with this house until it's worth more than I paid for it ;-)
Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit, thus the advice that comes from colleagues along the lines of "don't do the homework, it's really a waste of time" when everybody is actually doing it, could screw you over. It didn't mess up my life per se, but definitely had an impact on my grades when I was a naive freshman.
It's funny, all the advice I had from upperclassmen when I started college was "do your homework and go to class", and I did neither, and I don't regret it at all. Yes, it hurt my grades. However, I've found that my grades haven't mattered at all.
If there's anything you don't want as a role model in college, it's the mythical "slacker genius" (I say mythical because pretty much everyone who falls into this category is either a work of fiction or someone who works both hard and efficiently). Go to class, do the homework, study (and if you don't know how, learn!). If you get good at those things, there's plenty of time left over to have fun.
> Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit
Is this true when it's a student telling the outside world? It's a useful strategy to claim one's working really hard in school to explain why he hasn't been calling / doesn't want to visit over spring break / doesn't have a girlfriend / why the parents should keep sending money / etc.
> Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit
My experience was the exact opposite. People liked to compete to see who had the most coursework to do. People would complain about having to pull all nighters, but still spend hours on youtube or facebook beforehand. Some people were genuinely overwhelmed with work, but it was never downplayed as far as I could tell.
You should treat college homework and studying as a constrained optimization problem. Decide up front how many hours you're going to put in per weak and then figure out how to maximize your GPA within that limit. In the remaining time you can do whatever you want.
Worst advice for me was "don't let any doors close", "keep your options open", and variations on that theme. Did a lot of damage because it sounds so reasonable, yet the net effect is to prevent or forestall commitment.
"Watch your mouth." and "Wait your turn." Perhaps, it's something girls are harassed about more than guys, but until I stopped following that "advice" (early college), things were quite mediocre for me.
I learned to resist peer pressure and defer gratification early on. Sound advice, except I followed it to an extreme. Now I dress like a slob and have no motivation in life, and I don't even care.
I achieved plenty, but realized late in college that constantly studying was a defense mechanism for depression and loneliness. It's my biggest college regret. I even think that if I had studied less and spent more time getting to know housemates and classmates, I would have been happier and more relaxed, leading to higher grades. Sharing life with others is a reward in itself though, which took me a while to understand.
That investing time and effort into the skills necessary to build things with technology is a waste because within a couple of years it will all be outsourced to third world countries and there will be no jobs left in this area for people in first world countries. I should develop my interpersonal skills, design and creative arts ability with a view to becoming a translator between large corporate insensibility and those that will have to actually get things done for them in the future in aforementioned third world countries.
This was not 100% terrible advice, because it did make me actually look outside the sphere of science and technology into areas I was before utterly uninterested in and considered to be faintly grimy. However in retrospect the premise is utterly flawed and there would have been much, much better ways to expand my interpersonal skills without feeling guilty about being passionate about technology and actually getting things done with it myself.
I got this advice in 2002. As long as I actually considered it useful, my life has been worse, as soon as I gave up on it, my life immediately got immensely better.
I've found most "conventional wisdom" to be bad advice. "Wait for marriage", "wait for kids" are both bad advice. "Go to college" is not necessarily bad advice, but the universal expectation that one will do so is bad, and it is bad advice for a lot of people. There's a lot of other bad advice out there.
[+] [-] jdietrich|15 years ago|reply
Every single piece of bad advice I have ever received was from someone who didn't like their life. If you're unhappy, you have two basic options. You can do something to make yourself happier, or you can rationalise a reason why happiness isn't possible. The former is generally a steady upward slog. The latter is like quicksand - the longer you're there, the more solidly you become stuck.
All the bad career advice I got was from people who didn't like their job. Some believed that jobs were just inherently unpleasant, so you might as well go for the unpleasantness that pays the most and gives the best pension. Some believed that good jobs were just inaccessible for 'the likes of us', so there's no point getting you hopes up. Some were so uncertain of their employability that they took the first job offered to them and never dared do anything to jeopardise it. I heard rationalisations dressed up as philosophy, as ethics, as macroeconomics, but they were rationalisations all the same.
Learning from the mistakes of others is useful and productive, but an unhappy person can never provide any insight into how to be happy. Either they don't know what would make them happy, or worse, they do know but won't do it. Never underestimate how hard someone will work to rationalise why they just can't go back to college or start their own business or visit Europe or leave their awful wife.
When seeking advice, ignore status, intelligence and experience. Seek out the happy people, they're the only people who can help you.
[+] [-] olalonde|15 years ago|reply
Out of curiosity, are you happy with your life? :)
[+] [-] joelmichael|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irahul|15 years ago|reply
Some people are bitter by design. No matter what I do, I will always have many complains to be unhappy about. Right now, I am trying to boot-up my startup. If it doesn't work, I will be bitter. If it works out, I will be bitter about my other pet peeve - schools killing creativity and I would like to contribute towards making it better. If it too is sorted out, I would be bitter about people being bitter about each other owing to religious, regional or some other non-rational biases. I am bitter about Government corruption and lack of infrastructure in my country. I am bitter about common man's rights not implemented in spirit. I am bitter about morons dividing people on religion and reason, and worse, people listening to them.
All of these isn't going to change(some might) in my lifetime. And the only way to be happy about it is to turn a blind eye. If happiness is ignorance, I don't seek it.
This would be blatant generalization, but many happy people I have met are blissfully ignorant. They have accepted life as is, and are happy with the current state of thing.
I generally listen to all advice, and ignore most of it - the adviser being happy or not doesn't figure in my criteria.
[+] [-] joshuaxls|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] resdirector|15 years ago|reply
What about what-not-to-do advice?
[+] [-] neworbit|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wilduck|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vivtek|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starkness|15 years ago|reply
"Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts."
tl;dr: Praise kids for their hard work, not for being smart.
[+] [-] Mongoose|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _b8r0|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robryan|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kadavy|15 years ago|reply
It just didn't make any sense: I was 23 years old, had plenty of talent, and could't wait to get out of Nebraska, but I was supposed to buy a house? I couldn't think of a worse way to spend my money, time, and freedom.
Instead of spending my evenings fixing up my "house," I was blogging and learning to code. Instead of spending my money on a mortgage and property taxes, I bought GOOG & AAPL.
After a few years, a startup in Silicon Valley found me, liked my blog, and moved me out to California. Once I was done working for other people, I had enough of a stock portfolio to fund starting my own business.
If I had followed that advice, I would still be in Nebraska, would owe more than my house would be worth, and would hate my job/life.
"The best investment you can make" is always in yourself.
[+] [-] evgeny0|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jach|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mongoose|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rudd|15 years ago|reply
I think the cultural norm should be that if one way of learning isn't working for you, try another way. Practice, read it yourself, ask a friend for help, get a tutor, whatever you need.
[+] [-] Pickhardt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexgartrell|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stoney|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radioactive21|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackerdude|15 years ago|reply
This should have been good, but I came back from the first meeting not wanting to go back. I just didn't click with the group, and the language/environment they were using (Fortran on an IBM System/3x0 variant, I think) were of no interest to me.
This upset my father, in particular, because he was convinced that the programming I was doing in my bedroom (C, on a Commodore Amiga) was of no value. Programming a personal computer was fine for a kid, but making a career in software meant doing "serious" work, which to my (very non-tech) parents, meant programming IBM mainframes.
In retrospect, their career advice was about as bad as it could have been. I was learning exactly what I should have been learning. I was completely right to ignore them and continue doing what I was doing.
Except I could never shake the idea of "serious" vs. "not serious" software development. So while I continued to learn C, then learned C++, when I finished college in the mid-90s I went into a "serious" industry . Despite living within walking distance of Netscape's old headquarters, I completely missed out on the dot-com era, justifying it by telling myself that I was doing "serious" work. And while I've never been unemployed, until this year, I can't say I ever did anything remotely notable, or fun, either.
And worse of all: it became obvious within the last 3-4 years that my industry was a career dead-end. If I stuck with it, I'd eventually be one of those stereotypical unemployed, and unemployable, 40-something developers.
But there is a silver lining: over the last couple of years I started playing around with some new technologies and ended up reinventing myself. Earlier this year, I quit my old job and am now working for a startup that's doing stuff that's nowhere near my Dad's old idea of "serious". But I've treated my new job seriously, working harder than at any time in my career. And I'm happier now than I've been in nearly a decade.
[+] [-] chegra|15 years ago|reply
"Change the system from the inside" - If you are apart of a system that encourages physical and mental abuse of its members, don't try to change it, leave. Systems include: Fraternity, Brotherhoods, Cults, Gangs, Churches, Country, Jobs and the like. In general don't try to change systems, just move to a better one.
[+] [-] geoffc|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Almaviva|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kabdib|15 years ago|reply
I ignored his advice. I've had a fantastic career and shipped a bunch of different products.
30 years later, he apologized to me.
[+] [-] po|15 years ago|reply
If I were a blacksmith in a mediaeval village I would make sure my kids knew that they were tool makers, not blacksmiths. People will always need tools weather they are made in a forge or a factory.
[+] [-] davidandgoliath|15 years ago|reply
Despite a lot of it simply consisting of mucking around, a lot of generic information and knowledge stuck consistently. Despite being told frequently I was 'wasting my life away', in the process I was slowly sponging in information that would later assist me in launching a startup that nowadays employs even my father. :)
I do wish that early on my parents were more supportive of my passions and interests, and it's a mistake I hope not to make with my own children. When you see passion in someone, be it with any topic, it shouldn't matter whether or not it's something that can generate financial stability. These days with the sheer size of the internet -- there's a market (rule 34 I think ;)).
Do what you love, find interesting ways to fuel others with your passion and you can make just about anything pay the rent.
[+] [-] robryan|15 years ago|reply
Plus it's easier to see now, Dad uses the internet every day now so it's easier to see how much job opportunity is there.
[+] [-] johnrob|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamwil|15 years ago|reply
It's just something people say to console, not actually anything that's remotely useful or true. Magic never happens on its own. You have to go out there and make it happen.
[+] [-] j_baker|15 years ago|reply
I hate to break it to you, but the most successful people in society usually got there not only from hard work but from being in the right place at the right time.
[+] [-] petercooper|15 years ago|reply
I argued that that was a nonsensical claim, although over the previous 30 years it was pretty much true (the UK dip in the early 1990s was quite short and localized). In mid 2007 I noticed prices continuing to go up and up and bit the bullet. Naturally, I exchanged contracts the very month before prices started to go down. Out of principle, I'm stuck with this house until it's worth more than I paid for it ;-)
[+] [-] mduvall|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostrademons|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frankus|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jach|15 years ago|reply
Is this true when it's a student telling the outside world? It's a useful strategy to claim one's working really hard in school to explain why he hasn't been calling / doesn't want to visit over spring break / doesn't have a girlfriend / why the parents should keep sending money / etc.
[+] [-] masterj|15 years ago|reply
My experience was the exact opposite. People liked to compete to see who had the most coursework to do. People would complain about having to pull all nighters, but still spend hours on youtube or facebook beforehand. Some people were genuinely overwhelmed with work, but it was never downplayed as far as I could tell.
[+] [-] nradov|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifestyleigni|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rfrey|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiffani|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ora600|15 years ago|reply
Even though DBAs have more flexible hours, I wouldn't recommend a job with a pager to my worse enemies.
10 years later and I'm still trying to come up with a good way to get rid of it.
[+] [-] tomjen3|15 years ago|reply
It kills electronics very well, and the tea taste a little better for it.
[+] [-] groaner|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starpilot|15 years ago|reply
I achieved plenty, but realized late in college that constantly studying was a defense mechanism for depression and loneliness. It's my biggest college regret. I even think that if I had studied less and spent more time getting to know housemates and classmates, I would have been happier and more relaxed, leading to higher grades. Sharing life with others is a reward in itself though, which took me a while to understand.
[+] [-] etherael|15 years ago|reply
This was not 100% terrible advice, because it did make me actually look outside the sphere of science and technology into areas I was before utterly uninterested in and considered to be faintly grimy. However in retrospect the premise is utterly flawed and there would have been much, much better ways to expand my interpersonal skills without feeling guilty about being passionate about technology and actually getting things done with it myself.
I got this advice in 2002. As long as I actually considered it useful, my life has been worse, as soon as I gave up on it, my life immediately got immensely better.
[+] [-] cookiecaper|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|15 years ago|reply