[geocrasher]

My experience with school wasn't that different from work life. Lessons that I learned in school that followed:

1) I am a dork, embrace it

2) Avoid Math

3) Scientific method = troubleshooting with purpose. Use it.

4) People in charge can be total idiots, but they're still in charge

5) Popularity and Competence are not related

6) Competence and compensation are not related

7) If you stay focused and just do you, you'll succeed despite other people's drama and your personal pains

8) Abuse is abuse, and people negligent in doing anything about it are participating in it. Get toxicity out of your life.

9) People who believe in you are right. Ignore the rest and allow yourself to thrive despite them.

School sucked.

[flybrand]

> 8) Abuse is abuse, and people negligent in doing anything about it are participating in it. Get toxicity out of your life.

This needs to be taught more actively in school. Negligence in stopping abuse, or fostering abuse = just as immoral as abuse.

[geocrasher]

Exactly. I left high school over abuse. Another student spent the whole period sitting next to me staring at me muttering about how he was going to tie me up in the middle of the desert, and all the things he was going to shove up my ass, serious serial killer vibes, and the teacher just acted helpless, despite seeing everything. When they started stalking me after school, and it started getting physical, and the school did nothing, I left.

Thankfully that level of toxicity did not follow into the workplace, but I did have a car vandalized by a coworker.

Truth be told I was a bit of a punk, and had a knack for pissing off the wrong people. We all have our flaws, but nobody deserved what I went through. I'm a man now, not the insecure boy who tried to act like he was better than others to compensate, and I reject toxicity immediately. No room for it. Hard lessons to learn when you grew up with abuse.

[yoyohello13]

I’m with you except for 2. Knowing math is great.

[geocrasher]

Math is amazing, and I'm becoming interested in it after being out of school for over 30 years. But, my own incompetence with numbers meant gravitating away from them, for me. I am not dyslexic, but I think my ADHD does with numbers what dyslexia does to words and letters.

[rockercoaster]

I want to disagree with 2, but OTOH it's also so easy to do that I've just accidentally done it my whole life.

20 year programming career and I've never engaged with math beyond approximately Algebra II, in the real world. Hell, I go years at a time not needing anything trickier than Algebra I.

Nearly all of the math I actually use I learned in the 6th grade or earlier, overwhelmingly elementary school arithmetic—mostly the "bad" kind I got from memorization-based practice that mathematicians seem to hate even though it's a contender for the best bang-for-buck of almost my entire educational career, plus a lot of fractions-related stuff (so, so very many people are terrible at this, can't even do basic things, IME it's where an awful lot of people permanently fall off the math-train, way back in like 3rd grade), basic arithmetic, and pre-algebra-tier simple variable substitution.

Every now and then I get a bug up my ass to try to expand my math abilities, but 1) I'm so goddamn rusty at this point because I never use any of it that I have to start back at brushing up on high school stuff, which is discouraging, and 2) I'm not even really sure what I'm going to do with it (long experience suggests: nothing) so the motivation fades fast.

[BinaryIgor]

5) Yes - but even if not popular, competent people are always respected 6) I would say that there's correlation, but it's not 1.0, more something like 0.5 - 0.7; other factors matter as well.

Sometimes these do not hold true, but then you have a truly toxic organization - one that you should run from, as fast as possible

[geocrasher]

High school was toxic, and so were my first few jobs. Lessons learned the hard way.

[throwaw12]

> If you stay focused and just do you, you'll succeed despite other people's drama and your personal pains

Can't agree, I know people who got more work because they focused and did the work

[geocrasher]

These weren't universal truths, they were my personal truths.