Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

[anonymous1618]

I feel really selfish even asking this. My parents are helping in every way they can despite my complaining, I've exhaustively switched schools and basically tried every possible option other than homeschooling or dropping out (which makes it even worse to say that I still hate it, after all the effort they've put into fixing it). But I do hate it, I'm not learning, and I feel like I'm wasting time, and it's not just because of the usual reasons teenagers seem to attribute to hating high school: I don't think the school subjects are boring, or any subject for that matter (the logic I use is, if it were boring, no one would have discovered it; you can only dull down a subject, it's already interesting in its own light), I'm introverted and spend most of my time reading or obsessively working on hobbies like programming, and I absolutely can't stand wasting time. I've feel that I've had one "good" year of school in all of middle/high school, wherein I was extremely lucky to have a group of passionate teachers all at once. That year taught me a lot, mainly because it showed me that these subjects school had dulled down before aren't actually uninteresting. I haven't had a good year since, though, which has been frustrating to say the least, although I have had a few good teachers...

I was reading one of Paul Graham's essays the other day (http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html), and came across one of those "dwarping" moments, as one of those passionate teachers I had used to say, in that almost every other paragraph were ideas I had thought about endlessly about before summed up concisely by someone more articulate than me. One of the ideas addressed, though, has been really tormenting me lately, because it's an idea I've had myself that I've been trying this past year to do but has not been working for me.

"If I had to go through high school again, I'd treat it like a day job. I don't mean that I'd slack in school. Working at something as a day job doesn't mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I mean I wouldn't think of myself as a high school student, just as a musician with a day job as a waiter doesn't think of himself as a waiter. And when I wasn't working at my day job I'd start trying to do real work."

This sounds great in theory and helps me to some degree, but in some ways makes things even worse. I try and get through every school day and have decent grades and all, but each day is so monotonous and so many of the things we do are such wastes of time that it just drives me insane. Going home to work on something more I feel is more important that I actually enjoy and am challenged with, while obviously provides enjoyment, in another sense make this feeling even worse because it diminishes school even more. I do 'real work', but I want to real work at school too.

I'd like to think that I'm just the problem. Maybe I'm just taking my education for granted and this is just a "self-fulfilling prophecy" sort of thing. But, I spend nearly every moment outside of school learning, just because I love to do it. I want to love school. I love learning. Why don't I love school? I can't express in words how frustrated this question makes me.

I was just wondering if you guys had any experiences or suggestions to share about school. If anyone else has gone through this could or could give me some advice or just show how I'm wrong I would really appreciate it. I know it doesn't sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but I really don't want to waste the next two years of high school.

[tracy]

My comment will get lost in the noise, but I'll give you an insight here that you will likely hardly hear again: You want a thrill of success. At the age you are in, your brain is hardwired to search for success. Programming gives you success, because when a piece of code compiles, you get that feeling of success. School is not doing so. So you will compulsively chase programming, trying to get your success fix.

Turn this around and get your success from school. See if you can become the very best at school, and become the most popular kid at the same time. If you can switch your priorities to that, you'll discover that the dopamine rush will keep you coming back for more.

[edw519]

Great advice. You don't realize it, but you have opportunities being handed to you now that won't come so easily later. I miss school (high school & college) for so many reasons. Having lots of peers right there to talk to. So many activites. A library full of books. Sports and clubs. A wide variety of subjects.

A mentor once told me to take advantage of everything available to you on your "school buffet". That's what it's there for. It's a great opportunity to be exposed to many different things, easily, and for free. How else will you know if you like it? Sure, you may not like the class in English literature or the ballet or playing soccer in P.E. But try it anyway.

Years from now you'll probably be sitting in a cubicle by day and changing diapers by night wishing you could experience something new and different once in a while. Now is your chance. Do it.

[wallflower]

It sounds like you expect yourself to have everything figured out. Life is simple but not easy. Believe me, most everyone I know does not have life figured out in the mid-twenties and early-thirties. Life is not a puzzle, it's life. You think, you have it figured out and then another challenge/curveball comes along (layoff/marriage/divorce/best friend dying/whatever).

As someone wiser than me once said, high school is probably the most structured experience you'll have unless you end up in prison. College is different (if you decide to go).

High school is a geographical coincidence. College is more your choice.

You only have two years left in your "term". If you drop out, your parents very well may decide to kick you out (as in, why should they support you if you're not supporting them [by not dropping out]).

Unfortunately, in this white-collar society, having a high school degree is almost a bare minimum requirement for being hireable (in some states, McDonald's will not hire non-HS/non-GED)

> I absolutely can't stand wasting time.

Please read this: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101...

> I'm introverted and spend most of my time reading or obsessively working on hobbies like programming

As someone who is much older than you and very much has considered the possibility of dropping out (e.g. quitting my job), please consider what you will do for income if you are not in school. Are you active in community/open source? If not, why? What kind of brand/reputation in the open source community have you built? Enough to do paid consulting?

> But, I spend nearly every moment outside of school learning, just because I love to do it.

You're like me. You're using absolutes. Contradicting yourself. I'm guilty of those self-lies too. No one spends every moment learning. Otherwise, you would be learning that which would have a greater relative impact on your navigation of this world (e.g. organizing introverts together, taking the lead, social and other-ness).

[tokenadult]

As someone wiser than me once said, high school is probably the most structured experience you'll have unless you end up in prison.

Very true. It is precisely the young people who thrive most as independent learners who feel most stifled by high school.

http://learninfreedom.org/

Some of the feeling of structure comes with adolescence. But happy is the adolescent who restructures his learning environment to increase his personal responsibility.

[krschultz]

Take every AP exam available, that will knock off all the easy classes in college that will equally waste your time and you can get out of some high school classes now and do it as independent study. I took 5 or 6 in my junior and aced them all - including two for subjects I had never even had class in. Just pick up some princeton review books and go at it. By the time I got to college I had 40 credits already done.

[jacoblyles]

They had some fairly decent AP classes at my school that were challenging enough if you took several of them. I remembered thinking the first 11 years of school were a waste, but the last two weren't bad.

I also highly recommend AP courses.

[jedc]

YES.

Don't even worry if your school doesn't offer the class for it. A friend of mine and I did self-study for one AP test, and started about 3-4 weeks before the text. I didn't "ace" it, but I got a high enough score that it got me out of required classes in college.

[mhp]

Awesome advice! Don't worry if your school has an AP class (they are mostly busted). I think you can even take the AP exams multiple times (if you don't do so well the first time).

[Oompa]

Don't undervalue this advice. I took a good amount, and knocked off a whole semester at college. If I took and tried in every AP class I took, I would've knocked off even more.

[mis]

This helped me too, graduating early because of it. Seriously important one.

[CatDancer]

I recommend taking a look at a book called The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn. (http://www.amazon.com/Teenage-Liberation-Handbook-School-Edu...)

The assumption of school is that you don't want to learn and so you need to be forced to. For all I know this may in fact be true for most kids, and so school is necessary for them. However if you are self-motivated to learn then school is massively inefficient.

There is no need for you to waste the next two years. You can, if you wish, undertake a self-learning program (home school yourself). While it is true that there are things that will get by staying in school, it does not mean that you cannot also get these things outside of school, especially with a little planning. You will still get into a good college, have friends, develop your social skills, keep your future options open, and so on. The book I mentioned explains how.

[mannicken]

I'm a high school student myself (senior). I skipped massively (like 50% of the time I wasn't in class) in 10th grade, and after 10th just went to do Running Start. It's a form of dual enrollment and I'm going to community college now; I haven't set foot in HS (except to get authorization forms) in two years. College is different from high school.

Try something similar. High school is a massive, pointless waste of time. It's like prison. Get out of it by any means but be smart. Meaning: don't go apeshit and kill your classmates. If you do drop out, have a plan on how you can give people what they want so they can feed you and clothe you. May be you want to spend the rest of your days working in a Walmart, but probably not.

Anyway, don't stress over it. You're in a fucking America, you won't die of hunger :) And you'll die regardless of whether you went to high school or not, so don't worry. It doesn't really matter in the long run so enjoy the fact that you were born in this perverted (but fun) world.

[jballanc]

Having worked in a number of research labs, I would add to this that you should also try contacting professors at the nearest college. Very rarely is there something structured put in place for high school students to work at universities, but that said, many professors will work around/through/over the bureaucracy so that you can work with them. Often times all that is needed is a bit of initiative and some personal contact.

In other words, if there's one thing I've learned so far in life, it's not to underestimate the power of simple human contact. Go knock on a random professor's door, and I think you'd be surprised how many times the door opens!

[ashleyw]

"Any way, don't stress over it. You're in a fucking America, you won't die of hunger :) And you'll die anyway, so don't worry."

Awesome rule to live by!

[mhp]

"High school is a massive, pointless waste of time. It's like prison."

Maybe parts of it. In that it's extremely unlikely in ten years you'll talk to more than one person from your high school, but you'll still talk to many of your friends from college.

The problem with high school is you are stuck socializing with the people who happen to be geographically close to you. You don't get to choose who they are, so they could be a bunch of jerks and you can't do much about it. At college, that is WAY less likely to happen.

But you still can learn interesting stuff in high school, AND socially it's still an important step to go through all that dating/hanging out/partying stuff. You could wait until college to do that, but it would be awkward.

[timdellinger]

Lesson 1: The world is not designed for people like you. You will find this to be a recurring theme throughout your life. Sometimes you can find a way to modify things be more to your liking. Other times you can't.

Lesson 2: Not all parts of your life will be ideal at all times.

Lesson 3: Any complex system that uses human beings as input will be non-ideal for many (if not most) of those people.

Lesson 4: Humanity's sacred institutions are (contrary to the way they're marketed) full of frustrating inefficiencies and design flaws.

You're frustrated because you'd like to be constantly challenged by just the right amount so that you can learn and reach your potential. Consider the video game: each new level is designed to push your skills just the exact amount. Life (and human institutions) are not so well designed.

There's a reason that the book Ender's Game is so engaging: it's wish fulfillment. We all wish that we could go to a school that provided exactly the opportunities that would make us the people we want to be. But such a school doesn't exist.

(Oh, and on a practical note: if a subject seems dull, then hit the library/web and look for other textbooks on the same subject. A book that presents things the way you'd like to see them can make all the difference.)

[lpgauth]

Let's face it, the academic part of high school is not challenging enough for you, but what about the other parts? Are you on one of your school's sport team? Are you part of any clubs? Did you try to take on some kind of leadership position at your school? How big is your friend circle?

[mechanical_fish]

I recommend this highly. I felt more or less as you (the original submitter) do until the math club found me [1] at the end of freshman year. My freshman year is like a giant beige blur in my memory. It's like I was in a vaguely depressed stasis the whole time. But then it was math, trivia, and Drama Club stage crew for the rest of my high school career. Suddenly high school felt great.

There's nothing wrong with being an introvert... but there are degrees of introversion. And self-study is the secret to learning, which you seem to understand, but you might be surprised to find that you self-study better when you've got a team, a goal, a project, or a group. If the groups at your school seem to suck, there are other ones around. You've even got the Internet, which I didn't have at your age.

Here's one regret from my high school days: At one point someone came up to me and said "You're a big guy and you're not already on the football team or any other team. Want to learn to play the tuba and march in the band? We need more tuba!" At that point I was a very shy freshman, easily embarrassed, with no musical experience, and that whole idea sounded preposterous, like some kind of practical joke. So I said no. I wish I hadn't done that. It turns out that they were probably serious. And playing the tuba is probably pretty easy! I might have faked it pretty well with just four notes and a basic sense of rhythm! And it might have been fun to march around with the band... a nice, structured group activity with a lot of depth. (There is always a more complicated piece of marching-band music out there...) And I'd be have been that much farther ahead on learning something about music.

Hang in there. Don't drop out of high school if you can possibly help it -- it's good to have the degree, and believe me it will end. And college is a big improvement!

---

[1] They pulled me and a few others out of freshman algebra class and just gave us the AHSME, one day. I had no idea what the AHSME was, but I took it, and I ended up in a three-way tie for first place in my high school with my best friend (another freshman) and a senior member of the math club. I learned about the math club the next day when its faculty adviser came stalking into the cafeteria during lunch, waving the AHSME results in one hand, with the wild-eyed look of a prophet on a mission. He approached me and my friend and more-or-less told us that we had to join the math club, it was vitally important, because we had the knack.

That guy was great. Teaching is a weird business. 99% of the time you are saying the same things that you always say, but the remaining 1% are tiny moments which change people's lives forever.

[csomar]

Ok, this is not a good choice.

Me my self studying in a third world school I had never thought of dropping and continued my study and will graduate in 25 days!!

In fact you are lucky, what about if you was here? You don't know the schools here, private or public, teacher are sometimes more stupid that pupils. I can't say more than, my english professor can't spell correctly the "wednesday". I have some good professor also, my math teacher is a SUPER PROF, just because his an old one.

Brief, here most of schools are public, but you need to study outside school, in what we call "additional hours" in some professors houses, which is non-legall and is costing me more than $100 a month.

So I study from 6 to 8 hours in school, 80% of hours are pure waste of time, simply because professor are not competent and students are indifferent. In fact, if you are a professor here, and you just give your students 20/20 and don't teach them anything, they'll be VERY excited, they'll love you and consider you as an intelligent prof.

Why are you considering school a waste of time?

Here's the response:

you want to start productivity from NOW, you don't want to wait few other years to learn programming, you want to start now.

Is it good or bad?

No, that's VERY bad, in school you expand your knowledge, even if it's not programming related, you know new phenomenas of everyday life that you don't know.

Don't be in hurry, you'll start working as soon as you have learned programming. Developing software isn't a simple job.

My own advice, is to carry on your study and then compelete study in university, you can then choose which section fit for you better and carry on your programming carrer.

Don't try to burn steps and jump over them, step by step and you'll get there, be sure.

[peter-nthcode]

I went to college when I was 16 at http://www.tams.unt.edu/

Most states have these now.

Look into it.

[vincentpants]

I also went to college at 16. But be careful! I ended up dropping out of UCLA, going to community college, and eventually graduating from UCSB seven years later (then went to design school in Vancouver). The problem was that I was still wanting a sense of community, and I couldn't find it at university because of the age discrepancy. I dont regret my decision leaving high school early, but remember that this wont necessarily solve all of your problems, but it could be a good step! Good luck!

[sachinag]

TAMS counts as college? Interesting. IMSA (where I went) was very definitely a high school. I thought TAMS (like Indiana's) was a HS, even though it was on a college campus.

[mhp]

Like the other posters said, look into taking classes at your local college. If your grades are good enough in HS, it won't be a problem.

Take something like econ 101 (not programming) or physics. Depending on the school you can take classes at, I think you'll find you'll be getting your a kicked by the information. What you used to find so easy in HS will now be much more difficult. You'll actually need to study :)

[charlesju]

When I was in High School I used to pass the time by programming on my graphing calculator. I'm sure these days you can get by with reading a book in class or maybe even a small netbook. If none of those things are possible, just start a project and doodle your algorithms while you're in class and code them up at night.

There are a lot of ways to circumvent the system and do something you like to do, don't just give in to your immediate urges to shut it out. At the very least, you should graduate High School.

[jfarmer]

I was exactly the same way. I studied for AP tests on my own time, started a company, learned how to program, etc. School was boring. It was easy. I resented the fact that my peers took it like a joke an weren't serious about learning -- some of the teachers did, too.

All that was cool, but here's the thing I wish I did the most in high school: kissed a girl.

I think it's important to get good grades in HS because it will give you so many options when you graduate. Just deal with it. Some times you have to do stuff you don't like.

The rest of the time spend doing the things you love. And as a fellow introvert, I strongly encourage you to SOCIALIZE. I had a friend who forced himself to become less awkward by joining the HS football team even though he hated football. Forced socialization.

It worked. He was way less awkward than me in HS. Now he's in Boston doing this: http://diybio.org

[jseliger]

"I'm introverted and spend most of my time reading or obsessively working on hobbies like programming"

You might want to read the book The Introvert Advantage by Marti Laney, "Caring for Your Introvert" in The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch) and Philip Zimbardo's The Time Paradox, which I wrote about here (http://jseliger.com/2008/09/01/the-time-paradox-—-philip-zim...).

Notice this commenter's idea: "[...]the academic part of high school is not challenging enough for you, but what about the other parts? Are you on one of your school's sport team? Are you part of any clubs? Did you try to take on some kind of leadership position at your school? How big is your friend circle?"

High school still offers many, many challenges, even if you don't realize it; for me, working on the school newspaper and joining the book club made a tremendous difference in how I perceived much of life.

"I was just wondering if you guys had any experiences or suggestions to share about school."

School is a game. Make it your mission to learn how to crack the game, which doesn't mean you have to neglect your "real" education, as it sounds like that will happen chiefly on your own time. And what you consider "wastes of time" aren't always: they're opportunities to network, or to learn how to flirt, or to learn how to get away with things, and so on and so forth. These are important skills too, but many nerds ignore them for too long.

A final book recommendation: try Curtis Sittenfeld's novel "Prep." It's not about someone in your situation, but it is about someone who, I think, finally learns how to "do" school. If you're as analytic as your post implies that you are, it's possible to learn this. Anyway, the personal website I linked to above has my e-mail address if you're interested in hearing more.

[dtap]

Your life will change more than you can ever know in the next 5-10 years. The best reason to do well in high school is to get into a great college. You will meet people who share your interests in college. But in order to get there you need to do well in high school. You can find your way into an awesome job with hacker skills and a crappy GPA, but not so with an awesome college. The people you will find in college will amaze you. You may not learn anything in class, but being surrounded by like minded people will help you grow.

With that, push through. It is not that difficult to do well in high school and the reward of a good college is worth it.

[billybob]

"You may not learn anything in class" in college? Man, I learned a ton in college. Linguistics and anthropology and psychology and photography were fascinating (I was a journalism major but now do web development).

If you really do love learning, good classes can really expand your understanding of - and interest in - the world.

[JunkDNA]

There's a lot of excellent advice in this thread, but I think I can sum most of it up by saying that the primary thing you need to do for yourself is spend more time way outside your comfort zone. It's fine to be learning geeky hobbies, coding, reading hacker news, etc... but that alone is not enough to be successful in life. You need to broaden your experiences and learn about things that seem to have nothing to do with what you think you're interested in. It allows you to recognize new trends and opportunities. I guarantee this will come in handy some time down the line. I always think of the story that when Steve Jobs dropped out of college, he went and sat in on a calligraphy class. Why on earth would a geek need that? Well, years later when Apple was building the first Macintosh he was able to draw on that knowledge when they were figuring out how to support fonts (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html). I experienced this in my own life. I wanted to be a biologist, so I really got into my science courses taking extra biology classes my senior year. On the side, I dabbled in various computer-related activities, but I always felt like that was taking away time from my important biology stuff that would eventually be my career. When I got to college the field of bioinformatics started to emerge, and I realized I could use my biology skills with my computer hobby. Suddenly, all that time I thought I had "wasted" playing around with computers became my career. You just never know what the future holds.

Finally (and this is major), speaking as a fellow (reformed) introvert: you have a huge, gaping problem to address. You need to be able to easily and freely communicate and socialize with people. This is not some warm, fuzzy BS. It's a real life skill you have got to master. It's hard. It's painful. It's embarrassing at times. But, you have to do it. In "Hackers and Painters", Paul always talks about having the wind at your back in startups. Mastering social skills is an awesome hack that gives you the ability to make your own wind. People who can really network and socialize get things other people don't. That's a fact of life. Many introverts complain that this isn't fair. I always did. The reality is, social interaction is a pretty easy hack to get what you want in life compared to most other methods. It's worth the time and effort required to build up the skill. If you're hopelessly clueless how to interact with people, you could start off by reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People".

[Lilith]

A friend directed me to this post, and here is what I have to say. The best decision I ever made was to quit high school when I was fifteen. I read Grace Llewellyn's "The Teenage Liberation Handbook" and, despite it being written a little simply, the ideas resonated with me. Compulsory schooling is about control, busy work, and, as Foucault points out, a type of discipline based on the penal system. School made me view education as an abominable chore, and it was only once I left that I was able to begin exploring academic disciplines in a comprehensive and meaningful way. If you love erudition for its own sake (as I truly believe most people are prone to do--it's only after years of schooling that we eschew the notion of pleasurable learning experiences), you have what it takes to educate yourself.

I recovered from the trauma of compulsory school, and I am now a college honors student with a 4.0 GPA. While there are still serious problems regarding "education" in the world of academia, college is significantly better than high school. A GED, well written essays, and outstanding SAT/ACT scores will get you into some of the most prestigious institutions without a diploma. Most people think that you have to be miserable for the next few years because they were forced to be miserable and they think it's the only way to find success in the future. I believe that they are entirely wrong about that. Research "unschooling", Paolo Freire, and Summerhill school and decide for yourself.

[DougWebb]

I was a lot like you. My advice would be to do what I wish I had done:

1. Use your intelligence and self-teaching skills to make sure you get the best grades possible; this will help you get financial aid for college. Otherwise, you'll be limited to cheap schools, saddled with debt, or unable to go at all.

2. When you have choices about which classes to take, take ones that stretch your creativity in areas you wouldn't normally explore: for a geek, that's probably art, music, literature, philosophy, wood shop, metal shop, etc. These classes will usually have you creating things which is fun, and if you're creating written papers, that's very good practice for your future.

3. Since you're smart, #1 shouldn't take up much of your time. While in classes you can't avoid, you can 'take notes' writing about something else you're working on. Pay just enough attention to the class to make sure you're following what's going on. Outside of class, SOCIALIZE. Learn to make girls smile at you (or boys, if that's your thing.) Learn how to make small talk, and how to get someone else to talk about themselves. Having good conversational skills, especially if you're introverted, will be hugely important for you in your future.

[lambdallama1000]

Hello. I was recently in something resembling your position, and I decided to homeschool from grade 10 onwards. In my case I took graduate courses in math at a local (top 20) university for free -- the professors allowed me to sit-in on the lectures and do the homework so long as I showed them I was prepared. I am in grade 11 now and have been studying Khovanov homology, geodesic dynamics, and compact Riemann surfaces in the past few months.

It has allowed an extraordinary degree of freedom. I have been able to check out large masses of (mainly) science fiction and history books, with indefinite renewals -- and have been able to find the time to read one or two books a day, even with my other commitments.

It may be possible to do so in public schools. In my case, self-studying was always an integral part of my education as there were no adults in my immediate environment who could really teach me additionally; I did not receive the attention from teachers for that (though my work was consistently exemplary), and I was disallowed from entering elementary school early. You may be similar.

My main tools have been a laptop, paper, a "Pentel Graphgear 1000 PG1013-E" (a prized possession), and two library cards.

[spooneybarger]

if i hadn't dropped out of high school and gone to an "early college", i'm not really sure where my life would have ended up at. something to look into:

http://www.simons-rock.edu/ http://www.earlycolleges.org/

[Jebdm]

Definitely. Coming to Simon's Rock (although I am transferring for the fall semester) was easily the best decision I ever made.

[thisisnotmyname]

Make it a game. See how high you can get your GPA, or how little work you can do and still keep a 3.7.

Also, try a sport or other extra-curricular. (tennis and track were good for skinny guys like me). Do more with your classmates than just go to class.