How Not to Talk to Your Kids. Wow, that article really rings true for me. I was always the smartest kid in my class in school, but I was never particularly ambitious or energetic towards my studies. I developed a lot of lazy habits and I never really got good study skills. I deliberately avoided doing things that I feared I wouldn’t be good at. (Remember my Hermione Granger experience in ceramics? That’s why I didn’t take any art classes in high school or college.) I dropped out of the Honors Program at ND just so I wouldn’t have to write a thesis my senior year. Nowadays I look at friends who are nuclear physicists and lawyers and artists and I regret that I didn’t push myself harder. Relevant quotes from the accompanying MetaFilter thread:
- “If you skate through school you just might get the impression that you can skate through life.”
- “I felt (and still feel, to some extent) that I was gonna be ‘found out’- that I really didn’t know shit from Shinola.”
- “Self-discipline is built; you aren’t born with it.”
mark
February 14, 2007 — 3:05 pm
I was always the smartest kid in my class in school, but I was never particularly ambitious or energetic towards my studies. I developed a lot of lazy habits and I never really got good study skills. I deliberately avoided doing things that I feared I wouldn’t be good at … I dropped out of the Honors Program […] just so I wouldn’t have to write a thesis my senior year. Nowadays I look at friends who are nuclear physicists and lawyers and artists and I regret that I didn’t push myself harder
Snap!
Kris
February 14, 2007 — 3:10 pm
Are you saying that describes you too, Mark?
patrick
February 14, 2007 — 3:36 pm
That’s definitely me. Did nothing throughout K-12 and college turned out to be a rude awakening. I’ve learned to do enough work just to stay above-average overall, while doing well in stuff that I really like. I hope work will fall into the latter category, but I fear that it depends on what kind of job I end up working in a few months…
M-H
February 14, 2007 — 5:35 pm
That was me too. I found school really easy until the last year, I dropped out of university at 21 and didn’t drop in again until I was 38. Now I’m doing a PhD in my 50s.
mark
February 15, 2007 — 1:07 pm
Err… yes. Everything bar the “Snap!” was meant to be quoted. Downloaded the php source for your blog software, but then got lazy and couldn’t be bothered going through it to work out how best to do it.
Kris
February 15, 2007 — 3:12 pm
Ah, if you tried to use a funky tag or something it got stripped. I take out everything but a few basic tags as hack prevention.
And – Ack! GoddessBlog is messy, messy code. It’s several years old, and the version I’m running now is much modified. I really should post an updated, cleaned-up version or else take it down…