
The importance of dumb mistakes in college - whyenot
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/opinion/sunday/dumb-mistakes-college.html
======
devdad
So many commenters are missing the point or actively trying to misread the
article. The point is that when you're young you're going to do things that
seem correct and thought through at the time, but might not be when you've
aged. For those of us that were able to make these mistakes before social
media, we got the time to reflect and correct / adapt out behavior. We now
strip the young of this moment of reflection when the web can explode over
night over non-issues, effectively creating a situation where a simple Google
on a twenty year old might bring up a wall of discussion about the bad
behavior. I'm in my mid thirties and am not as angry with social issues as I
were in my teens. The things I did and the things that shaped me were
discussed and corrected by a small group of people, not an angry mob on the
internet that didn't really know me. I'm grateful for that.

~~~
fredgrott
no we have not...social media is a volunteer activity same with using the
phone posting letter to the editor of a newspaper etc...everyone has a choice
to turn it off and not post...

you seek to make the young avoid ownership for their actions..something out
fuck of a President does daily...No-fucking way sir or mam!

Taking ownership of one's voluntary actions is called...wait for it..wait for
it...LEADERSHIP....

Rather than feed the young to disaster and no-sense of ownership let's lead
the young to owning every voluntary action they may take..its a better and
more pleasing future..

~~~
jojopotato
It’s not always a volunteer activity in social situations, unless you want to
go around telling other people to not take any photos of you.

------
LogicX
I think the problem starts far earlier than college...

Imagine a 1st grader who brings a butterknife to school - zero tolerance
policy kicks in, and you have a far too impactful outcome.

When I was in kindergarden, I kissed a girl in the closet. I wonder how that
would go over today.

Technology plays a role, but just in general, society's handling of incidents
is too extreme these days.

~~~
chrischen
> When I was in kindergarden, I kissed a girl in the closet. I wonder how that
> would go over today.

That's going to come out when you run for office when she accuses you of
sexually assaulting her.

~~~
sctb
Can we please not do whatever this is? It's definitely not substantive.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
hutzlibu
I believe it was meant to be sarcasm, just not very fitting.

------
spodek
Reinforcing the importance of dumb mistakes...

A friend wrote a heartfelt essay in a campus magazine that the rest of us
found laughable. We taunted and laughed at him for years about it.

A couple years ago he won a Pulitzer Prize. The lineage from that essay to the
prize is obvious in retrospect to me and probably looking forward for him at
the time.

It's never too late for your dumb mistake. I'm 46 and my just-released podcast
-- [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-and-the-
envir...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-and-the-
environment/id1320141457) \-- which opened at #38 in Science on iTunes,
emerged from laughable mistakes I made public speaking on the environment
earlier this year.

~~~
nishs
Could you share a link to the friend's essay?

~~~
spodek
I was in college in the 80s and 90s so it didn't make it on line.

------
kjrose
I love how he says people should make dumb mistakes and then in the next
sentence actively disqualified people he disagrees with from having the same
privilege under the guise of “well you can’t allo hate speech.”

It’s so typical.

~~~
mhb
It's also both a curious distinction and conflation that he implies when he
says _...sexual violence or racial hatred._ Why not just say violence instead
of sexual violence? And why is racial hatred more of a bogeyman than general
hatred. And then why conflate (physical) violence with hatred (thoughts)?

~~~
bartread
I suspect, in our current climate, the author is trying to avoid being mobbed
online himself.

~~~
kjrose
This could be more likely than you’d think.

------
blfr
I don't find OP's premise believable.

Corporations do not support free speech as they have shown time and again. A
student opposed to it is unlikely to see any employment-related consequences
from such stance.

Quite the opposite. Unlike vandalizing McDondald's, that editorial[1] shows
the student is willing to abridge his own freedom in favour of diversity,
which is probably the most popular corporate value, and conformity, which may
be omitted from official documents but remains in demand.

[1] [http://thewellesleynews.com/2017/04/12/free-speech-is-not-
vi...](http://thewellesleynews.com/2017/04/12/free-speech-is-not-violated-at-
wellesley/)

~~~
ZenoArrow
You're mixing up the situation today with the situation as it was in the 80's.
The whole point of the article was that it's helpful that people can make
mistakes without a high level of public scrutiny. The suggestion being made is
that this has become an endangered privilege in the modern age.

The editorial you shared is one from earlier this year. This does not disprove
the article, if anything it reinforces it. The need to be more diplomatic
whilst growing up is greater now because of that increased public scrutiny.
The idea that 'hate speech' is best addressed by silence than dialogue is not
one solely driven by a desire to give up on freedom, it is also driven by a
practical need to stop youthful mistakes wrecking prospects in later life.

Take a step back and think about the mistakes you made growing up. Now
consider if those same mistakes were permanently recorded in the public
domain. Does that seem like something that would've been helpful to your
personal growth?

~~~
blfr
The article I linked to is the example OP used, not something I offered. And
it's not about the tone of that editorial but its direction which is
completely aligned with the modern corporate expectations and nothing like
vandalizing a McDonald's with an anti-corporate slogan.

Sure, maybe college kids are adjusting their values because of the permanence
of record. But it's a completely different thesis from the one presented in
the OP (let them make mistakes on a smaller scale). Actually, a much more
interesting one.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "Sure, maybe college kids are adjusting their values because of the
> permanence of record. But it's a completely different thesis from the one
> presented in the OP (let them make mistakes on a smaller scale)."

The central points of the article are covered by the following quotes...

"That’s the important bit. Because for all of the supposed liberating power of
their digital devices, they might as well be wearing ankle monitors.
Technological connectedness has made it much harder for them to make mistakes
and learn from them.

Today’s students live their lives so publicly — through the technology we
provide them without training — that much simpler errors than mine earn them
the wrath of the entire internet."

"In my own life I made bad choices that went far beyond spray paint. I flunked
out of college and at various points narrowly dodged jail time. When I think
back to those mistakes, I’m horrified and chastened. I feel fortunate to have
survived, to have had the privilege to make amends.

It would be nice to live in a world in which errors weren’t necessary. Or
would it? Miles Davis left behind a quote that I think captures the beauty of
a world in which mistakes are natural or even valued: “It’s not the note you
play that’s the wrong note — it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it
right or wrong.”

Our children deserve the opportunity to play the music for themselves."

The general gist is that mistakes are an essential part of the learning
process. Increased public scrutiny holds students back from learning from
their mistakes. You hold people back from exploring ideas fully if you're
aware that every simple misstep can carry a high price. Whether the students
are consciously aware that they're being held back is an interesting point,
but not the main one. The impact may not always be felt on an individual
level, but if an impact is made on the cultural norms of the time then it can
still affect the behaviour of these same individuals. If you don't know what
you're missing out on you may be conditioned to accept current cultural norms
without questioning them.

------
Clubber
>If a Williams student spray-painted “Corporate Deathburgers” on a local
building today

The biggest difference between today and when I went to college (a decade or
so after the author) is now the kid would get thrown in jail, convicted and
stuck with probation and a permanent record. Very difficult things to get out
from under and in many states, follow you for life.

I understand the problem with the digital stuff as well, that is similar, if
not just as bad as a permanent record.

------
barrkel
This plea for leniency compared with the harsh treatment of poor kids no
longer in school making similarly immature mistakes doesn't cut a whole lot of
ice with me.

~~~
mcherm
You may be missing the point. Those "poor kids" you refer to should ALSO be
granted an opportunity to rebuild their reputations.

~~~
barrkel
My objection is not just to the entitled hypocrisy, but also to giving
leniency to young vandals with little self-awareness or understanding of how
the world works. I see it as a failure of earlier education rather than
something to be forgiven.

~~~
bartread
Yeah, OK, but let's just say some young person - privileged or otherwise -
chooses to scrawl "Corporate Deathburgers" across a fast-food outlet. Nobody's
saying they shouldn't be punished for it.

What I _think_ the author is asking is, should that incident then follow them
around forever and ruin the rest of their life? I'd say, no, it shouldn't. But
nowadays there's a significantly higher than, say, 20 years ago chance that it
might.

Justice, even retributive justice, demands that the punishment must fit the
crime. Yet what we see nowadays is wildly disproportionate: Justine Sacco's
life was _completely_ _ruined_ because she cracked a moderately poor taste
joke on the internet. The response and consequences of this were entirely
ridiculous, over the top, and unnecessary, and it's taken _years_ for her to
reconstruct a relatively normal life. I don't think that's OK. I _think_ the
author is suggesting he doesn't think it is either.

------
itronitron
An alternative view is that a college student making dumb mistakes is not
being sufficiently (or effectively) guided through their specific interests
and passions. While I agree that people should be able to make mistakes and
learn and recover from them I also think that college students are generally
unguided. The consequence is that many opportunities (not dumb and not
mistakes) are unrecognized and lost.

~~~
watwut
They are adults. Their peers with lower grades are working and expected to
live like adults.

~~~
qball
>Their peers are expected to live like adults.

Interesting perspective, considering many of them today still live like
children (living with one's parents is the polar opposite of living like an
adult). As such, the age of majority in developed countries today is
(functionally) nearly 25; I expect the law to catch up within a generation.

Of course, this is all due to economic circumstances- this isn't 1970, so you
can't just walk into a factory and get a job like you could then. And _that's_
the real reason for this conversation- the economy has contracted so much in
its demand for manpower that being on social media doing something stupid is
now a big deal (and even worse, that it's able to discriminate enough that
university attendance is now mandatory to get jobs that should only require a
high school education).

~~~
watwut
Maybe because I am from different culture, I don't see a big deal about that
living arrangement. If it is cheaper and you don't have much money, it is more
mature financially reasonable arrangement then paying more just to prove
yourself adulthood. And if you live away from parents, bit they helped you
with paying or getting college debt, then you are less independent then you
think.

On the other extreme,I have read older geberation brags about how their adult
children could not wait to leave and are independent enough to never call. I
don't see that as achievement. If you was such a dick to your offspring that
they disliked you so much, then you are just that.

In any case, cops nor judges treat these people as children. Nor should they,
adulthood means we consider you old enough to co trolling your actions and be
responsible for then. Living arrangement has little to do with it.

People are too eager to use their own consumer choices as adulthood marks.
Adulthood is about making choices now, not back then. And is independent of
whether you use public transport or car.

~~~
qball
>Maybe because I am from different culture... it is more mature financially
reasonable arrangement then paying more just to prove yourself adulthood

I don't believe your claim that your culture doesn't seem to understand the
value of having a space in which you are not to be interfered. Not having one
stunts the development of your culture in ways I am sure you are already well
acquainted.

Just extend that concept to the individual a little further- your social
growth is absolutely stunted when you have to worry about destabilizing
yourself. As an example, you can't come out as gay if you have to (pretend to)
be straight to keep a roof over your head, or invest in a new idea if you only
get paid enough to cover needs and not wants.

And that success and failure are meaningful is what separates children from
adults. If success is no longer possible because people can no longer get that
experience and grow from it, that's a bad thing, especially in a society where
only the already-well-off get to do it. Social progress slows down when humans
can't fully mature, and drags innovation down with it.

~~~
watwut
> I don't believe your claim that your culture doesn't seem to understand the
> value of having a space in which you are not to be interfered.

It is pleasant to have it. The question is, how much money you pay for that
and how much you can afford. It is also necessary for old people to have help.
Also, if you live with friends, especially if you don't have own room, you
have no place where you are not to be interfered. If you have spouse and small
kids, such place don't exists either.

Having a place where you are not to be interfered is exceptional state for
most people in most history.

> or invest in a new idea if you only get paid enough to cover needs and not
> wants.

What does that have to do with living arrangements? Nothing. But also, this
would imply that majority of people in the past were not adults either. It
shapes your actions and options, but they were no less adults. We are a bit
less adults compared to them, because we play more. (We also drink less and
are less violent which is very likely related.)

> And that success and failure are meaningful is what separates children from
> adults.

There is very little success of failure in local factory job in stable economy
you mentioned in above comment. Nor much personal development. You are
changing standards here. And for adult 1960-1970 middle class women, there was
not much personal success or failure at all - her success or failure being
defined too much what other people do. Still considered adult (edit: on second
thought, some feminists argued that arrangement prevents women to grow and
become real adults. So there were people who agreed with you.).

> If success is no longer possible because people can no longer get that
> experience and grow from it, that's a bad thing, especially in a society
> where only the already-well-off get to do it. Social progress slows down
> when humans can't fully mature, and drags innovation down with it.

But of course, success is possible whether you live with parents and save
money that way or not. Or whether you live alone or with friends. So is
failure.

~~~
mattmanser
How would you live with friends and not have your own space? Bunk up in the
same room?That's just not done in the Western countries. In the past decades a
usual shared house would be a private room, often with a lock, in a house with
a shared kitchen, lounge and bathroom(s).

I also think you don't realise how a factory job did used to be a decent wage
earner and you could have a whole other life on top of it. As far as I
understand it, socialist worker parties, unions, etc. were all producing
intellectuals, politicians, etc. from the late 1800s until the crackdowns in
the 1980s.

In the UK we are seeing calls to loosen laws around unions as the pendulum
swung too far towards the owners of capital, I've recently read Peston's
WTF[1] that was arguing it, Jeremy Corbyn is saying it, the idea is entering
the main stream again.

[1] Pretty good read on why Brexit happened, I don't agree with everything he
says but worth a read if you want some insight into it

[https://www.amazon.com/WTF-GUARDIAN-POLITICAL-BOOK-YEAR-
eboo...](https://www.amazon.com/WTF-GUARDIAN-POLITICAL-BOOK-YEAR-
ebook/dp/B06XRK5JQ7/)

~~~
watwut
I know people who live like that in San Francisco - programmers. So yeah, it
is done. Moreover, if you live with parents you typically have own room too.

I read up quite a lot on German society prior/between wars and nope. Huge
amount of very poor people. UK a bit less so, but undreclass definitelt
existing. Where lack of privacy was least of their problems. Not sure if
Poland count as west, but they had poverty too. So did Italian which counts
definitely. Don't have such detailed books for America, but unions sis not
happened to be real because of massive prosperity for everyone.

Also, America had huge black population at the time that was very poor and
unable to get good living even if they had jobs - and class of poor whites
júst a bit better off then them.

But yes, there was period of better prosperity in after WWII. That is when
factory work was good. It still is better job then situation of poor prior and
between those wars.

------
madengr
It’s high school too. Cops have dash and body cams now. It used to be they’d
just take your beer. No discretion now.

------
watwut
Fun exercise: what if the one spraying on store would not be charsmatic
college student, but a dude who barely finished high school and looks ugly?
How much of the causual attitude would apply?

------
marcoperaza
If you treat people like children, immune from consequences, they will act
like children. If you hold them to a higher standard, the vast majority will
rise to it.

~~~
HighPlainsDrftr
When are children immune from consequences? Any good parent will discipline or
correct their child for mistakes. It is after the child leaves home and has to
function on its own does it become a bigger problem.

~~~
analog31
A good parent will discipline its child, but also give its child a second
chance. And a third, and so forth. An observation that I've read on HN is that
second and third chances are distributed un-equally, typically favoring the
children of the wealthy and powerful.

------
Cyph0n
I agree with the point about how technology exposes some kinds of experiments
a bit too much.

But jail time? Sorry, that's not just a "mistake", that's outright reckless
stupidity (obvious exception: protesting civil issues or similar).

Just because you (the author) made a stupid decision​ and narrowly avoided
jail time, does not mean that what you did was a good thing in general.

Following that logic, should we also argue for reckless driving if some CEO of
a startup narrowly missed killing someone back in the day? Should we all drive
recklessly so that we can "learn from our mistakes"?

~~~
Spooky23
Should a student be unemployable in many situations because of a minor
misdemeanor? That happens.

Rap sheets should mostly age out or be more inaccessible... especially for
petty property crimes.

~~~
Cyph0n
No, I don't think that's fair.

But the author is _explicitly​ encouraging_ such behavior because it all
worked out for him/her in hindsight. That's what I don't agree with.

~~~
bsder
> the author is explicitly​ encouraging such behavior

That wasn't what I read.

What I read was if you do something that happens to be negative in some way
and get noticed, this is now a permanent scarlet letter.

This can range from his "corporate deathburgers" (which is vandalism) to a
"controversial editorial" (which isn't illegal at all but can bring the wrath
of the universe on you).

I bet that _ALL_ of us have said things at various points that we would not
want recorded forever.

Unfortunately, we have not yet evolved appropriately calibrated social
behaviors to deal with this. The current modality of "No Tolerance--Burn The
Infidel(tm)" for everything, no matter how minor, is not helpful.

~~~
Spooky23
We have. It’s called forgetting and leaving stuff in the past. Now we have
records of everything and disqualify folks with no meaningful reasoning.

When I started my career in the late 90s, I know of a half dozen senior
leaders who were actively involved in the Vietnam era anti war movement. My
one director had a scar on the back of his head when some cop on a horse
cracked it open with a truncheon. He was arrested for loitering and woke up
handcuffed to a hospital bed.

That experience might have excluded him from service with the FBI, but
otherwise would have no impact. Twenty years from now, will some bullshit
arrest like that impact an 18 year old at a Trump protest? Probably.

------
bernardino
I’m in college, and have made my fair of mistakes that I think are “dumb” in
the eyes of my peers, family, friends, society, etc, but not many that I think
are “dumb” in my eyes. The most prominent mistake that I can think of? I’m
spending a fourth year at a community college rather than having transferred
to a university after my second or third year. I graduated high school in June
2014. I should have graduated college in May/June 2018. But now I will most
likely be graduating May/June 2020 (heck, maybe a few semesters later).

My life as of now has not turned out the way I had planned it. I have yet to
have an internship under my belt. I have no connections. If you will, I’m a
twenty-two-year-old modern day George Costanza prior to him getting that job
with the New York Yankees - when he’s living with his parents and has no job.
Yet I think I’ll be just okay.

But above all, I would like to advise other people, not only colleges students
but to those who think they have made “dumb” decisions: Please do not worry.
Modern mass culture, or as the film maker Tarkovsky writes, the civilization
of prosthetics, cripples people's souls and makes people's mistakes/problems
bigger than they actually are. Though I recall a year ago, struggling alone
and having no hope. What guided me towards today? Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters
to a Young Poet. Here are a few quotes from the book:

"Everything seems to me to have its just emphasis; and after all I do only
want to advise you to keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole
development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and
expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in
your most hushed hour can perhaps answer."

"Consider yourself and your feeling right every time with regard to every such
argumentation, discussion or introduction; if you are wrong after all, the
natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other
insights. Leave your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which,
like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried
by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each
impression and each germ of a feeling to come to completion wholly in itself,
in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's
own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of
a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in
creating."

"If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things
that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond
measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite
simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then
everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for
you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your
inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance. You are so young, so before all
beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient
toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions
themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign
tongue."

"Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer."

"We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty
that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is
difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do
it."

"And if there is one thing more that I must say to you, it is this: Do not
believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and
quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and
sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have
been able to find these words."

"There is perhaps no use my going into your particular points now; for what I
could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring outer
and inner life into unison, or about all the other things that worry you —: it
is always what I have already said: always the wish that you may find patience
enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may
acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your
solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me:
life is right, in any case."

------
nradov
What a stupid article. Why should being a college student bring special
privileges to make dumb mistakes and escape consequences? What about other
young people? If it's important for college students to be able to make dumb
mistakes then why shouldn't the same apply to young factory workers or bus
drivers or soldiers?

It's articles like this by authors who have never worked a real job that make
regular Americans think that academics are out of touch with the real world.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Wow, okay, I think you've missed the points made by this article.

To summarise the article...

1\. We learn valuable lessons from our mistakes.

2\. Before the era of smartphones and social media, people could make mistakes
and not have those mistakes follow them around for the rest of their lives.

3\. By making mistakes more public we're creating a chilling effect on
learning.

4\. The freedom to make mistakes isn't one that should be limited to a select
few. Aside from certain types of mistake that should be dealt with strongly by
the legal system, the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them is a
privilege that we should give to the majority of people.

Do you disagree with any of the points above?

------
cm2187
Basically the author is arguing is that college students should be treated as
children and therefore not responsible (and therefore accountable) for their
actions because too young to know better.

Where we place the line between adults and children can be debated (are 18yo
really mature enough to be treated as adults?). But one can't get "being taken
seriously" and "having the protection offered to children for not knowing
better" at the same time.

I personally think that you can't really consider them adults before age 22.
And for that reason we should stop taking student protests seriously.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "But one can't get "being taken seriously" and "having the protection
> offered to children for not knowing better" at the same time."

Sure you can. You're thinking in a binary manner, in reality 'respect' and
'protection' are not binary.

To explain in simple terms, a student should be able to have both 'some'
protection and 'some' respect. You don't have to protect someone like a child
at the same time as respecting them as an adult.

------
dreamdu5t
No college should not be a time for dumb mistakes. That should be earlier. 20
year olds should be treated like adults not children. College should not be a
place to party, recklessly use drugs, recklessly have sex and sexually assault
women, and graffiti things. What an incredibly low standard.

