
The Ivy League, Mental Illness, and the Meaning of Life (2014) - randomname2
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/qa-the-miseducation-of-our-college-elite/377524/?single_page=true
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rl3
> _These are kids who have no ability to measure their own worth in any
> realistic way—either you are on top of the world, or you are worthless. And
> that kind of all-or-nothing mentality really pervades the whole system._

Replace _kids_ with _founders_ and it's still just as true. Coincidentally,
many Ivy League grads end up starting startups.

~~~
gok2
Completely agree. ivy league grad, started startup, failed ofc and felt
worthless for a while.

But it passed away after I got out of the building and talked to other
founders, they are in a worse situation :P

~~~
enraged_camel
My feelings are mixed: I find it both funny and sad that what made you feel
better was seeing that others are worse off. Perhaps a reflection of our
culture in general?

~~~
venomsnake
In engineering we call that calibration. From what I understood he did not
felt schadenfreude.

------
littletimmy
The problem is that in the United States, a college is not a place to learn
but rather a finishing school to define to what social class you belong. If
you go to the Ivy League, you're a member of the elite. What to do to get
there? Curate your entire life to be appealing to a bunch of humanities majors
who couldn't get a job other than reading admissions apps. I completely agree
with Mr Deresiewicz's characterization of that as "excellent sheep".

As a person from the third-world who went to the Ivy League, I am also
scornful of America's culture of self-congratulation. When I went to
Dartmouth, I remember one of the first things during our orientation was a
senior faculty member giving a speech to us telling us all great we all were
to be here, how selectively we've been chosen, and all that. I went there to
learn, not to learn how cool I am. What rubbish.

~~~
walshemj
And your point is? in both the USA and the UK (even more so) STEM majors are
considered as greasy engineers.

Ivy's and Oxbridge are more about forming networks for later life - just as
public(UK)/Private(USA) school is.

And cultures that fetishize STEM careers have just as many problems - how many
kids have been destroyed by tiger parenting or pushed into careers they don't
like or have aptitude for.

~~~
epalmer
As a parent my wife and I saw our role with my two girls of exposing them to
as much variety and diversity in the early years as I could. Arts, music,
robotics, programming, puzzles and so much more. The goal was to help my kids
find something to be passionate about.

My oldest just graduated with a degree in sociology which is not one of the
most employable degrees for an undergraduate. She is working part time in a
library and living at home. She was meant to be a librarian and all that know
her, know that about her. She has to be get a Masters of Library Science to be
a librarian. She will have to put in two or so years at the library she works
at to go full time without the MLS. So she stays with us and puts in the time.
The good news is that she knows what she wants to do the rest of her life and
to be severely dyslexic and be in a library is just awesome. Her mom and I are
fine with her living at home till she can be full time since she is a saver
and is responsible.

And as a person that has had mostly STEM related careers that I have loved, my
youngest seems to be moving towards mechanical engineering next year. I love
this about her as it warms my STEM heart.

Most important is that both seem to have found their passions. If you love
your work you will likely be in the flow some and who can ask for more than
that out of a career. After building several businesses my current employment
gives me the opportunity to do what I love (programming and systems
integration) and be in the flow. I could not be happier at work and I want
that for my kids. Passion alignment is a great thing.

EDIT: And my youngest has some graphic design and art talent which I am sure
will help her be a better design engineer. She was in doubt in high school if
she should juggle the art and design classes along with her tech speciality
center IT classes. We supported the extra work simply for the benefit of her
love for creating art and design.

------
japhyceo
I was hoping to goto MIT before I entered my freshman year. But none of my
friends were in honors and this created one of the worst times of my life. The
previous year had been one of the best.

In that dark year, at 14, I became focused on hacking and social engineering.
I had lost my best friend and girlfriend, and the dynamics of it all isolated
me from my other friends. Being 13 and somehow in love with the prettiest girl
and then losing it all was devastating.

I barely graduated but had a fun and worked on cool side projects.

At 18, I met a hardware engineer and went on to work on various projects.

I have had a lot of interesting job offers or deals just by meeting people.

I had a major investment bank recruit me but I never even had a real job and
probably couldn't get hired at Burger King. The deal I was offered was absurd.
In the end, I declined it and somewhat regret it.

But my point is, had I dated that girl throughout high school, I probably
would had went to a great University. And today would be some strange
diminished version of myself.

------
JFlash
Yeah, I don't really know what I'm going to do if/when I'm a parent. Academia
is calibrated around kids doing this "hoop-jumping" as early as possible, so
do I push my theoretical children into this race or do I let them eat into
precious time to figure things out?

~~~
zappo2938
Both my parents have PhD's from Ivy League schools. My mom ended up doing
research at MIT and my dad at Harvard. I joke too bad Ivy League schools don't
teach people how to be good parents.

The place I think people get crushed is when kids are the smartest person in
their class in high school at the top and then arriving at an Ivy League
college are of average ability in comparison. Their self esteem is propped by
being the best at academic subjects while their peers excel in sports or in a
social hierarchy. All of a sudden, they are not the smartest kid in the class.

My parents were so upset when I decided I didn't want to go to college out of
high school. I was doing minipreps, isolating DNA, PCR chain reaction, and
making gels, in my dad's genetics laboratory at an Ivy League school which is
basically cooking. I liked cooking so much I decided to be a chef. That is
when the yelling and screaming started. I should have stayed in the career
closet.

The worst part was after 8 years and a successful career cooking with my
parents accepting my choice I decided I wanted to do other stuff. Now my
parents were upset at me again and refused to pay for school. Really? We are
going to start this again?

~~~
epalmer
As a parent of a recent college grad and a HS senior getting ready to trek off
to college I would not pay for college for one of my kids if they waited 8
years. One gap year, okay so that is fine. But 8 years. My wife and I are
looking forward to eventual retirement and want some control over our bank
account. Eight years would put college payments solidly into my retirement
years.

So from a practical standpoint cash flow is a consideration. From a dependency
standpoint isn't eight years long enough for you to mature beyond financial
and emotional dependency?

~~~
copperx
It amazes me how self-centered this comment is. It's your kids education
you're taking about here.

~~~
chris-pb
In this case the "kids" are at least 26. At that point surely we can expect
them to be able to fend for themselves?

~~~
aaronem
Only 26? Surely not. Why, at that age he might not even have a master's degree
yet!

------
JDiculous
I witnessed this firsthand getting a B.S. at a state school and a Masters at
an Ivy. The Ivy kids were differentiated more by their sheep/robot like work
ethic and dedication. Naturally the far majority of them pursued careers in
investment banking and management consulting, careers that are essentially an
extension of this hoop jumping.

I've decided that I'm not going to raise my kids in the U.S. This absurd hoop
jumping isn't the optimum way to raise a successful kid, and it sure as hell
doesn't create happy childhoods.

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irremediable
Am I right in thinking the most sensible option (for most college-going
people) in the US is to go to a state college for the first year or so, then
transfer to somewhere more prestigious?

(I'm British, and I don't have any firsthand experience of the American higher
education system.)

~~~
atomical
The most sensible option is community college for two years and then
transferring to a state school.

~~~
pvnick
Agreed, that's what I did. The best thing is that in community college you can
spend as much time as you want bouncing around and figuring out what you want
in life, rather than being rushed to "get in, get out" like in a 4 year
university. It's also much cheaper, and the quality of education for classes
taken in the first two years (basic chemistry, history, literature, etc) is
frequently on par with that at any 4 year university.

~~~
meagain20000
I went to a CC in manhattan then to SUNY at Buffalo. At the CC I studied
calculus, physics, chemistry, linear algebra, diff equations. I still think
the education I got at the CC was better. The teachers were certainly better
teachers.

~~~
pvnick
Yeah, the teachers at my CC were better I thought too, perhaps because they
were there primarily to teach and not to research. That and the classes were
so much smaller which is great.

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mwhuang2
I'm from a Chinese family. Many of my friends and I were raised with this
mindset. They went off to attend elite colleges, but I couldn't stomach the
endless hoop jumping and toxic achievement culture, so I just did my own thing
and went off to my local state school. While I've had some ups and downs, my
life experiences were unique and I prefer not to form regrets about the past.

------
rodionos
> Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League

I will consider this option in earnest once our own kids get acceptance
letters.

------
paulsutter
Reminds me of this Louis CK video on the meaning of being white:

[http://youtu.be/GPdqlROzgvg](http://youtu.be/GPdqlROzgvg)

------
aaronem
> And I think we see that in the last 50 years, the meritocracy has created a
> world that’s getting better and better for the meritocracy and worse and
> worse for everyone else.

But weren't you saying just the opposite? That being part of the elite, which
here you call "meritocracy" because you're playing a card trick, drives people
crazy?

Here's what I think: You're talking to the elite (if you weren't, you wouldn't
be in the Atlantic), and you know said elite are more comfortable thinking of
themselves in terms of "meritocracy" (even though one of your theses is that
there's no meaningful merit involved), and you also know that pretending to
care about unequal distribution of social benefits is currently in fashion
among your audience (hence the preference for "meritocracy", because it
implies that your audience's unequal share is earned). Keeping all three of
these plates spinning at once is difficult; the sentence I quoted is them all
hitting the ground at once.

>Davis: Some criticize this kind of self-reflection as narcissistic[...]

>Deresiewicz: [...]the main point is to know yourself so you know what you
want in the world. You can decide, what is the best work for me, what is the
best career for me, what are the rewards that I really want. And maybe you’ll
end up saying that I do need a certain level of wealth, but you will know it
because you will have come to know yourself.

Nope. Nothing narcissistic here. You know, in ages past when countries had
explicit aristocracies rather than the implicit ones which deposed and
replaced them, "the main point" as you put it was to serve others, rather than
oneself. Can't imagine what brought that to mind just now, though. Totally
unrelated to anything, no doubt.

>Gaining self-knowledge isn’t a simple or predictable process. Are there
certain things that can only be learned outside the classroom?

Could there possibly be any _wronger_ question to ask?

>Aside from the classes themselves, the fact that we’ve created a system where
kids are constantly busy, and have no time for solitude or reflection, is
going to take its toll. We need to create a situation where kids feel like
they don’t have to be “on” all the time.

Are you sure? What it sounds like you're saying is that "we" have been doing
the best "we" can for decades, and the result is barely tolerable. Are you
sure it wouldn't help more if you just stopped creating situations? If the
problem is that you're raising your kids inside a Skinner box, why would you
think the solution is to make the walls less opaque? Are these the only terms
in which you can think? You don't need to answer that one.

>When I taught humanities classes, I never talked about self-reflection, and I
never invited students to talk about their feelings or their backgrounds or
their experiences.

Well, you got that right, at least, if only by accident. And it has to have
been by accident, because you think you got it wrong. The context couches this
as a failure on your part, but why would it be? Why would you think that
someone _else 's_ self-reflection should have anything to do with _you_? You
don't need to answer that one, either.

So how does this amazing article finish? With its subject telling us about his
own college experience, in the course of which comes this marvel, which I've
emphasized so you don't miss it:

>I drifted for two or three years after college until I reached _a cinematic
moment in my life_ [...]

Why _cinematic_? Because we've all seen this movie. To call it
"transformative" would be erroneous, because a plot twist doesn't change the
shape of the plot, it's part of the story all along; to call it an "epiphany"
would be the same, plus stupid, because we all know God is dead. Indeed, part
of the interview describes how academia has tried to fill the former social
role of religion and failed at it.

But this possibly quite significant point is glossed over entirely because
it's not important to Deresiewicz's movie and therefore not important to the
article or the audience, who are (presumed to be) in much the same state as
the subject: their problem isn't that they've failed to live the movie plot
they thought they wanted, it's that they've _succeeded_ at it and found
themselves nonetheless unfulfilled. Which is fine as far as it goes, what a
shame for them but who cares, right? Except they've managed to inflict the
same disaster on the next generation, because they are not only narcissistic
but incredibly stupid besides.

And, having recognized the existence and nature of this error, what do they
feel really matters? Is it that their descendants, their students, their
supposed protegees, are going to have to find their way out of this
clusterfuck on their own because everyone who might be expected to help them
is too self-absorbed to bother and too stupid to succeed at it anyway? Of
course not. No, what matters is who gets the blame, specifically that it be
anyone but they themselves:

>But the take home message is that everyone has to liberate themselves from
this system. Education should be an act of liberation. We need to make a
better system but ultimately everybody has to claim their freedom for
themselves.

These are literally the last words in the article. Do you think that's an
accident? Because it's not an accident.

