
Being an excellent robot (Erica Goldson Graduation speech) - ColinWright
http://zenpencils.com/comic/123-erica-goldson-graduation-speech/
======
Nursie
I find that hilarious.

Particularly "While others would come to class without their homework done
because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an
assignment", "while others sat in class and doodled..." and "while others were
creating music..."

This seems remarkably naive. The doodlers did not all become artists, many
were just bored or uninterested. The ones missing assignments were probably
not reading books that fascinated them, they were probably playing video games
or smoking/drinking somewhere out of sight. The musicians probably did have
more fun than you.

But none of these people had life any more figured out than you. And if you're
the sort of person that _can_ excel at anything they put their mind to, just
because they want to, then the world is yours to do with as you please.

That doesn't make you a robot, it makes you a god.

~~~
ronaldx
>The doodlers did not all become artists, many were just bored or
uninterested.

In fact, the doodlers were likely attending to the lecture, e.g.
[http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1882127,00.ht...](http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1882127,00.html)

~~~
darkmighty
This is not so much motivating, as in saying doodlers actually doodle to
absorb content without letting the mind wander. I don't attend to classes for
absorbing content (books are fine for that), I do to think deeply about the
subject as it's exposed and interact with the teacher with questions, making
the exposition richer. This just confirms the doodler stereotype.

------
jaimebuelta
What I see in this brief (I haven't seen the actual talk) is an understandable
fear to get out of the education system.

Let's face it, from kindergarden to the end of college, what we have is a set
of "levels", a fixed path with very very few points where you can actually
decide something. The natural step is to reach the next level and keep doing
roughly the same. More tests, more lessons... etc

BUT, when that system ends, there is a void. The adult world is not "a fixed
system" or "the next level in the game", but a whole chaos, full of options,
opportunities, uncertainties. And that freedom can intimidate, specially if
someone has been focusing in excelling in the educational system and has the
perception (not necessarily that's a real thing) that none of that is useful,
that other people already have links (which a lot of people will form) with
this new and weird "life outside academia"

I mean, it's a great thing, but I can totally understand that it's scary at
first.

~~~
mathattack
This is true. I think society has gotten better at stretching out the shelter
over time. It used to be undergrad + law school, then figure it out. Now it's
undergrad + banking/consulting/TFA + MBA + McKinsey, then figure it out.

Or for the lucky who were REALLY into programming, we knew early on that
grades didn't matter as much so long as we learned enough to be valuable,
since it's a field that's a relative meritocracy.

My experience, though, was the folks not handing in homework assignments were
doing it out of laziness, not alternative studies.

~~~
klibertp
> since it's a field that's a relative meritocracy

I couldn't _know_ this, I could just sincerely _hope_ it's true, for all the
years I played with programming, neglecting my duties as part of an
educational system. I believed that I _can_ become good at this thing called
programming and I believed that it _will_ be enough.

Almost twenty years later I'm still astonished that my childish, naive belief
was indeed true. That in this field it is much more important what we can do
than who we are.

Or maybe it was just luck and I'm deluding myself...

~~~
mathattack
There are politics in technology like every field, but... It's a field where
things work, or things don't. And very hard problems get solved, or they
don't.

In Marketing, there's always a way to spin a result. In HR, the results can be
too long in the future to hold someone accountable.

Sales is perhaps the only other that comes close in being a meritocracy. There
too the pedigree doesn't matter as much.

------
cheez
I think this is just the other extreme of unschooling. The focus is on blindly
excelling.

I "went" to high school. I graduated with a 95% average. In high school, there
was a tie between me and some blonde girl to get valedictorian. I told my
physics teacher that I didn't even care and to give it to her because for her,
it was a huge point of self-validation. I got 100% in physics and calculus
because I loved the subjects. I spent my summers studying calculus. Excelling
was a by-product.

Through high school, I played sports, wrote music and had sex with girls. I
did well academically too, even though (or because?) I stopped attending
classes during high school and never went to class in university.

I graduated university from a top 10 university on the dean's list and I ended
up making hundreds of thousands of dollars every year by taking my own route.

I love what I do and I loved every minute of university.

The problem I think is as she says herself: she focused on excelling, not on
doing what she enjoyed. Maybe her parents are to blame. I don't know. But this
is not at all a strike against the school system.

The school system is broken. But IMO, this is not why. It works very well for
the 5% who enjoy academic pursuit.

~~~
svnfv
> I stopped attending classes during high school

You got away with that? Count yourself extremely lucky.

~~~
cheez
Why wouldn't I get away with it?

~~~
acuozzo
Public High School students in the US can't miss more than a pre-declared
maximum number of days per year and often face consequences if they miss class
after they've been verified to be in attendance that day.

Truancy is taken seriously in the US.

~~~
cheez
I guess my mom had a talk with the school.

------
jasallen
I think this shows incredible insight for a 18 or 19 year old. Going against
the grain will certainly provide more resistance, but if she moved that way
after this speech, I think she's already an 'artist', at least in the Seth
Godin sense of the word.

Is the new absolute standpoint a little naive too? Sure. And a little bit of a
big jump from where she was? Sure. Binary Search algorithm on figuring out her
'self', and she's got a real early start on it.

------
snorkel
The only hard part is knowing what you want to do with your life and how to
make a living from it. Being top of the class certainly doesn't hurt your
chances at success, if anything it instills dedication and discipline
necessary to achieve whatever you decide to do next.

School is just a really long training level. It's not as fun as the game, but
make the most of it and the game will be much easier to play.

------
grannyg00se
"students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create
a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and
secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it"

I'm not so sure they're unaware of what they're doing. Don't most people go to
university to "get a job"? Which typically means a 9-5 corporate cog paid to
do the corporations bidding for most of your waking hours. That's actually
what people _want_ out of their four year piece of paper. Most people have
already accepted and acknowledge that university isn't required to perform
these jobs, but it's required to acquire these jobs, so they go through it.

There will be few who are there for the education itself, and perhaps go on to
research positions for much lesser pay than the successful corporate cogs. But
it's no mystery that the vast majority are there to willingly become part of
the complacent labour force.

------
JonnieCache
See also: [http://school.neocities.org/](http://school.neocities.org/)

------
Inception
This is a great!

