

Please Excuse my Grammar - lettergram
http://austingwalters.com/please-excuse-my-grammar/

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clearal
An Objectivist complaining about fairness. That's rich.

"I hold to several key ideals, I hold that I am a man. I believe that there is
nothing higher than myself, no god, I am a god, I can make the world into what
I wish. I hold that I have no right to impede another human being and no one
has a right to impede me. I aspire to be the best I can be and attempt to only
deal with others who believe as I do. I work hard for everything I own and I
intend to keep all I can. I am against taxes, I am against a welfare state, I
am against anything which forces me to help others that I do not wish to help.
What I am is an Objectivist of sorts. I never wish my freedom to be taken from
me and will always be willing to fight for it if there is a battle I can win.
I believe in reason, logic, and that greed is good." [1]

[1] [http://austingwalters.com/about/](http://austingwalters.com/about/)

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etrevino
The problem here is simple: working hard isn't enough. If you can't pull all
A's, get good test scores, and great recommendations, then you can't have
graduate school. Obviously it's unfair, in large part because someone
wealthier won't have to work to survive and can concentrate on his or her
studies. The converse of that, though, is when things get hard and the rubber
hits the road the student will have some margin of error. The author of this
piece has none, as he admits. That makes him a liability to an academic system
that requires professors to make many of their graduate students slave labor
hours so that they can publish at an appropriate level.

I've been to the highest levels of grad school and had to leave because of
personal problems. There's nothing quite so painful as being told that your
spouse's terminal illness has little to no bearing on your examining
committee's opinion of you. (n.b., I was in a European school, so I couldn't
take more than a three year leave of absence before presenting and defending
my thesis. My examiners could have given me another year, but they refused,
saying that my spouse wasn't exactly going to get _better_ during that span)

This is all utterly unfair, but the sad fact of the matter is that graduate
school isn't for the author. I don't mean that it's an unrealistic dream, I
mean that it's not going to give a rat's ass about the author's life situation
and grad school will treat him like shit when he has to take time to deal with
very real life problems that academics tend to gloss over. The author would be
better served by avoiding grad school for now and establishing himself
financially. Good professional experience will counteract many of his GPA
shortcomings (and most schools will ignore those if he has professional
experience). When he's in a position to get a _fully-funded_ position in grad
school, only then should he go, because only then will he be able to commit
himself 100% to his studies.

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sdrothrock
The author argues that he is "smart" due to his performance on standardized
tests ("I feel smart, my tests showed I’m smart"), but then turns around and
argues that a standardized measurement of performance (the GPA) does not
measure "smart" ("does a 3.5+ GPA really mean that? To me it seems more like
they played it safe, they didn’t push themselves hard enough").

His takeaway is that the tests are right (because he feels they are right) and
that the system and the GPA have failed him.

My takeaway is that there really isn't a good metric for measuring "smart" or
whether someone really groks the material offered in class... and that the
education system really needs to have more of an emphasis flexibility and
really grooming teachers to look at students' abilities and performances
holistically.

I want to say that a "good" counselor would have looked at the author and said
"Ok -- you've done well on your tests and I understand that the environment is
disruptive for you. Why don't we set up a meeting with an AP teacher and let
them gauge you?"

Relying on "good" teachers and "good" counselors is scary, though. It means
you have to trust human beings and not objective metrics where you can say
"this is a pass" or "this is a fail."

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zxexz
I empathize with you! I enrolled in community college after leaving school in
1st grade (yes, first grade. I was six). No high school diploma, no GED. After
2 years I transferred to a top 50 university, and it's a miserable system. I'm
taking grad classes at the same time as undergrad to try to spice up what I'm
learning, but the complete lack of interest-driven education is absolutely
despicable. I would drop out and work as a freelance coder full time (it's
crazy how much that pays), but I only have a year left, supposedly. My grades
are only good in the classes I've enjoyed and have been interested in, and the
rest are Cs and low Bs. Even an F. I just can't bring myself to mundane,
boring work. I know that people say I should learn to live with that, because
life is filled with mundane work. But I've always been able to make money
coding, etc. and loved every minute of it. I honestly feel like Uni is
"harshing on my vibe, man" if you know what I mean. I could be learning so
much more if I could spend less time with my Uni work :(

Aha, well that was as relevant to this post as I thought it would be when I
started writing it. C'est la vie. HN is getting my rant anyways...

~~~
tikwidd
wait, what? you were at university as an 8 year old?

~~~
zxexz
Nope :P started community college at 15, transferred to uni a few years later.
Bit of an alternative educational history.

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samirmenon
Our high school, Niskayuna High School in Upstate NY, has a policy (from what
I've heard, it's fairly rare) called 'Open Enrollment'.

By this policy, any student can, in spite of the wishes of any teacher or
department director, decide to take a class at a different level than
recommended. Essentially, if you want to take the AP class, you can, even if
your teacher tells you to take the remedial one. Nobody can force you not to.

I think its incredibly empowering. It makes school seem like a place of
opportunity instead of a place of discouragement. As far as I know, 'Open
Enrollment' (aka 'Self Selection') is not very widespread in high schools. I
wish it was.

~~~
seizethecheese
While I appreciate the sentiment behind this, I have to disagree. It is very
important to maintain a certain level in advanced classes, or the classes
become a farce. I am at a mid-tier state university right now and I feel like
it's some sort of nightmare with all the nearly illiterate students.

~~~
gizmo686
If students elect to take classes far beyond their level then they can simply
have no idea what is going on and fail. That should be enough of a natural
consequence to discourage a flood of under-performing students to high level
classes.

~~~
dragonwriter
Dunning-Kruger explains why that can't be relied on to discourage the flood --
the people that ought to be discouraged may well agree that unprepared
students shouldn't register for the high-level classes, but won't realize that
they are unprepared.

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grammerscule
Frankly, I couldn't get past the grammar. And spelling. And blatant typos. You
so lack an attention to detail that I wonder if you might have a learning
disorder.

Or you don't read. Please read. Read everything you can. Read fiction, non-
fiction, cereal boxes, "newspapers", graphic novels, the internet. Read
anything. It's kata for communication. If you can't or won't read, you'll
forever suffer from an inability to communicate effectively. You will feel
this most acutely when communicating in written form, but incomplete or
incorrect sharing of your context in any form will contribute to your
perceived disease.

~~~
Gracana
You would see that your advice is misplaced if you had finished reading his
essay.

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Centigonal
I liked your article, your persistence, and your confidence. Keep it up!

You should do some more editing (straight vs. strait, their vs. there, etc.),
but that's an ancillary concern.

Some comments from another STEM undergraduate in the US: You're clearly
someone who's a bigger fan of doing things via your own system versus flowing
through others' systems. There's, of course, nothing wrong with that. Lots of
hacker types have that tendency. Feynman used his own notation for
trigonometric functions in high school because he thought the existing one was
stupid. It's a handicap in many situations, but an advantage in many others.
The world needs both kinds of people.

Anyway, point is, the traditional pathways to success are based on certain
metrics, and people flowing through that pathway will optimize toward those
metrics to the exclusion of others, inflating them (that's Goodhart's Law).
You're someone with an aversion to traditional pathways who's trying to reach
life goals through those pathways. The system wasn't made for people like you.
This automatically puts you at a disadvantage, as your time and effort is
spread out between a lot of things, only some of which help up the metric the
grad school people are looking for.

So take a look at yourself and gauge your skills: you're obviously competent,
you're intrinsically motivated, you're persistent, but you're bad at (or your
life conditions preclude you from) optimizing to certain metrics. Given this
information, if you want to do better, you can either give yourself a handicap
(take less credit hours or easier classes) or change the game to something
you're better at (look for less GPA-centric grad school programs, consider
other future possibilities -- also see etrevino's comment!).

In the further future, look for smaller places and higher risk/reward
scenarios. Working in those kinds of environments will let you take on
challenges on your own terms. Finally, many of the problems you mentioned at
college would be nonexistent at a smaller school. At a smaller place, people
are more willing to bend rules and to make exceptions given extenuating
circumstances. Keep that in mind when making future decisions.

Oh, and, yeah, the system is incredibly broken. So are a lot of things in
life. the best we can do is often to work around them and push to change them,
usually in that order.

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Blahah
Some places can be flexible about their entry requirements. If you're not
against coming to the UK, try some places here, like Cambridge (much cheaper
than ~all US schools). Don't just apply - contact specific supervisors about
joining their groups. I can help guide you through this if you (or anyone)
want to drop me an email.

As someone who bucked the traditional route to get here I can assure you it's
feasible. I didn't go to university until I was 21 - and then I did a weird
subject at an unheard of university. Now I'm a grad at Cambridge. If you don't
like the system which is set up to select people who are likely to be good,
then you have to work around it, not try to run straight through it. By
applying the normal route you're guaranteeing yourself to get stuck. People
are always the way around institutional rules - get to know some of them, help
them to like you, then help them to help you.

Also, if you want to change the world with your skills, very few academic
projects will let you do that. We're building a site that lets you find those
projects and give your skills: [http://solvers.io](http://solvers.io)

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hobs
I completely understand. What did I do? Got a job for someone who cares more
about accomplishments than about some ridiculous method of measuring that
meant nothing in any context but authoritarian measurement systems(do what we
say to pass).

Upsides? If we make money, I am lauded and respected, and getting things done
is the highest achievement. Downsides? Way too much time spent optimizing
problems and dealing with bullshit that is unrelated to your interests.

Conclusion: no matter what path you choose, you have to yoke yourself to
someone's wagon, whether it be academic or business. Otherwise hope you are
born rich or have a billion dollar idea.

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Gracana
I also feel frustrated with and betrayed by the academic system, and while my
reasons for feeling that way are somewhat different, the big picture is
similar. I've worked hard and learned a lot and by some measures I am
intelligent and educated, but I don't have the academic history to back it up.
But... none of that matters, because I got a job where my actual skills and
knowledge are valued, rather than my credentials. Is that a path you can take?

Oh and by the way... I see people picking on your grammar and spelling
mistakes, but I really don't think they're any worse than what I see regularly
elsewhere. I've read plenty of papers published by engineering and computer
science graduate students that have been worse.

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huhalu
I graduated 2 years ago from the same school as OP. I had better GPA, simply
because I learned to game the system and to be better at taking tests. When
you realize the system (college now and graduate school soon) is not
benefiting you, you might want to come to a different system (industry). I
moved to SF after college. My day job keeps me interested in distributed
system, while I spent my free time learning my favorite subject, combinatorics

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danbmil99
School is not everything.

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dgcoffman
You are delusional and incredibly vain.

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teemo_cute
I use [http://spellcheckplus.com/](http://spellcheckplus.com/)

"I'm commenting in Hacker News which means I have a minimum IQ of 120. But in
no way my above statement proves my above average intellect which can be
personified in this comment. But then some may say I'm arrogant or just
trolling neither of which, this sentence is too long I'm gonna end it now."

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w1ntermute
Sorry, but I find it very difficult to understand how someone who can't even
spell the word "straight" correctly could have gotten an A in English his
senior year of high school. I'm pretty sure I knew how to spell that word
correctly by the time I was 5 or 6.

~~~
throw_away12847
* The author is not perfect.

* You are not perfect.

* You missed the point of the article entirely.

* You responded to this story just to be smug.

* You are very rude.

~~~
w1ntermute
Actually, you're the one who missed the point entirely (of my comment). I'm
questioning the factual accuracy of an article in which the author claims to
have gotten an A in his AP English class the senior year of high school,
despite the fact that he still can't spell the word "straight" correctly.
Either he's lying, or his teacher had very low standards. The former is much
more likely.

I also question his interest in writing correctly, as all he would have had to
do was to paste his article into Word and it would have told him that he was
spelling "straight" incorrectly. The fact that he didn't even bother to do
that is an even bigger concern.

There's also the fact that, rather than bothering to come up with a proper
response to my initial point, you decided to attack me by calling me "very
rude" and making (incorrect) assumptions about why I responded to this
article. That also makes you very difficult to take seriously. Don't bother to
respond until you can do so in a civilized tone.

~~~
lettergram
Just going to go ahead and say it, strait is a word as is straight. The
article was titled "Please Excuse my Grammar" and misusing a word is a grammar
(not spelling mistake). That also seems to be part of the point of the
article, did you read the last line?

The author wanted to misuse grammar to bring attention to the fact that the
education system doesn't support learning. Instead the system labels
individuals and attempts to keep them in those labels, rather than helping
them improve.

