

Ask HN: How Did you hack your education? - thomsopw

This is a broad question but in general i wanted to look at ways of getting ahead in school etc.
So how did you hack your education?
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michael_dorfman
A lot of what I did to hack my education was specific to my particular
circumstances, but two pieces of general advice should apply to anyone:

1) Choose classes based on the professor, not the subject. Ask around to find
out who the exceptional professors are-- you'll find out, quickly-- and take
whatever they are offering. A good professor can make the dullest subject come
to life; a bad professor can suck the life out of the most fascinating topic.

2) Treat studying as a job. Set aside a couple of hours a day, preferably at a
fixed time, to do focused, head-down, no nonsense studying. I used a study
carrel in the library, every day for two hours. Two hours a day was all it
took, to stay ahead of the pack in all subjects, and still have endless time
for a very active social/extra-curricular life.

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nostrademons
I did the minimum required to not fail out of high school. In the massive
amounts of time that I freed up by not doing homework, I taught myself to
program C and Java and Perl. I made sure I understood the material I was not
doing the homework for, so I could ace all the standardized tests. I took (and
aced) the AP tests even though my school didn't offer AP courses. I (barely)
graduated high school, then worked for a year at a tech startup. Evidently
some admissions officer found that impressive, so I got into a top college.

Then I did the minimum required to not fail out of college. (Actually, I cut
it _really_ close, flunking two courses in my major and at one point having it
look like there was no conceivable way I could fulfill the graduation
requirements.) In the massive amounts of time that I freed up by not doing
homework, I redid the database system for a 100k-user website, wrote the
school's course evaluation system, and taught myself Lisp and Haskell. I had
no trouble finding jobs after college, despite my dubious graduation status.

Remember that no matter what you're "supposed" to be doing, you always have a
choice in what you _actually_ do. There're lots more paths to an impressive
resume than doing well in school.

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HamletDRC
No matter how many different classes require a paper to be written, always
write one paper and reuse it for all classes. US Profs love creativity and
when you come to them and ask if you can write about the "History of Religion"
for your history paper they will always say yes. Then go to your religion
professor and pitch the same paper. Et viola. Two classes with one paper. And
since you'll have a little more time to write the one paper it will usually be
better.

Also, always do the readings _before_ the class, not after. By offsetting your
reading one week sooner then everyone else you'll have an advantage.

~~~
Jtsummers
The same can be done with a project but writing two papers. I was taking
courses in graphics and parallel programming at the same time. I took my
graphics project and modified portions of it to run in parallel. Then I
submitted one paper on the graphics and another paper on the transformation of
serial->parallel and the performance gains.

But always get permission first. If professors find out that you're reducing
your workload like this they aren't always pleased. However, if you're talk to
them (and they're reasonable) then they'll almost certainly accept it.

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juiceandjuice
Research experience (4 years under a well known international experiment), and
I utilized everything resource I had available to me at a public university. I
taught myself a lot of things, I got _free_ instruction from advisers, I
figured the ins and outs of this and that... sometimes at the expense of my
actual grades. And the most important thing... I was good at it and people
liked me. Ironically, not many physicists are very good programmers, and
that's exactly why I got hired for a job.

I graduated with a 2.5 GPA (no thanks to ADHD) and now I'm a Software
Developer at Stanford. I initially had a hard time finding a job near where I
lived (Utah), and no money so I took a part time job for a bit.

Oh, and as for the actual courses: Find out who your professor is and what
your book will be. Check the course website from the offering professor (or
any other professor at your school) the end of the semester before you take it
for homework and test solutions. I wrote some data mining scripts that
basically googled "book name" + syllabus + test|homework|solutions|answers and
scoured the answers for pdfs. This will get you both homework solutions and
possible test problems (most professors are unoriginal) Also, search "ism"
occasionally as well, as you may get lucky and find the instructors solutions
manual. Buddy up with professors and find out where there offices are, as well
as your major's library and search for old course books they are throwing
away. For non-cs in math/physics/chemistry, if you have a unix account don't
be too shy to go ahead and ls -lR ~professor/public_html > jnk.txt.

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iuguy
I utterly failed in school after realising that it didn't matter that much.
Unfortunately I discovered girls, booze and fun just in time for my A-Levels
and after finding more to life than studying hard cut back massively. I picked
subjects I was already way ahead of my class in and dropped out as they were
wasting my time, then went back in just in time to find that two thirds of my
graduation would be based on maths (a course that I never signed up for, but
essential for A-Level Physics) and Microsoft Access (I'd used DBase, FileMaker
and even Oracle, but this made no sense to me).

It was only when I flunked my A-Levels that I realised how little they
mattered. Pretty much everything I'd learnt about computers I'd learnt off my
own bat (exception: Microsoft Access). I thought about going back, but the
prospect of graduating from University at 26 just seemed like a waste of time,
so I got myself a job as quick as I could and tried to work my way towards
games development.

I never quite got there (after flirting with the games industry I saw it was
just as bad as Infosec, but even more full of idiots at the time), but overall
I think I did ok.

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tyng
I graduated with a slightly above average score by not studying for the whole
semester but cram everything in the last two weeks before exams. I used my
free time (> 25 hrs per week) to run an entrepreneurs club at uni that I
cofounded, learned a huge lot about networking, raising money, marketing,
teamwork, leadership etc etc... The club did a lot of impressive things.

Sadly none of the skills I learned from my extra curricular activities counted
on my resume because the HRs treated it as a standard non-commitment student
club thing. Truth be told now I'm having trouble finding jobs, and I wish I
actually studied during my uni years because I felt I learned nothing from
it... But that I don't really regret, what I regret was not starting up an
actual business whilst still a student because after you graduate social
pressure start to come from every direction to force you find a job
(girlfriend, parents, friends, etc)

Sorry, I didn't hack my education. This is more of a not-to-do

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trouble
I got a job tutoring first year students (I'm a masters student), which has
really forced me to understand the course material thoroughly. Answering the
same questions over and over about report and essay structure, referencing,
and the importance of reading the assignment outline has made me a lot more
aware of these when working on my own projects too. Also, it's not officially
part of my job (i.e. I don't get paid for it), but I always offer to review
drafts and critique students' structuring, language use, and grammar, which
really reinforces good habits when I have to write something myself.

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cmos
Drivers Ed was taught by an old irish ex cop who was obsessed with talking
about how much alcohol you could drink before you should not drive. His best
piece of advice? Keep a jar of peanut butter in the glove compartment so when
you get pulled over, put peanut butter in your mouth and it will cover the
smell of alcohol on your breath.

I would work on my robot after school and my favorite teacher would write me a
late note, so I only spent the last 10 minutes of every class in drivers ed.

Robot got me into college. 20 years of driving and not one speeding ticket or
accident.

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akibalogh
I became a full-time college student at 15 and had the state pay for it.

A limited number of "middle colleges" (such as Washtenaw Technical Middle
College in MI) allow students to become full-time college students. The state
paid for my college tuition and books and all of my classes counted for both
high-school and college credit.

So, at 18, I graduated with a HS diploma and a community college Associate's
Degree.

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dlib
I found a way to access last year's exams by doing some url magic in the
course catalog so I could access the Blackboard page of previous years the
course was offered. Same type of questions came up every year so I knew where
to focus on. It's no longer working though since they upgraded Blackboard.
Also, googling for the solutions manual has worked for me a few times.

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bnycum
I learned that many professors had favorite books where they got their test
questions. I would go to professors' offices and check out what books they
might have on their desks or book shelves, then take a quick trip to the
library.

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rms
I got obnoxiously high karma on Hacker News.

