When I went to college, having already done full-time software work and countless hours of programming in my spare time, I went to a departmental advisor confidently requesting to test out of the introductory CS classes aimed at first-time programmers. I nearly got laughed out of the room. I pushed the department on this, but it was clear: they simply did not do this. Everyone takes intro to CS. Everyone.
It sucks, but there are people out there no smarter than you yet more powerful, and sometimes they impose a speed limit.
If you get the opportunity though, I'd still suggest doing what the author did. No harm in learning something twice, particularly from two different perspectives.
When I started college, I thought I could fly through the intro CS courses. Within the first week the professor had completely reset my understanding of computer science, rebuilding it from the ground up using purely functional concepts. I’m incredibly grateful I could not test out of that class. I would have done so in a heartbeat and missed out on the most important lessons I’d need for my career.
Pretty much the same situation for me. I was already writing C++ professionally and had embarrassingly high thoughts of myself.
The first language we started with was SML and for a good couple of months I just laughed at this stupid language with its silly and unnecessary limitations. It wasn't until we had to implement a parser in it, something I coincidentally had struggled with on my own, that I started to realize that I was dealing with a different paradigm, and a very powerful one at that.
Similar not same situation, but different outcome. Had done hobby programming in high school, read a bunch of books, took a junior college course on C.
Got to undergrad. Followed the speed limit, took intro to programming course. 450 person class, 1000 person wait-list. 75% of the class did not pass. Only attended two lectures, hand written programming finals. Never lost a point.
It wasn't until the 3rd year programming languages class that we wrote minimal lisp interpreters in scheme and did crazy stuff in prolog that I had that rewiring sensation.
Not trying to brag, just putting this here for others reading to say that not every intro to programming course speed limit is worth it.
The approach when I did CS seems pretty reasonable: Lectures were attendance entirely optional for most courses (exceptions were some courses with small number of places; e.g. I did a "French for sciences" class where attendance was compulsory), and for the intro course I showed up to the first and last lecture, but you had some compulsory lessons in smaller groups and a couple of compulsory group projects.
I got to save plenty of time by opting out of most of the lectures, but the groups and projects gave you feedback if you started skipping too much (something I learned in the introductory maths course that I also first thought I could get away with not going to every lecture for) and forced you to read at least the main set books so you got a good idea of whether it was material you understood.
It's indeed easy to think you know more than you do, but at the same time, sometimes you do know exactly what you know - been in both situations.
Like why bother going to college to skip the in-person classes? Might as well just buy books and work through them and save money. Make yourself a bookcase. That's cool. Not "well-educated", a term I hate, well-read. Though you do at some point have to interact with the medium for real, can't just read about martial arts. At that point hire a tutor--in-person classes.
Matt Damon as the protagonist of Good Will Hunting: "You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."
That wasn't true before the pandemic but without in-person classes it is absolutely true.
Because there were other classes more worth my time, and so by skipping the in-person classes of subjects I needed to take but where I knew the material well I could take a higher course load and get more of the things I actually learned new material from.
By the time I started university, I'd been programming for 13 years, I'd done paid freelance development jobs, and written my first compiler, and I'd done more advanced stuff than the first several semesters worth of classes. I had gaps, and I filled them with the group work and books, but there was no value to me in the in-person lectures for the introductory computer science courses.
That's a pretty good answer but there's a few gaps in it. Like I get there's still "taking a higher course load" ie score points by jumping through hoops to impress the future. Like I did a lot of this in high school, endless jumping through flaming hoops, and good exercise in hindsight, but come on. Well I guess everyone has little choice.
Yeah and you did pay some attention, got a sampler plate, makes sense.
Plus it's fun acing courses with no effort every once in a while. It's a good sign.
Taking a higher course load was to enable me to actually learn things I wanted to. It was not about jumping hoops - didn't even finish my degree, because I had better things to do (a startup). I did finish it up years later, and that was about jumping hoops because the job market in the aftermath of the dot com crash in the UK where I moved to in 2000 meant having a degree was a lot more important.
It was also not about enjoying acing courses, but about needing to take courses that were compulsory for the programme and that you could not test out of. As I said, the option to skip most lectures felt like a reasonable middle group - if I'd run into problems with the group sessions, I could have easily gone back to the lectures at any time.
Our “week 6” assignment was to implement optical character recognition (OCR) in Haskell, a lazy pure functional language. That assignment blew my mind!
The lecturer pre-generated small black & white square bitmaps of single characters from a sample set of fonts to use as aids during development. (Just the lower case letters a to m.) Then your mark was the percentage your OCR could recognise from a much larger set generated from about a thousand fonts.
In the same course the next major project was to make an AI for the card game Hearts. This is a four-player game, and the project materials included an automated tester that could be given any 4 AIs and would score them against each other. In the labs we would battle our AIs while developing them.
I ended up getting the second highest score out of a class of three hundred students and I still don't know how to play that game well. (I got the AI to teach itself the probability tables for optimal play, which I didn't memorise.)
I'm just struck by how cool those assignments are — I feel like this might be one of the biggest differences in school quality, most of the stuff I've had to do at an unremarkable school felt a lot more like "fake problems", but this OTOH sounds like something that would actually get me a lot more motivated even if I had no clue where to begin at first
That lecturer was spectacularly good at teaching, and stood out from the rest of the pack so much that it was almost hilarious.
He used a digital projector in an era where that was still rare in even computer science courses so that he could demonstrate the basics of the edit-build-debug cycle. He'd deliberately leave small errors in the code to "fix" and he'd get the class involved with suggestions on where to look and what to try.
All of his projects were competitive, because it got the students much more engaged if they were racing each other. I believe the year after mine had to play a monopoly-style game where trucks were going around a "game board" and could buy and sell stuff for profit, could run out of fuel, borrow money, etc...
Meanwhile all the other lecturers would drone on and scribble unreadable gibberish on a blackboard. We had one lecturer give us a final exam where half the marks depended on converting 7 lines of C to assembly, except that 7 lines had 5 errors in it. Two of the lines were just the braces, which means effectively every line was faulty.
Same here. I came from the demo scene and was disgusted by the thought of having to sit along total beginners, because hey, I had demos ranked in the charts.
CS is a totally different beast and I am glad about the humble experiences around CS. I might not totally agree with all the educators tell you, especially around OOP, however especially the mathematics around CS was impressive and very helpful.
But as long as you know the math it is easy to self learn the other parts of computer science. I just studied physics and math in college and self learned the rest and learned algorithms, compilers, distributed systems etc on my own and have worked on those at Google and never had a time where someone knew something they learned in CS that I didn't know. It was the opposite, since when I self learned I went through every CS topic you can take I often knew a lot of CS things that the CS grads didn't know since they were limited in how many credits they could take.
I know many who took a similar route as me, but I've never met anyone who self learned math to a reasonable level. And since math is a very small part of a CS degree you could learn all of it in 1-2 semesters, so the optimal way to learn computer science would be to take 1-2 semesters of college math and spend the rest self learning. I bet you'd get a better understanding that way in much less time than it takes to go through a CS degree.
One of of the TA's when I did CS was a member of the Crusaders [1]. We had a lot of interesting discussions of the difference between demo-style coding and CS...
I had the opposite for the intro to programming class. Sure, I learned a language I didn’t know (but that took like a week tops) but all the actually programming topics were things I learned years ago. It made me very bored and gave me a tendency to skip class, which is a bad habit to fall into.
The other intro courses (eg computer architecture, which taught assembler) were great though, even if I found them easy due to prior knowledge.
Unfortunately that experiences doesn’t give a clear line for what to test out of and what not. I bet I could have passed the computer architecture one too, but I would have missed out, while the programming one would have been best if I used the time for something else (I mostly did, but there were lab sessions that were graded and couldn’t be easily skipped)
As someone who teaches in university I can tell you by experience that the worst students are those who think they already know what you are going to tell them.
The thing is: it is hard to tell them apart quickly from those who actually already know, without having them take some test.
And even if you have them take the test, you cannot be sure they miss some fundamental core concept that will be crucial to understand later.
I myself had to go through introductions more than once that I thought will not offer me anything new, but going through the basics once in a while with a better understanding can be of incredible value
I think in 10 years of teaching I met one student who genuinely might have skipped through the intro programming course without too much harm.
Being able to pass a test is indeed
not a sign of mastery of the material (this might come as a shock to some! Just because you got good grades doesn’t mean you’ve mastered the subject! It just means you’re good at the test! But wait, why use tests then? Well, sit down, get comfortable and let me tell you a tale of how we got here…)
The fact this conversation exists highlights that our education system is silly. Without evidence, I subjectively like the ideas in “One World Schoolhouse” as an alternative.
The way I see it people who just like to get a degree will complain about having to take classes with material in it they already think they know.
People who are really interested in the subject will not complain. I for example have been programming for the past 15 years and I will still read something like an introduction to C programming, just because there might be some ideas, explainations or examples in it that will help me deepen the fundamentals of what I already know.
Arguably there are topics where this works better and topics where this works worse. In electronics or mechanics groking the fundamentals is so essential to the whole field that you should know them by hard. And the only way to know them by hard is spaced repetition. So having some overlap in the things you learn is not only necessary here, it is crucial.
>Being able to pass a test is indeed not a sign of mastery of the material
I think/hope you mean "guarantee" rather than "sign", because, yes, someone who has mastered the material is indeed much more likely to pass the test than someone who has not. The existence of non-representative counterexamples does not refute that.
In school, you for some reason take the lessons first and then the test. In real world, on so many levels, you start with a test and then proceed to lessons as needed, if at all.
If you pass an earlier test while missing some fundamental concept, then you'll simply spend the time learning it when you do need it. If you never need it, maybe it wasn't that fundamental after all.
Sounds a bit like 2nd-graders who wish to skip the multiplication because they don't need 2*3 - they can pass the test just by calculating 3+3 after all...
When learning, unlike the person teaching you, you don't know what's coming in the next lesson or the one after it, so it's sometimes a good idea to trust them on a curriculum. It's also the one of the biggest downsides of being self-thought (as I am in big part), you always have holes in your perspective that you're not even aware of and it takes years to stumble on something that someone else was told in the 1st year of being a dev.
> If you pass an earlier test while missing some fundamental concept, then you'll simply spend the time learning it when you do need it.
Only if one knows what they don't know. And fundamental concepts have a habit of hiding in plain sight. It's easy to waste lots of resources because one doesn't know about a fundamental concept.
I think it's a similar situation as if you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
You can probably find a solution with what you already now (as a junior programmer) as most problems programmers have to solve are not that hard but you may completely miss a better solution because you had no idea it was possible. I may be fine but you may also lose a lot of time later because it wasn't.
I agree that it's possible to self teach almost everything in CS but the point of university is to speed up the discovery of CS from scratch and have solid foundations. You certainly don't know everything graduating university but should now where to look when you have a problem imo.
I sympathize with this and have definitely been horribly wrong about basics before, but it‘s also crazy how many teachers don‘t manage to set up courses and asssignments such that they really force you to understand the basics.
This is sadly true. I have suffered under this as a student myself, so I try to not forgot how it felt and constantly check my material for unexplained aspects, that I just assume blindly.
Your response neatly encompasses everything I disklike about academia. It's easier for the institution to bucket everyone into a group and disregard the individual, so that's what inevitably happens.
Not sure you are projecting a little bit here, what I do and how I do it is very untypical for academia (I teach at an art university, so it just counts to give people skills not to teach them some fixed curriculum), I also get the chance to do one on one teaching sessions where students will profit because I can do things at their level. Also we don't have tests and students are free to choose their courses.
Given that environment if someone comes to "introduction into analog sound synthesis" I can expect them to want to hear just that (or they need the credits). If people don't come to learn, I will not force them. They are grown ups, it is their decision if they want to learn.
Please also consider that unless you have experience in teaching groups you might have a rose tinted view of what an instructor can practically achieve. If you have a group of 20 people with 10 of those having no clue what you are talking about, 2 that are very advanced and the rest with mixed levels inbetween you must find a way of teaching the 10 that have no clue while also not boring the 2 who are more advanced. This can be a hard problem to solve in a good way as you cannot split yourself. If your group is bigger it gets harder even (and at some point you have to stop worrying).
I am totally for people being able to skip classes where they can demonstrate they already know everything thought in it. But practically it might be a lot of work for anybody working at university to create such an test for e.g. just one person. From the perspective of a student it all looks a lot simpler than it might be. For example even if someone could test a student to make sure they are not sending them into a hail mary be letting them skip fundamentals, maybe that someone has so many other tasks on their shelve that even if they wanted they cannot do that?
Also: for every student where this might make sense you will get 3 or 4 that really overestimate themselves with a nearly narcissistic inability of judging their own ability. You know, the type that would like to construct the equivalent of an iPhone in circuit form while not being able to explain ohms law.
> Also: for every student where this might make sense you will get 3 or 4 that really overestimate themselves with a nearly narcissistic inability of judging their own ability. You know, the type that would like to construct the equivalent of an iPhone in circuit form while not being able to explain ohms law.
But of course they could. And indeed, considering them narcissists is what many hate about the academia. Maybe they'd be better off taking a less linear path. Sure, in the context of the academia skipping classes is not justified and there's no problem with anything you're doing. But when one is frustrated with schooling, the first instinct is often to try to go faster. Quitting school is supposed to be a very bad thing, that's the one acceptable way to do something different.
For the most part I had the nicest and most accommodating teachers, had no problem with them, they had no problem with myself, can't blame them for anything. But I do strongly dislike the nearly universal borderline religious belief in traditional schooling being the right way. It's okay to not know some thing and not want to know them.
Well instead you could get one-to-one tuition sensitive to and tailored for your unique strengths, brought by the very best in the field. That would be pretty resource-intensive, but maybe you are worth it. But now look at from the providers' perspective: they can only afford to do this for a small fraction of the students that will think themselves deserving of it. What approach will let your special gifts shine through all the competing candidates?
In practise your university will not provide you with the time/resources to do extras like these.
On top of that as an educator you have a real responsibility not to send someone on a hail mary without fundamentals, which might ultimately drive them out of university because it will not get easier after that. This is a real risk.
Another aspect: What so you think how many students will try to skip classes if word gets around it is actually possible to do so? How many of those will cheat to do so? And bow many of those who made it through will be able to face the next exam without cheating?
When I was in college I needed to take two classes, one of which was a prerequisite for the other, within semester to graduate on time. The CS advisors adamantly refused to add me to higher level class because I was missing the prerequisite class. Furthermore, the classes were taught at the same time to prevent people from taking them in the same semester, for some reason.
I talked to the more friendly advisors in the Philosophy department, who also had the ability to add and drop students from classes, and got them to add me to both classes I needed. I persuaded them not to worry about the overlap. I completed the semester by attending the higher level class except for exam days (I had to get a special dispensation to take one final early because their final exams were scheduled at the same time).
My point with this anecdote is that sometimes more powerful people try to impose a speed limit and sometimes you can get around them.
So I get that college in the US can be expensive, hence the rush, but for me, one of the main benefits of university was time.
My CS class very quickly divided into "those who could already program" and "first time programmers". (testing out was not a "thing" then - at least I never heard of anyone doing it for any class.)
Interestingly it was more classification than groups. I spent time helping friends who were stuck, but I also spent a lot of time with other advanced students, in the lab, pushing each other. The assignments were trivially simply, so we just spent time making them more interesting.
Because the course work was done quickly, we had a lot of time to go the extra mile. Time we wouldn't get later in life.
The important things though, the theory, stuck with me, and even the early classes were valuable. Intro to programming only lasted a few months, then there was a lot more theory, and we could meld that into our code a lot more.
I went into college knowing how to code. I came out knowing how to program, and there's a big difference.
If you are in college today, funding aside, I'd say - don't be in such a rush to finish. Fill your spare time by sucking in riches, seek out every nugget, help others, be challenged, see the time as an opportunity, not a class to simply pass.
I'm in the UK and this studied in a system where you can't just skip ahead, but I also got so much out of sucking in the riches as you say and helping other students. Because I already knew the basics I could spend time really mastering every last part of the courses and it was wonderful (and also gave me space and time for lots of non-academic activities!)
This is my experience as well. I was doing well in CS courses, but struggling in others, and didn't graduate early (well, didn't try to either). However, finishing whatever they threw at me allowed me to go ask for more, or try more harder things.
As a result, I learned way more than curriculum offered, got way harder assignments and projects (like designing a compression algorithm from ground up as a graduation project), and satisfied much more overall.
I continued my M.Sc. and Ph.D. at the same university (because I already had a job, and I just wanted to learn), and this head start (and being in good terms with the professors) allowed me to do similarly heavier curricula during these studies, too.
I think the scheduling both at the same time might just be an "optimal" solution if you already know that people can't take them at the same time.
That frees up other time slots for courses people taking either one might take.
I tested out of multivariable calculus in college and to this day, it is one of my biggest regrets. My peers who took the course have an intuitive understanding of the material that I never developed. Sometimes there's a difference between learning on your own and working through the material with others.
For 99% of multivariable calc students, once the course is over and the social environment moved on, there is no reason or motivation to leaen it. Like most of college coursework, it's just a ritual.
There are loads of information available on this. For example, Khan Academy has a very nice multivar glass, done by Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown). Why are you limited by what happened (presumably) years ago?
The lack of homework, I think. It's not a natural thing to do. Apart from an explicitly pedagogical environment I have found the best thing to suggest people is to try to work their learning into a project. For math this can be hard unless you also have relevant engineering experience to make something with your math you are learning.
The first part of 18.02x (Multivariable Calculus) is open at the moment, not for certificate, but the autograder works. The second part starts next month
I'm still struggling to find the right blend of self study and group study. With peers you can coast along through the help of others to pinpoint you where you missed something, what's the "right" path to a solution. Which means .. you didn't really understand it. But sometimes I found solutions on my own, but then I realized that there were still some issues in them. I'd say it's important to self study but to reality check regularly.
After learning programming and CS on my own, I thought I'd go back and pick up on areas I missed by taking some courses at a university (I already had a degree). It was a fairly highly ranked university for CS (in the top 20), but the whole thing was honestly a waste of time and money and I was shocked by how little I learned.
I did test out of some classes, though they only allowed it for a handful of classes. And you needed to be able to get a higher score than students who had just finished the class, while doing so with much less material (students going through the class get told specifically what's on the test and are given materials accordingly; people trying to test out aren't given either). It was also surprising that on the Computer Science II test they had a large amount of the score based on memorizing default Java methods.
Because I was doing this strictly for educational purposes, I got really interested in how much students were retaining between semesters. It seemed to be very little, and there was little that they needed to retain. Most would remember big O, but no one remembered little O, big theta, Big omega, little omega despite the time they were required to memorize it. As I mentioned, CSII was very Java focused where students had to memorize specifics of default methods and Java inheritance edge cases, but after the class was over that information was almost all forgotten. You might have a class where you do a few weeks of stack based programming in a toy language, but it's not enough to actually do anything with and, again, is wiped from the students mind as soon as they finish their finals.
All this was driven home even more when I tried to discuss topics with colleagues who had CS degrees. They retained a very small amount of the things they studied in college, with the vast majority was met by "Oh yeah...I think we studied that? Isn't that the thing where [insert some vague broken memory]."
The whole thing felt mostly like a waste of time in order to justify four years of teaching. Of course, someone who never studied programming or CS would get _something_ out of it, but even there it seemed to be in the most inefficient way possible.
I don't think anybody is expected to have perfect recall of all those small details, but it will all come back easily when you need it and go back to skim over the material to refresh your memory.
Ugh. I was told by the administration that I couldn’t test out of my intro to programming class in college.
Then I had several professors ask me why I hadn’t tested out.
I’ve wondered if the professors didn’t know or if the admins just didn’t believe me I would’ve been able to. (And this was with a passing AP test score from high school)
I feel like Accreditation is to blame. It’s such a racket.
I was told I couldn't test out of calculus (university didn't recognize IB calc), but course prerequisites were easy to get around so I just started registering for higher level math classes. My junior year I went to my advisor and he happily waived the calc requirements.
i am unfamiliar with the accreditation racket, but on the face of it if Berklee lets you test out of 2 years of music theory, surely you can test out of computer science. I know I tested out of 2 years of math.
its probably a more boring answer like university bureaucrats refusing to budge because they just didnt feel like it, which is a rather more tractable problem (in the large; individual students are powerless of course and i have been there too) than the accreditation system.
we need university entrepreneurs to disrupt lazy universities who arent serving their customers well. sadly lambda school has left a black taste on all trying to do this. but i have hopes that freecodecamp will do it the "right" way - patiently.
I spent my childhood learning classical violin and it’s a completely parallel education system that’s unaffiliated with public education and goes back centuries (With freelance teachers, dedicated schools, Church run programs, and so on) so I’m not surprised it’s possible to test out.
The same thing doesn’t happen with computer science.. i.e we don’t send young children to CS tutors 2-3 times a week and make them practice on a daily basis. Perhaps society has yet to master creating virtuoso programmers in the way it has spent hundreds of years perfecting the education of young musicians.
On my first day in university the intro CS professor started his slide deck with "this is what a keyboard looks like", so I walked out of there, into the department office, demanded to see the chair, talked my way out of the first year courses, and demanded to take all of the required 2nd year courses in parallel that first semester. Not sure if the department chair was bemused, or just wanted to drop me in at the deep end, but he agreed to it, and I got out of there with a double-major undergrad and a masters in 5 years...
Where there's a will there's usually a way, but you need to either know how to manipulate the powers that be, or have enough confidence to bypass them.
I'm sympathetic to having to take courses on material you already know, but I do think there is some justification to making everybody take an intro CS course. Specifically if it's a course that is about teaching the ways of thinking about programming, such as abstraction, composition, state, rather than a rote course on how to write code, then it provides students with a foundation that is rarely seen in AP courses or self-study. It can be an opportunity for a professor to provide their views and experiences on programming. It can also be a chance to talk about other essential, but rarely discussed topics such as ethics, the qualities of a good programmer, programmer culture, etc.
Of course an intro course that is this well thought out is rather rare, in which case experienced people should by all means skip the rote nonsense.
Counter story, when I was a senior I found I missed a freshman requirement. The teacher saw me in the class, I was fine with having the blow off class but the teacher recognized me as a CS student and said I shouldn't be there since I was a senior. Had me schedule and take the final for the class, I passed, and I was able to skip it for the semester.
I believe at most 4 year universities, in the US at least, you pay by the semester or quarter and not on the number of classes you take. So the university won't generally make more money if you test out.
> I went to a departmental advisor confidently requesting to test out of the introductory CS classes aimed at first-time programmers. I nearly got laughed out of the room. I pushed the department on this, but it was clear: they simply did not do this. Everyone takes intro to CS. Everyone.
I tested out of the maximum number of courses for my degree. It's insane. This is why I have such a low opinion of structured education. I hope to be someone's Kimo. I had my own who pushed me to build good software, not be lazy, and a lot of fundamentals on simplicity.
I started by talking to advisors and professors in the CS department, and they agreed that I should test out of intro programming classes.
The dean was a cruel man named Warren Harrison who accused me of trying to "game the system" and told me that they don't tolerate people like me here. I shared the story later--other people had similarly negative experiences with the guy.
I wonder how much of this is due to formal curriculum standards and accreditation. It seems like the only permitted method of skipping a course is having had taken an AP course and scoring high enough on the exam.
I’m guessing standardized education prevents the kind of judgment calls that would allow a department to let a knowledgeable student skip classes they don’t need to be in.
I had a 5 on each of the AP physics exams and still had to take freshman physics.
The school had a policy that you could not test out of the core courses in your major (I was a physics major; had I been a different major, I could have at least gotten placement, if not credit.
It can get even more ridiculous as a transfer student.
I had to re-take two physics courses at a California State University school that would have otherwise transferred from a junior college due to minor catalog year changes. Ironically the JC physics courses both had labs (the usual stuff in Electricity & Magnetism, and a whole bunch of optics and slit diffraction fun in Modern Physics), while only the E&M lab remained at the four-year university. The Optics/Modern Physics prof from my retake also taught astronomy, and was still harboring a minor grudge against Neil deGrasse Tyson from some shared research work in the '80s.
Also couldn't test out of or otherwise apply transfer credits to freshman biology, and the subject matter was at about the same level as what I experienced in 7th-grade science at a rural public school.
Intro to CSCI was unavoidable, as my previous programming coursework was coded under MIS. The cherry on top was the professor pulling me aside after the first midterm, telling me "you could teach this, since you can't test out I'm just giving you an A for the whole course". Despite this I still attended his rambling lectures, and found that he did actually manage to tie all of his tangents together rather like a call stack in human form.
On top of all of that, the transfer coursework that actually applied toward the degree that did surprise me were my technical training credits from the Community College of the Air Force. Ten units under law enforcement and field work actually took care of general education elective requirements - "Fundamentals of Ground Combat" was rather amusing to see on the graduation transcript.
If anything the issue with AP courses is that the bar is so low to pass one. Indeed it's a bar based on percentile and not on actual knowledge. Someone getting a 4 or 5 on the APCS test tells a department zero. Which is why some schools have the policy that APCS does not allow students to skip the intro CS course.
I was on the competitive programming team at my college. I was able to join on one of the more advanced teams pretty early, my other teammates were college seniors while I was a freshman.
I actually was able to get our 2x weekly meetings to count as course credits for basic classes and the professors who ran the group vouched for me to skip some of the pre-requisites for higher levels classes. (e.g. I took Algorithms II while in the same semester the competitive team meetings counted as Algorithms I).
Then my family moved, I wanted to transfer schools to keep living with my parents while attending school. The new school wouldn't accept my "free" credits. So in my third year of college I had to take intro to computers, intro to programming, etc.
I did that for one semester, hated it, then managed to find a job writing Python. I still haven't graduated, heh...
I had this too. I had worked the system a bit to wait until my final semester of college to actually take the intro CS courses (I had one of two possible prereqs to the second course so just started there).
I asked to test out and the department head said no. I had almost an entire CS degree and still had to take the easiest course. We made a compromise that if I take the midterm and exam with all the other students, I can pass the class. I got a 100% on both and spent like, 1 hour learning Octave and C for each exam.
I was only in college for a brief stint, but I ran into this problem as well when I went to college. Although I hadn't been in the industry yet, I was a hobbyist for a long enough time for the intro to CS at my college to be simply pointless. After a couple weeks, I was able to convince my professor that I should be able to test out, and despite the fact that there was no procedure, I was able to just take the final exam, pass, and move up to the next course.
That next course also seemed pretty basic, but I hit a brick wall, because I didn't have the required math credits to get into the next course up if I tested out of that one. And testing out of a math class, while certainly doable, was not as enticing as a prospect :)
The truth is, while it's reasonable for an intro to CS course to be kind of basic, I think it was a good sign that either college, or at least the college I was going to for computer science, was not a good option at that point in my life. Thankfully, circumstance would knock me into the industry instead in short order.
(Now I'm interested in college, but not for computer science.)
I had the opposite problem. When I was a freshman, if you took AP CS you were allowed to self choose out of CS1. And I did. It was a terrible decision for me, in retrospect. It set me down a bad path. I was a very bad student. I could keep up with the software stuff in HS but that was about it. I shifted to college where everything was in C and pointers and I was struggling to wrap my mind around them at the time. And oh by the way, I was a freshman in college, with a million other new things going on in my life.
I very much get the desire to place out of CS1 or whatever. My experience was that the overall college experience was the jam. A low level class here or there isn't going to change your life.
I had a similar experience. They said I could test out of it if I took every test and did every homework assignment. And that is why I didn't get a minor in CS. Fortunately, at the time they didn't strictly enforce course prerequisites so I was able to take a few higher level CS courses, but for 300 level classes you needed a signature from a CS advisor, which I couldn't get.
I think the bigger point in this story is not that there will be times in life where you're confronted by authority to stop you from going over the speed limit, but that for every one of those cases there are countless other scenarios where you are the authority yet still think there is a speed limit.
> It sucks, but there are people out there no smarter than you yet more powerful, and sometimes they impose a speed limit.
College's point was never about learning anything for a while now, it's a credentials machine and the machine only works in one way: the one that extracts the most value out of students, the longest.
College’s point is to prove that you can learn a couple of dozen knowledge sets in six months each, to a testably adequate level, and also stick with something for three years (a reasonable guess at how long a technical employee takes to pay off the investment of hiring them.)
> you can learn a couple of dozen knowledge sets in six months each
You mean shallowly enough just to pass a few tests that can be easily hacked by accessing the previous year's? You can definitely fake it until you get the paper, I've seen that so many times.
That's not hacking or faking it, any more than shipping a couple of products using the some pointers from stackoverflow. If you show you're actually able to stick with a thing and finish it to a sufficient level of quality, that's kind of the point. Developing a deep understanding of esoteric topics can be fun and intellectually satisfying but is usually a tiny part of most careers, even the fun and satisfying ones.
I think the one course requirement I got waived based on my experience was an internship requirement. Everything else I had to take. I don’t regret missing out on the early courses as they provided a lot of surprisingly useful instruction. A lot of the “why”s that I’d take. For granted.
Any publicly funded uni that does not allow testing out of every class should be blacklisted. They intentionally prevent it due to quote "costs". They depend on the tuition so admins can buy lake homes. That's straight out of the words from someone whom handles it.
The best option is not to go. I had also done full time programming for clients from age 15 on. 5 years after that I got opportunities to lead small projects. 10 more years after that and I was made VP of an engineering department. I've worked a lot with fresh graduates from "good" schools with good GPAs. I've always been thoroughly unimpressed by what they know and what they think is important for the job.
This is basically what I did. The only complication were "quizes" which were just completion marks but at random times. So I would skip 4-5 classes after each quiz then come to classes and so personal programming in the back until the next quiz landed.
Across virtually any measurable trait or collection of traits with a reasonably normal distribution, about half of the people will come out better than average.
Iratewizard may or may not be better than everyone else; but he/she is almost certainly better than average at a lot of things. We all are.
Your skill at a job doesn't equate to your value as a person. A job is just a way I and most others contribute back to the world. It's in everyone's best interest if there aren't unnecessary barriers to that contribution. For instance, universities' poor curriculums and the way they predatorily pretend to be the gatekeepers of "prestigious" jobs.
I read this article a while ago and recently re-listened to his interview on Tim Ferriss' podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnk4sgOFjBQ He talks about how maniacal he was at practicing music at a young age. His friends gave him a hard time because all he wanted to do was practice scales over and over. The dude was exceptionally motivated from a very early age.
The gist of this blog post is that the average pace is for chumps and that he was able to finish Berkelee school of music in much less time than the average person takes thanks to studying ahead of time with a mentor and reading the books and testing out. He wasn't a 'chump' and the lesson is that you shouldn't be either.
I remember reading this advice 10 years ago and really taking it to heart. I didn't want to be a chump afterall and became convinced I could do everything faster than the chumps. But the problem with this is that it can make you beat yourself up and/or always feel rushed if it does take you a normal amount of time to do something. Like I've had to admit that I'm a really slow programmer. It took me forever to learn it. And I beat myself up a lot in the process.
But now I've taken to listening to more Alain de botton and Oliver Burkeman for my self-help/self-development. These British authors advocate for a much gentler version of self help. In one Alain de botton interview, he mentioned how we've come to worship exceptionalism and see being average as being bad. Oliver Burkeman's 4000 weeks book plainly states that you can't do it all. This has been super refreshing for someone like me who took Sivers' stuff seriously in my early 20s and then beat myself up for merely being average at many things.
You provided a lot of great context here that wasn't in the article. I found it suspect to begin with unless he had a lot of knowledge or was exceptional. How did he know how to answer those questions in the first lesson with the mentor unless he already had a strong understanding of chords going into it? In other words, he had enough knowledge that the mentor could accelerate accumulating more on top of it. But he had to have already spent a huge amount of time (equivalent to several college semesters) acquiring knowledge to be at that point.
I found the rest of your comment interesting too, but I don't think the overall point of the original article is invalidated, it just needs a caveat. There is no speed limit, except your own ability!
Consider that while the author got good at music, the chumps got moderately good at everything else as well that can be quite fulfilling. And the author missed out on life experiences that you can only have during age 18-19-20.
With time as a limited dwindling resource, we all make tradeoffs and optimize for what we care about. From that lens, the "chumps" don't seem like chumps at all, and neither does the author.
I enjoyed it. I liked the acknowledgement of the finiteness of life and the reality of hard decisions. That productivity books really are missing the point - tinkering at the edges to squeeze out 5% extra productivity does not confront the reality that you’ll still be unable to complete almost everything you really want to in life.
I think what was lacking is a bit more concrete guidance. I know it’s almost the point of the book not to provide any, but perhaps more qualitative examples would help.
Definitely helped me overall and changed my mindset somewhat.
It's not coding you should be quick at but finding a robust design, that doesn't need a lot of fixes or rework. It takes practice and experience and may not be as glamorous. Also takes an experienced boss to appreciate, but there are jobs for us.
> It's not coding you should be quick at but finding a robust design, that doesn't need a lot of fixes or rework.
Yes, but you don't even need to be quick (modulo company/team-politics, which tends to favor speed). I am a slow but good architect, but slow doesn't hurt because it's going to be dwarfed by implementation time anyway. Not to mention, paper+pencil+contemplating is the most fun part!
How do you measure programming speed? Everyone remembers an instance where they lost a sizeable amount of work, only to figure out that you could easily recreate the work in a few hours because you know what has to be done. Programming is not the only part of the job.
This is good advice to be taken sparingly. I went through the US Navy Nuclear program in which "no speed limit" was taken for granted. I never stopped operating that way until, one day, I had a mental health breakdown (I lasted about ten years). It took two years of therapy to deprogram that mentality from my mind.
So yes, it can get you far, but there is a cost to be considered if you don't keep it under control.
Beyond that, it only works with technical knowledge and very specific learning styles. He learned the math behind the those progressions, but the taste, depth and creativity to explore new ideas and compelling ways to portray them involves play and self discovery. Creativity is not a technical problem to be solved.
Yes to the above. I'd also add that fine motor skills are proven to be trained through sleeping. Music has a ton of that, so practicing every day serves a purpose that cannot be replaced by intense sessions.
It is however very possible (and likely) that the author had already trained and somewhat saturated those parts, perhaps even without thinking about it because it was their natural state. In those cases you can become a sponge when a new modality opens up to you.
Rich kids who get personal tutors tend to not dominate their fields. There's an advantage, but it has to be coupled with alone-time practicing. People who alone-time practice out of genuine curiosity tend to underestimate the magnitude of practice they get because it can feel effortless.
So if you knew the material on day one they'd just immediately consider you done? Like if I pretrained on the material and then went to the program and asked them to determine if I was to the readiness they expected at the end, they'd do it?
Genuinely doubt it. But I guess it's possible. The pay is shit enough that the guys who would smash it are doing something else.
> So if you knew the material on day one they'd just immediately consider you done?
The material is largely classified, so there is no way to "pretrain" it.
The first 6 months to a year of the program is not self-paced, it's semi-traditional classroom learning except its 8 hours of lecture a day, 5 days a week. Homework and studying are done after lecture and the number of required study hours are mandatory depending on the sailor's GPA. It is very common for students to spend 60-80 hours a week in the classroom. You could think of this as an enforced minimum speed limit. The first year is spent teaching students how to learn at all-gas-no-breaks speed.
After that, the next year to 18 months of a nuke's education are spent in a qualification program that is entirely self-paced. You study the material independently, and when you feel you have a solid grasp on it you request an evaluation (think technical interview) about the subject. How fast or slow one moves through these interviews is entirely up to the individual sailor. But too slow and the sailor will be dropped from the program, thus why it's important to train them how to learn quickly.
Anecdotally, after the nuke program, university (NYU Tandon in my case) is trivial. The workload is nothing compared to the expectations of the nuke pipeline.
Does that also apply to the instructors at Nuclear Power School? Because one member of my undergraduate class became a NPS instructor, and, well, not to mince words but if he was the best then I must be off the charts....
Their qualification program is similar, but the Direct Input Limited Duty Officers recruited straight to instructor duty typically take over a single subject of classroom instruction and aren't expected to fully understand all subjects in the entire qualification process.
More saliently, the nuclear pipeline is not made up of "the best". It is ubiquitously composed of academic rejects. College dropouts, "smart but lazy"s, clever misfits, and a few enterprising criminals. The kind of unfulfilled talent that comes a dime a dozen.
The Navy learned that with enough discipline and a tolerance for high washout rates, you can get "greatness" for pennies on the dollar by making it yourself from the raw cuttings left behind by America's higher education system.
You need to operate within your capacity. For me this seems frustratingly low (50 pretty focused hours a week). Don’t know if others have a higher capacity or they’re just postponing burnout, but I have tried to go beyond 50 hours and it always ends in enforced holiday.
I don't think you're alone in this. That seems to be about my limit as well. If one is focusing as hard as they possibly can on a complex problem, I think the limit is more like 25 hours a week.
I have been wondering whether there is any psychological research on this. I imagine that it would be hard to do since focus and productivity are difficult things to measure in a way that would be externally valid.
I cannot at all relate to your experience specially since you're providing details sparingly. You're saying x exists without any evidence and then saying avoid x at all costs. Can you give more details about what happened to you that you needed two years of therapy? How frequent was your therapy once a week or multiple? Did you do therapy with a run of the mill therapist, one specialized in a particular area or a full on doctor, a psychiatrist? I just want to do a cost/benefit analysis. Did you consider age a factor if you worked there for 10 years, presumably you had other jobs prior?
So glad I chose regular ET over nuke ET. My whole reason was not wanting to be on a sub, but I've heard tons of stories over the years about nuke life that have cemented that choice.
This is true for kids as well as adults. I started homeschooling as a child because of some health issues, and it was stunning (to my parents mostly) how much more efficient learning could be when your day wasn’t full of empty space, and your schedule was actually organized to be the best for you rather than for other people.
I’ve carried that lesson throughout my life. You can do a lot more, in a lot less time, when you’re in charge of your own time.
This was pretty clear when our kids were all sent home during Covid. We pushed very far ahead using Khan academy. Keeping it simple with basic math, reading, and writing.
About halfway through Covid schools started sending home this work they wanted the kids to do. 80% was a waist of time.
I never really thought about it till then, but primary school is basically babysitting where they happen to do some learning as well.
You know, I overlook a lot of grammatical errors, and I usually don't like to be that guy, but when it's an "oh look how smart I am" type post I can't help myself. It should be waste of time, not waist.
haha, I'm not offended, and I _am_ a terrible speller. I didn't mean to sound super smart, I just parked the kids in front of Khan academy and did some reading with them.
I was trying to point out actually how simple it was to be better that what the schools were sending home.
And I don't really disagree with you. I think Covid proved that childcare is indeed a major component of school. I doubt that a public school or all but the most expensive private schools have much ability to tailor education to the individual needs of children.
I would also like to add that I have a lot of respect for my children's teachers. Having such a wide variety of skills and talents in a class of 9 and 10 year olds must be very challenging.
Can't wait for sentence level autocorrect to appear. Because doing it at word level is not enough.
I mean, ok, swipe typing has been a great improvement. But depending on the keyboard it manages to do stupid crap even at word level (like suggesting a 8 letter word if you just "typed" 3 letters)
Then I will have to be the annoying person who points out that English is not a prescriptive language and that the more we push for incorrect spelling the more correct it will be.
Anyway English is an ugly hack of a language, the more we mispell it, the better chance we have to get it fixed to something closer to Esperanto.
I’m very interested in home schooling for this reason but am concerned about two things: both my wife and I work, and social interaction for my son with kids his age. Trying to think about solutions for both of these. Advice?
I used to work at a YMCA, and I taught PE for local homeschool kids. They would come every-other Thursday or something, and we did swimming, rock climbing, badminton, and a bunch of other stuff.
That's a start, but I'll say that homeschool kids are a bit off, socially. It's not always a bad thing, but it's noticeable. And, a few don't have that problem--I think it's the kids with a lot of interaction, like on sports teams etc. Honestly, a lot of the weirdness of those kids was often that they just seemed very grown up. They interacted a LOT more in 1-on-1 conversations with adults than most kids do. Nearly all of them seemed smart for their age.
Scouts, karate, MTG clubs are some ideas. Honestly, gaming? In our lives I'm sure a lot of social activity will move to some virtual spaces, maybe VR etc.
> They interacted a LOT more in 1-on-1 conversations with adults than most kids do.
That's not really a surprising result, is it? Most kids spend all day at school being told not to talk unless called on; plenty even spend most of their day at home like that (at least with the adults in their lives, parents "I'm too busy" and such)...
> Scouts, karate, MTG clubs are some ideas
Yeah, there were definitely a lot of kids in cub and boy scouts who were home schooled when I was growing up. For the religious folks, church and church events had an outsize proportion of homeschool kids as well (I suspect cause and effect goes both ways there). It's likely the homeschool community in your area also coordinates social events (even if it's just going to a park).
No, not surprising at all. In my time at the YMCA (in non-homeschool areas), I often found that new kids were not used to talking with adults, like me--their "group leader." At home, mostly they ate dinner and went to bed. At school, you just don't get one-on-one time, especially just to chat about yourself or off-curriculum topics.
> I'll say that homeschool kids are a bit off, socially.
Nice anecdote. My experience is the exact opposite. The ~20 home schooled kids I know are the most socially adept kids I've ever met. They aren't shy. They hold nice conversations. They actually like talking to a mix of people.
I think they're the most socially adept kids when speaking with adults, and the most socially inept when hanging with other kids, particularly medium-to-large groups. On average. I knew plenty of them who didn't fit the mold.
I'll echo some of the other posters here in saying that homeschooled kids are usually shockingly good at holding conversations with adults for their age. Not being in an institutional environment where you only really talk to schoolteachers means they get a lot more practice having normal conversations with adults. That was a benefit for me in my later teenage years for sure as I transitioned into the grown-up world.
As a child homeschooled since 5 years old myself: _do not do it_.
Any academic gains are not worth the social stunting, especially if the child is already shy.
Happiness in life is rarely based on academic achievements, but rather on the relationships we build. These relationships are built through social skills, and our interactions with our fellow man. Homeschooling severely stunts this at a very vulnerable time in a child’s life.
I went to a science and tech magnet school for HS, so there were a fair number of homeschooled kids. By winter break freshman year, you couldn't tell most of the homeschooled kids from the rest.
In at least two of the exceptions, the kids were specifically homeschooled because they were getting picked on in public school for being socially awkward.
Counterfactuals are difficult; I was far more socially awkward than most of the kids in t high school that were homeschooled, and I was in public school from kindergarten.
I think it is true that parents home schooling their kids ought not neglect social and emotional skills any more than they should neglect science or math.
The thing is, you don't know that you would be better off socially had you gone down the normal path.
School suppresses kids and forces them to conform. That's probably the thing it does more strongly than anything else. And it does it even more strongly to shy kids.
So you might've missed out on deep friendships, but maybe not. And you almost assuredly missed out on bullying (physical and emotional) and negative, oppressive social pressure during those formative years.
Not as many people develop (useful) social skills in school as you may think. It's a reason many, many people (in the US) have very negative experiences in high school and want to forget it.
I wasn't homeschooled, but I knew homeschooled kids growing up, and they all had friends and active social lives. Homeschooling doesn't have to mean you're locked away never interacting with anybody - in fact my homeschooled acquaintances had lots of friends who themselves were homeschooled, since their parents met through one of the various homeschooling support networks that exists in the UK.
Meanwhile I went to school like everyone else from the ages of 5 to 18 and I still came out at the end with the social intelligence of a potted plant. Sending your kids to school doesn't guarantee they'll turn out normal - if that was true then everybody would be normal.
I personally did sports. I didn't really like it when I was younger (10-13), but I got pretty good when I was a bit older. The flexibility of being homeschooled allowed me to pursue being an athlete more thoroughly through my teenage years whilst not missing out on academics. Luckily my parents had the financial means to let me pursue that (being an athlete on a national team is expensive af). It was probably the single best space for me developing into a relatively well adjusted adult.
I wasn't homeschooled before age 10 or so, so caveat emptor with younger kids.
Does your child actually need social interactions with kids his own age? The answer is pretty dependent on the individual. Some people need the social activity to play and stay motivated, but it mostly brought me misery and distraction. Adults can socialize kids too — there’s no speed limit. Prehistorically and for most of history kids grew up alongside their parents and a wide range of ages in peers, and followed their parents around as they worked.
The issue is that all the other kids of their age and of different ages will be at school. I'd say that the generalisation that kids need social interactions with kids their own age is true - an 8 y/o definitely shouldn't be interacting exclusively with people aged > 18 - although we drive that to an extreme with our rigidly age segregated schooling systems. Life around adults can be dreadfully serious and I think the innocent play of childhood amongst peers is generally crucial.
> The issue is that all the other kids of their age and of different ages will be at school.
This is definitely a big one. There are homeschool groups which provide enrichment during normal school hours. The biggest boon for socialising as a homeschooled kid though is after school classes of various kinds (sports, etc). They generally don't happen at school.
I'd say kids definitely need interactions with other kids. Homeschooling generally has wider bands than school grades in terms of age ranges, which can help kids learn to socialise with a variety of different age levels. On the other hand, I definitely knew a good number of homeschooled kids (myself included) who took a somewhat unhealthy level of pride in preferring the company of adults.
I was home schooled K-7 (skipped 8th grade). The flexibility was great and allowed me to start taking college level computer programming courses when I was 10 years old. I think I came out of it reasonably socially adjusted. I have two recommendations for anyone thinking about doing something similar:
1. Make sure your kids are involved in a decent amount of outside activities during the elementary school years that get them interacting with other kids. Things like team sports, music groups, etc.
2. Do NOT home school your kids through high school. I knew other kids who were and thought that they had socialization issues. You could easily argue that this point is mostly anecdotal and I couldn't really disagree, but I have a gut feeling that the high school years are particularly important when it comes to socialization.
Homeschooling takes 2-3 hours per day, not 8, and it doesn't have to be 5 days per week. Once the kids are around 10 or so, they can do a lot on their own as far as reading material.
For socializing, there's karate class, or other kid sports. Church groups, going to the local park. You know, getting out into the world.
If you're looking for advice, here are my top thoughts:
Your approach really depends on the age of the kid. I wasn't homeschooled until I was about 10, so my knowledge of how primary education works is much more limited.
You will definitely want to ensure there are after school activities your kid enjoys that they will be able to continue if you decide to homeschool them. It's important to not rip them out of all of their social circles.
See if there are any local homeschooling groups in your area. I assume you are in the US or Canada, where this is more widespread than in Europe. They will be able to advise you on what's good locally. I'd be careful to ensure that the groups are relatively well-aligned with your vision of what you and your kid want (it's often easier to find religious groups as they are usually more vocal, my assumption is that you are probably looking for a secular one). If you can't find a group that you like, seriously consider before deciding to go it completely alone.
Don't expect magic to happen overnight if you do decide to homeschool the kid. You mustn't push too hard, especially at first. It's a big change. The most important part is to help your kid learn how to learn as a self-driven person.
Give the kid agency. Let them choose what they learn (to a certain extent). You need to secure buy-in to the process. Without that you will just be fighting, and it will suck.
If you're both working full time in an office type job, it's not going to be easy. I did know one or two people who did this, but it's much more common for one or both parents to be either WFH and have a flexible job or for there to be a stay at home parent (sadly this is almost always the mother in my experience, it can be hard for stay at home dads to break into those circles).
If your kid is high school aged: think about how they might be able to go to university if they want to. Local community colleges often have programs that are suitable for dual-credit. I didn't do this but many of my friends did. Look into exams like the SAT/ACT/AP and how you can take them as an independent person. I was able to get into UK universities (I am originally British) with results in those American exams. Many of my friends used their community college credit to transfer into 4 year universities. Talk to other parents and their kids who did go to university about the route they took to get there.
The other fun benefit is that you'll have a much closer relationship with your kid than most other parents do, as you'll spend much more time with them.
I believe she met lots of moms and socialized her kids with activities with them. She also did all kinds of things with her youngest son. For example they were docents at the local aquarium for a few months.
Home-schooled kids are missing out on a lot even if you assume they are getting a good basic education and you're also somehow compensating for the social aspects.
Just to cite one example: music programs. Drama programs. The arts in general. Hard to substitute for these at home.
In addition, more widespread home-schooling serves the right-wing interests that are trying to tear down society in general, and to tear down the public school system in particular, in favor of religious indoctrination and elite schools for the rich. Those interests are dangerous and ascendant enough as it is. They don't need any more help right now.
I don't really agree with your first point. In my experience, most music, arts, and sports programs are in the form of after school activities that are open to all kids, and don't usually happen at school. Those sorts of things are a lifeline for homeschooled kids, as it's one of the best ways for them to still be around people their own age.
As far as your second point, I have definitely met a number of people as you describe, but they are significantly outnumbered (at least in my area) by perfectly well adjusted people whose kids just can't make it in school for whatever reason. Not every kid is capable of tolerating 8+ hours a day of institutionalisation, especially if they have some kind of medical issue.
I think the approach that local government takes with homeschoolers in my area (of the US) is too hands off: I never once met someone from my educational service district who might have checked that I was even alive and not just a tax cheat. However, I think that we should be careful not to restrict the ability of people to home-educate if they want to. Its an important backstop if they can't make the school system work for them, and trying to fit every edge case into the school system is a recipe for some seriously unhappy kids.
You actually think that's a useful point? It's not. Mozart's father was an extraordinary musician, and had support from royalty. Obviously, most kids, the vast majority, don't have that privilege. Furthermore, you're missing the social aspect.
What? The right-wing purpose of home-schooling is to get away from the religious indoctrination in public schools. And their support of school choice means elite schools for everybody, instead of just the rich, which is the status quo.
And at least in my school district, homeschoolers in the district could participate in extracurriculars like band and drama a la carte.
Elite schools for everybody? Hard to laugh hard enough at that. No. It doesn't mean that at all.
We were a lot better off when participation in the public schools was much higher. Draining resources from that system cripples it, and only a tiny minority can afford to send their kids to a quality school without it.
But our public schools are fine, except in places where they have a lot of violence (and private schools are not a factor). Education everywhere is throttled by students’ time and attention, not the quality of the schools.
“School choice” means vouchers, so that means everybody can afford to send their kids to a private school. That won’t make the kid any smarter, but they’re usually in a better school culture.
Their purpose is to get away from the political indoctrination in public schools. And honestly, considering how much of what's taught in school about our government and society just isn't true... I don't blame 'em.
(To be fair, a lot of them would probably try and get away from religious indoctrination if it weren't Christian.)
> And their support of school choice means elite schools for everybody, instead of just the rich, which is the status quo.
How do you figure that? The well-off are still the only people who will be able to afford the best education, because the reality is the amount of money you spend on education is highly correlated with the success of that education. The only thing it will do for the rest is take those with plenty of money out of the public school's tax base, decreasing the quality of education there even further.
You're right, I did (to an extent). Homeschooling isn't really scaleable. If you did try to, you'd probably invent something that very closely resembled a school.
However, my mother (who was much more heavily involved with my education) generally described her role as "less like a teacher, more like a principal". She certainly was in charge of the overall shape of the education, but a lot of the teaching happened in small group settings (effectively mutual tutoring) at the local homeschool group. Of course she did teach me lots of things in her area of expertise.
Back in 2001, I started work as a web-developer right out of high school at the age of 17. My high school diploma wasn't good enough to get into a software engineering university in my country (the Netherlands), so I had to wait until I was 21 to take an admission-test.
So I worked for 4 years before I got to a university and followed along for a 1-day introduction. They would tell their prospective students what they would learn in the next 4 years, and what jobs they would find when they were done. At the end of the day was a Q&A with some professors.
It was at that moment that I realised: 1. I know more than these professors do; 2. I'm currently a very skilled autodidact software developer; 3. I already know all of what they would teach me in four years; 4. they were working with outdated materials; they taught generics, not specifics.
These professors were academics. Google didn't exist yet. They, mostly, hadn't worked in any professional environment. They weren't pragmatic. They were slow perfectionists but also several years behind on the rest of the world.
And that was saying something: the bleeding-edge books that I was reading took at least 1 year from the start of writing to publication, so even I was behind on reality.
Even today I sometimes wonder what software engineering students learn in 4 or more years. It shouldn't take nearly that long. If you spend 20 hours a week studying software engineering you should be ready to find work in less than a year. And from that point onward, that's where you actually learn how to do it right.
In college, I was able to sample a lot of computer science from building a pipelined cpu in verilog, algorithms, writing a multi-threaded OS, implementing animation engine in opengl, quantum computing, machine learning (lots of theory and lots of practice), group theory to name a few.
I thought my degree was a bargain at the state school I went to. Also majored in math. Both CS and math had so many interesting classes, I found myself wishing school was 6 years instead of 4. Work is hardly that cutting edge compared to what we learned in school, which woukd cover the latest stuff in the literature in some classes.
Most of all, I learned that getting stuck at problems is normal in college. You have to be patient, spend a lot of time and slowly make progress. That helps me immensely in my current job, esp. debugging complicated problems.
> Even today I sometimes wonder what software engineering students learn in 4 or more years. It shouldn't take nearly that long. If you spend 20 hours a week studying software engineering you should be ready to find work in less than a year. And from that point onward, that's where you actually learn how to do it right.
This is the difference between college/university and a coding boot camp. At college, they are trying to teach you a breadth of subject matter and experiences to turn you into a well-rounded, educated person. At a coding boot camp, they are giving you vocational training and nothing more.
Each approach has its benefits and drawbacks and neither is appropriate for every situation.
I'm glad you realized that for you, college did not have a benefit, and you saved yourself a great deal of time and money.
Oh man, I remember this attitude from a lot of my classmates back in undergrad. "Why are we using Java like dinosaurs? All jobs are in Ruby/Rails!" (Today it would be Node/Typescript instead of RoR)
It really amazed me how many students didn't see forest for the trees. Sure, the college could teach us RoR, but five years from now it will be something else. And sure enough, five years later it was all about Node. And five years from now it will be something else.
Typescript, Node, RoR, and so on are all just icing over the same underlying core concepts that have stood the test of time. Learn the concepts, and you will be an expert regardless of whichever icing is on trop.
When I took our databases course, our professor gave us problem sets with long lists of ridiculously complicated things that we had to write queries for in relational calculus. The problems all ways seemed so contrived. And why the hell were we writing them in some stupid mathematical notation instead of code?
But when I started my first job, I found that I had a much better understanding of how and when to use joins, derived queries, and subqueries than some of my colleagues, who used "where in" clauses everywhere. And if they got worked into a corner, they queried a huge chunk of data, brought it all in over the wire, then used a soup of procedural loops and ifs to filter out what they wanted. Unsurprisingly, their code wasn't very performant and was filled with bugs.
I ran into a similar thing when I got into an argument with a guy about JS on the server. He said JS was revolutionary because it allowed for async IO. And I said what's new about that? You could do that in Ruby too. The guy refused to believe me. He legitimately thought that because Ruby didn't have an "async" keyword that it couldn't do async IO. He knew the syntax sugar de jour on top of async concepts, but he didn't understand the concepts underneath. If fads move on from JS to a new language that has a different async programming model, what is he going to do?
You can learn SQL or Node from online tutorials or a coding bootcamp. And it will feel more useful than a college course because they give you concrete examples right away. But they will only teach you the surface dressing. They won't push you to understand the tough underlying concepts because that isn't easily done in a single article or a three week crash course.
I went through the normal course and the programming part wasn't that hard and those of us who could do so already got to skip it. Those who hadn't programmed before learned what we could do in about a year.
The classes that destroyed people were Algorithms and Datastructures, distributed/parallel computing, programming language design, OS design, low level hardware design (here is infinite transistors and infinite resisters, now go build a computer) and whatever the two classes we had that covered Sipsers Introduction to Computation was called.
These were all classes that covered stuff you wouldn't ever hit upon when you were programming, but which are necessary as to know as a Computer Scientist.
Then there were all the classes that were, at even the smallest level, related to human computer interaction, which were entirely a waste of everybodies time, including the instructors.
Although I get where you're coming from, I think you're taking a big risk by assuming you know everything there's to know already. The fact is that you can't know what you don't know. You could be dunning-kruggering yourself on a daily basis and there's no way for you to know.
> These professors were academics. Google didn't exist yet. They, mostly, hadn't worked in any professional environment. They weren't pragmatic. They were slow perfectionists but also several years behind on the rest of the world.
Maybe you're blinded by your arrogance a bit, because there's an actual field of science dedicated to effective learning, teaching, practicing. Although it's great that you found something that worked for you, it doesn't mean that you've had the best or most optimal learning experience. Every teenager thinks they're smarter than their stupid dumb teachers, but they often aren't.
There's a reason why things are taught in a certain manner, and why there isn't that much change in that. It's because these methods have been tried and tested, and there's no need to chase each new framework, method or technology, because it's all built upon the old stuff anyway.
These courses are meant to give you a broad understanding of everything there is to know about computer science. Specifics change, but generics don't. If you know the generic things it doesn't matter what the specifics are.
College lectures exist for two reasons: 1) because books didn't exist 2000 years ago, and 2) it's the only thing 1 teacher can do when stuck with more than 20 students at the same time.
Modern research shows how bad lectures are, but many colleges are still lectur focused because of tradition.
Like a sibling comment, I find my degree to have been well worth it. I did know everything I needed to find work before I even started—I got a job in my second semester that I held all four years. But college gave me perspective on just how much there is that I don't know, in computing and in every other field. Most of those things are things I will never learn and use, and that's okay. It's valuable to me to know what's out there, and there have been many times where I've come across a problem and known what to research to solve it because of a college class I've taken.
So, yes, college isn't about career training. But life isn't about career. I know it's not everyone's experience, but for me, college made me better at life.
> My high school diploma wasn't good enough to get into a software engineering university in my country (the Netherlands), so I had to wait ...
I also hadn't heard of the (Dutch) Open Universiteit in 2001, but it allows anyone over 18 to start an academic study.
If you're a successful autodidact, you probably have at least a reasonable "academic attitude" - the main difference between a university and vocational training (MBO / HBO).
I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to take away from this.
The author is obviously quite musically gifted, as was his tutor?
Berklee has a bunch of nonsense curriculum?
Berklee has a bunch of acceptable curriculum, but if you happen to be a musical genius and have a musical genius as a tutor, you can quickly prove that you’re smarter than everybody else?
Is any of this meant to be inspiring to regular folks, or is it just for people that already consider themselves to be intellectually far ahead of most others in their age group or field?
It wouldn't necessarily be so as other universities are also able to have students who learn at different rates despite the article being about a student that went to Berklee.
Regardless, even in the case the article only applied to Berklee it still wouldn't be a university specific question as not every student that goes to Berklee will be able to learn at the same rate. This is what makes it a per student question instead of an answered property you can apply to Berklee itself.
Wait if the article only applied to Berklee it wouldn’t be university specific?
When I read the article it was about somebody that graduated early because of the rules at Berklee that allowed them to do so.
Is this actually a universal thing for universities?
Usually (in the US) a “speed limit” is generally a term that relates to maximum speed, whereas a minimum speed is called… a minimum speed. I’m pretty sure there is an actual lower “speed limit” for most universities in that it’s difficult or impossible to take (for example) 15 years to finish a BA.
Even if we took all of those in the most leaning way we still wouldn't arrive at a way to remove the student specific portion from whether the coursework is superfluous so I'm not sure the questions would do more than further confuse you from what people were saying.
I'd say this the target audience is anyone looking at or working on a degree. Even if you're a slow learner already at a university that doesn't have any form of testing out it can be helpful to know learning the material strictly via the course schedules may not be the most efficient way to absorb it. For others in the target audience it has some good advice about seeing if you can test out to finish sooner too.
> ...but if you happen to be a musical genius and have a musical genius as a tutor...
There's the crux of the story which I'm sure is well intended, this is the slight shortsightedness as to place this as an inconsequential part. I'm not blaming the author or any editor. I imagine they know how important this part is but it doesn't come across this way.
Without realising that "small part" for what it is (a huge deal breaker) the story comes across as either aloof or detached because it's impossible to resonate with unless you had a similar opportunity in your education at some stage.
And yes I did with my mathematical ability and will likely spend my life in awe at a professional musicians musical ability or a great authors writing style, but I enjoy understanding higher order patterns.
I think the part he said the pace is set for the mediocre students to be able to finish their degree made his point very clear. Then going from specific to the general. More concretely, school pace is set for below average students so if you're average or above average then you don't have to follow that same speed. Once you apply this logic to life in general you'll encounter numerous other areas where the pace is also set very low and you'll do much better if you pay no attention to it.
Most highly capable students do advanced work at university instead of just racing through and leaving.
No one cares how fast you finished your degree, when you are 30.
We are only reading OP article because Sivers made a website to sell CDs when the web was new, not because of his excellence as a student or as a musician.
This very website exists because Paul Graham made a website ViaWeb to sell stuff on the web, not because Paul Graham was any good at making the stuff the stuff the website was selling.
this for people learning things that have been already discovered and done. You can do it as slow or as fast as you want, because really you're just copying information to your mind.
Creating new things (research or art) is what takes time.
> The pace was intense, and I loved it. Finally, someone was challenging me — keeping me in over my head
This, I've found is key, but I do think there is a "speed limit". You definitely want the student¹ out of their comfort zone, and challenged. But I do think there is a depth that is too deep, where it will simply be so absurdly difficult the diminishing returns of the challenge are not worth it.
> the standard pace is for chumps
Yes, but …
So I self-taught CS/programming when I was in high school, and asked to take the easier of the two AP tests for CS. These were not offered by my school, and the administration balked at it: how could a student pass possibly pass a test for which there was no class? My mother had to convince them to allow it! We paid for the test — failure would be on me, so who even cares? (And yes, I passed.)
And I still find this: you might have no speed limit, but other people do. They'll not want to do whatever you want to do, often because it requires exerting a modicum of effort on their part. Like, they'd need to learn something, and getting someone to study something is, if they don't want to, is blood from a stone. When you can fly solo, it matters naught, but sometimes you have to depend on others. IME, more often than not, it's the latter.
¹who can handle it? I'm not sure if it applies to all students, particularly those that are really struggling. But for those hoovering up info, into the deep end.
> But I do think there is a depth that is too deep, where it will simply be so absurdly difficult the diminishing returns of the challenge are not worth it.
The point is that "too deep" is different for everyone, and you shouldn't be prohibited from going deeper just because it's too deep for someone else.
Oh, certainly! I meant it more in that it's part of the skill of teaching, in figuring out where that "deep but not too deep" is for the student. And that there's a limit, and you can't drown them.
Great article and interesting story. The combination of innate talent plus a beneficient one-on-one tutor can have remarkable results and it's really too bad this historically important form of education isn't more widely supported.
A case example is Leonard Euler, one of the most significant mathematicians in human history by any measure:
> "Euler’s interest in mathematics stemmed from his childhood when his father would teach him the subject. As luck would have it, Johann Bernoulli, Europe’s foremost mathematician of his time, was a friend of Leonhard’s father and the influence of this great mathematician on the young Leonhard was immense. Euler’s father wanted to prepare him for a career in theology and it was Bernoulli who persuaded his friend to let the boy study mathematics."
However, education for the masses is also important and there's just not enough expert tutors to go around for the one-on-one approach. It's also true that the combination of innate talent and motivation isn't necessarily all that common, or easy to identify. Notice how this tutor had a selection system in place? I.e. not many people showed up for the offer.
That's where the 'gifted and talented' programs have tried to pick up the slack in public education, with mixed results. Unfortunately, more often than not, teachers feel threatened by such students... not that high-quality teachers capable of tutoring such students (notice the low pay) end up being recruited by our public education system all that often.
> Unfortunately, more often than not, teachers feel threatened by such students
My wife and many (most?) of our friends are educators, and my impression is quite the opposite. By and large, they would love to provide more for these students – there simply aren’t any resources provided to do so.
Yes, that might have been a little unfair. I must admit I was thinking more about 'institutions of higher learning', where some professors fear being replaced by their students. That's not a risk faced by instructors in K-12.
As many students know, you can cram a whole semester worth of material in just a few learning sessions before an exam: you can pass exam but you forget everything as fast as you've learned it. Use such methods for subjects that you don't care but must pass.
If you do care about something long term, spread the lessons over time.
My grandfather did grade school through high school in a one room school house, he was able to graduate three years early, since he was able to learn/audit the older children’s work when he was done with his own.
I figured this out on my own as I got older. The rules are made for the bottom of the barrel, because it has to be that way. The instruction not to eat tide pods is not for the average person, but they still have to tell everyone not to do it. It's like when engineers build for the most common scenarios, and then they have to work out corner cases. But they have to be fair, so the rules designed to keep fuck ups in line affect everyone. It's a race to the bottom to deal with the lowest common denominator, and if you're more capable than that it's suffocating.
And what makes someone not bottom of the barrel? There's people born with talent, higher intelligence, but the real thing that makes someone above that threshold is simply a willingness to learn. Unless you've got some extreme disadvantage, persistent willingness will take you a long way, farther than most people. What makes some better than others is in their behavior, not their innate traits, usually.
Problem is that this willingness might also be tied to intelligence (which in turn might be nature rather than nurture). If you don't enjoy the stimulation that your brain receives when you learn and understand something new you aren't going to be doing that habitually.
I don't think I've ever met someone that doesn't enjoy learning. I've met self conscious people with low self esteem that pretend not to enjoy learning because they think they're stupid and respond to protect their ego, I've met people who don't think learning most things will be beneficial to them, I've met genuinely stupid people who just don't grasp concepts, but I've never met someone who truly doesn't enjoy learning new things.
Instead of treating college as “no speed limit” treat it as “no bandwidth limit”.
If for example, you have been programming since you were 5, but you still are required to take an intro to CS course, instead of griping and pushing to skip it, just take advantage of the freed up brain bandwidth and maybe go take a class on history, or art or philosophy.
Taking advantage of the college environment to broaden your knowledge will serve you far more than graduating one or two years early.
You're joking to some extent, but what I ended up doing is not too far off. I got so fed up with all the graded, nitpicky and laborious online tests, that I automated them. An entire browser extension to collect the entire question bank and then statistically figure out all the answers (because often I only had the final score).
I completely agree with this. The problem is that to learn that quickly you generally need a dedicated mentor who is very skilled, and those people aren't usually readily available.
I've thought about this in regards to SWE before. If I had an experienced SWE who was my dedicated mentor I'm sure I would improve extremely quickly. Unfortunately, that's just not tenable.
I'm of the unpopular opinion that we conditioned ourselves to pedestalize speed of acquisition as the most important evidence that someone is talented. I see root comments bringing up how the person the article is talking about was anything but a beginner because he was practicing to the point of obsession at a younger age.
Reading the post in isolation omits important details because it's hard to quantify how much of that knowledge he was learning was first acquisition and how much of that was synthesizing things he already know in a way that is different enough to be considered a new lesson to learn.
Also, a good point to remember is that direct 1-to-1 contact with a mentor also allows for tacit knowledge to be acquired, not only instructional (for reference https://commoncog.com/the-tacit-knowledge-series/). Meaning that, another argument that can be made when you read an exchange like in the article is that 1-to-1 learning transmits a better quality of tacit knowledge to the student than a catch-all instructional knowledge.
And the point of the university is to communicate knowledge that is "everlasting". I see the article and the diss of the university as something required for software developers and I mean it in the nicest way possible but you're missing the point. University isn't there to make you a good tool builder (because that's what ultimately software is, it's a tool meant to be paired with hardware in order to allow the user to do what they want).
We already know how to become tool builders, disregarding everything that makes software so different than making chairs, guitars and swords. Universities aren't there to make you a specialist into web, mobile, gaming development either. That's why you see self-taughts since forever like John Carmack dropping out of college once they learn as much as they want to, before they keep grooving on their merry way, ultimately banding together with others who share the same passion with them.
Universities will never replace real world experience, and real world experience cannot replace universities for what they provide, because their goals are different. Universities don't have to remove the metaphorical speed limits. Even some of the experimental private bootcamps who value depth acquisition of fundamentals end up simply forming layers of classes where people getting paired with others who are working on the same concept. But that's still another form of mass apprenticeship.
The last comment by Fran Snyder was good too. I never really thought of it this way, but lately I've been going fast (coding) and not letting my natural inclination to think "this is too hard so I should procrastinate and yak shave." I've been pushing through that and confronting the hard parts of the code and finding it's really never as hard as I worried it was.
fran snyder (2009)
Speed kills the censor. One of my favorite quotes from "An Artist's Way." There are multiple benefits to setting challenging deadlines and defining your goals for yourself.
> He was quickly explaining the chords based on the diatonic scale — how the dissonance of the tri-tone in the 5-chord with the flat-7 is what makes it want to resolve to the 1. Within a minute, he started quizzing me.
> “If the 5-chord with the flat-7 has that tri-tone, then so does another flat-7 chord. Which one?”
> “Uh… the flat-2 chord?”
> “Right!"
What chords is he talking about (or did he mis-type)? I read "5-chord with flat-7" as G7 and "flat-2" as Dm7, but G7 and Dm7 don't share a tri-tone, only an interval. ?
I doubt this comment will get far on this forum, but it does jog my memory of my favorite professor and mentor in college (a very long story). Anyway, I was complaining to him that I was struggling with keeping up learning something in fluid mechanics, and he pointed out that it took Bernoulli 20 years to put together his general equation, but, as students, we’re expected to master it in a weekend. Anyway anyway, life isn’t a race, unless you’re trying to get ahead of someone else. To your point, plenty of people can do wonderful things in their own time and on their own pace, and that may not be as fast as someone else.
I’m still in my 20s and I’ve fell to the idea that if you haven’t achieved everything you want early on then you just don’t want it enough or you’re not working hard enough.
However, what if I achieve everything before hitting 30? What would I have to look forward then?
I think some things are just meant to be hard and take a long time. You just have to learn to enjoy the process and understand that everyone has their own pace and that’s okay.
I had a different takeaway. That you can fast-track the pointless "traffic jams" (using the race analogy). Why sit in traffic for no reason?
In his example, he tested out of classes that he was already proficient in—not all classes. Doing this occasionally would allow you to have more time for things that matter.
Well, it's more like - if you can afford 1:1 instruction and find a teacher whose style really fits you, you can really speed up your learning.
I've experienced this with guitar. Self-study can be done but you really need a coach who can push you further than you think you're ready to go, along with tailored instruction. You'll make years worth of progress in months this way.
If you’re in C major, the V chord is G7, which contains a tritone between its 3 and 7, B and F. You can say, what if instead of B being the 3 of the chord and F being the 7, F is the 3 and B is the 7? Then you discover that the root of this other chord is C# (or Db). Because the function of a chord is largely dictated by the 3 and 7 in it, this means you can substitute any dominant 7 chord with another dominant 7 chord a tritone away and it will still basically function the same (this can create some extra dissonance before the cadence which is nice and it creates some nice chromatic movement in the bass).
I see a lot of discussion between a couple of different "camps" on this.
I would have loved to have gotten a degree at a great university. Most of the arguments for a formal education are absolutely correct. But many of the arguments against it, are, as well.
But we make plans, and God laughs. Things turned out the way they did for me, and I ended up getting my undergraduate from The School of Hard Knocks, and my postgrad from The College of Getting the Shit Kicked Out of You. It's just the way things went. Long, sad, story (get your hankie).
I love learning, and still do it, every day. That's one of the reasons that I love this industry (It sure ain't the people).
The way I was "reared" in this field has given me some really useful, powerful, skills and habits, but I definitely feel the "holes" that are there, from not having the luxury of a complete, comprehensive education.
Never considered the speedrun route, but I also had someone (a prof. in my case) tell me something that changed the way I viewed college/the curriculum.
Paraphrasing, he said, "don't get too wound up with the syllabus, treat class and deliverables as touchpoints for your own self study". I guess it may have the same net result as "read the text" or "study outside of class" for some, but that view of things really resonated with me.
It felt a lot healthier to me to work in this way. I went down whatever rabbit holes interested me. It's not very efficient in terms of grades and stuff, but I had the time back then anyway, and I never really felt like I was cramming or grinding. When exams rolled around, I usually felt like I was in decent shape, just needed to do a little adjustment based on class hints or whatever.
From what I've heard (via youtube) from graduates of Berklee, the number one benefit of going to Berklee is the network of musicians you develop, and number two is getting to play with a lot of other highly motivated young musicians. From Sievers' description, what he did was counter to both of those goals.
I was fairly lucky to stumble into a UC program that was pretty good about not setting up speed limits for those pursuing computer science. I knew how to program going in, was very clear on my statement of intent that I did not want to be stuck in introductory classes, and was largely able to start where I wanted and then take what I wanted. Like the author, I also graduated with my degree at 20. Things seem to have mostly worked out.
What I will say is that bringing up college as an example of a place with "no speed limits" is kind of odd. I happened to fall into a place where I could shape things around me to fulfill my needs. I abused a program designed for encouraging undergraduates to do research to get a rubber stamp on all the graduate classes I was interested in. Not everyone can have that. Some of those doors have closed behind me, and were already closing when I got into the program. At most colleges if you don't have the prerequisites you're just not getting into a class, period.
I do think there is something to be said for there not being any speed limits on knowledge in general. College is one way to get it, and one of the last things I did before I graduated was try to design a class for students who were willing to go fast and deep. But a lot of it is materials, and people, for which college can be a very rigid structure that does limit you from moving quickly. In that case you might have to find your own path that you can move at your desired speed on.
Really depends on the program. A friend taught CS in the US, Germany and now UK, and (Sanierung to him) the German university has the hardest requirements of the three.
One barrier are also tedious requirements like "do the exercises and attend tutorial lessons if you want to be allowed to take the exam". For a lot of people that's a good idea, but for some it's just a waste of time (tutorials/exercise sheets don't influence the final score at my Alma mater, but larger software projects sometimes did).
Not to say it's impossible here, just harder. I know a few people who were faster than the average student, which means they either took the expected time for their BSc/MSc or a semester less, since the average student took a semester or two more (or didn't finish at all). But people who really broke the speed limit? One, maybe two. Though of course that's biased since I didn't know everyone in the dept. For the one I'm sure of, I vouched that he should be allowed to take the exam without the formal requirements (I was his tutor in that course). He obviously passed, and IIRC he had one of the best exams while doing twice the courses everyone else did. A real genius & also a nice person as well!
So, as someone that has studied classical music I have this to say: No way in hell that he went through one semester in one day of music theory. It is in many ways a craftsmanship that has to be practised. He had probably acquired most of that through practising without knowing it.
What it tells me is that Berkley didn't properly divide people into skill level after the entrance exams.
I have studied classical music in 2 countries and have been to many different schools. Music theory and solfege has always been divided by skill. The people that scored the best at the entrance exams do the base level stuff plus extra fun stuff in one semester, whereas the people that score the worst do it in 4 to six semesters.
My solfege teacher told me there is usually two people every year that wants to do the final exams without studying, and most fail.
For what it is worth, it is an elitist field of study. The best ones get in. And the best of those get a job.
I did most of my Uni Comp Sci degree in 2 years (only took 2 courses the last year and worked on the side, learned a lot working) - not on purpose - it was mostly by reading ahead because that stuff was more interesting
(Note: in the NZ system most degrees are 3 years not 4, largely because we have entrance tests that cover much of what in the US is "general ed")
1. "here's how you can get ahead of everybody else"
2. "Productivity porn is toxic"
I think by now most of us understand that both ideas are true to a certain degree. The hard part is figuring out how to balance the two. The problem is, most posts of one nature fail to address the other.
What applies to music, which I consider heavenly, do not apply to every field in life. Taking loads of music without limits may be harmless, even good, but some other things, nah! You gotta Love, really Love what you do, to speed up like that. It makes no sense otherwise.
Speed kills the censor. From an artistic perspective, but also, innovation in tech, revolution of ideas ettc. Status quo spots and counter-acts slow change.
Ok, sometimes, maybe when it impacts them, they try to counter it. sub-optimally, using bad sweeping legal gestures....
Lately I've been enjoying Matt Rickard's blog, so much so that I subscribed. His articles are so short that it's faster to just read them than to decide whether to read them.
> Then, as Kimo suggested, I bought the course materials for other required classes and taught myself, doing the homework in my own time. Then I went to the department head and took the final exam, getting full credit for those courses.
As someone who never went to university is this really how it works? You can do all of the learning on your own, pay the tuition fee for the class and take a test without stepping foot in class to get your degree?
That's pretty wild if so. Literally tens of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper when you did everything yourself.
It may work like that for some degrees at some schools. It definitely wouldn't have been possible at mine. In order to be able to take the exam, I generally needed at least x% across all homework assigned for the class and to attend the exercise classes.
I graduated in 3 years and also at 20 (so one more semester) and was way less inspirational in doing it.
I took 5 AP classes in high school that got me out of 5 classes and took 4 CLEP tests the summer before my last year so it would be my last (those tests are a very easy way to get credit requirements you don't care for filled). Then I dropped analytic geometry my last semester and only did 3 classes including the CS capstone because I just wanted to code at that point.
Why get a bachelor's degree in music? Why not study with the best teachers you can afford, play with the best groups you can get into, and upgrade both when you can? The degree doesn't really get you anything you couldn't get faster and better without all the fluff that comes with a degree. (Source : got the degree.)
I also got the degree, despite being pretty sure I'd never pursue music as an exclusive career choice (and well, 25 years later, haven't at all, but still hope to in semi-retirement!).
Most of the benefits weren't so obviously related to the degree itself but rather the setting, of being among like-minded students. I still stay in touch with a number of them (which is more than I can say for students I did a comp. sci. degree with), and I'd say they'll provide useful connections if I did consider pursuing music professionally.
I'm not sure exactly how much theory etc. I learned that I didn't know already or could have easily exposed myself to easily, but I certainly have no regrets doing the degree.
University was a wonderful time that shaped me in many ways. Technically, because it gave me the time and freedom to branch out as much as I wanted, and socially because I had a fantastic time with friends I made there, at a time where I was still unencumbered by commitments.
Cutting that short would have been the last thing on my mind.
Not relevant. In modern day if you have time and freedom at a uni you're the top 1%. Today the costs are so high you have to be working and studying full-time. Sometimes at the same time. During covid schools made whatever rules they liked, even if they infringed on basic rights of your rented home/property.
You don't need to spend 80K and drop out in the third year to get social experience. Everyone else outside of universities does it just fine.
I went to University in Germany, where there is no tuition, and admittance is gated by pre-academic grades.
The only money I had to spend[1], was for the apartment I rented out with my roommates and for feeding myself. I had a fun and flexible part-time job for that. A lot of my friends stayed with their parents. Certainly not 80k...
[1] Technically that's not true. My studies had the misfortune to overlap with the brief time where there were tuition fees in Bavaria. It was around 300€ to 500€ per semester, and a massive pain in the a**. I was able to get by, and it got voted off pretty quickly.
This is a great outlook on learning. It brought back memories of being accepted in a highly selective school. Using this analogy, it was a fast lane. The curriculum would've taken 8 years instead of 4 if it had been designed for average student speed.
I always preferred summer sessions for this reason. The classes moved at twice the speed, which always felt like my preferred pace. I always did better in those classes too.
> By doing this in addition to completing my full course load, I graduated college in two and a half years. I got my bachelor’s degree when I was twenty.
Whenever you’re watching YouTube videos from an influencer or popular educational channel, remember this. Most of these tutorials can just be a 3 paragraph blog post in its most condensed form.
It's to the determent of almost everyone, honestly. Below average speed learners struggle to keep up and speedy learners are bored to tears. Neither are able to reach their full potential.
In a hundred years teaching will probably be done by personalized AI tutors or something and they'll look back at the era of some person talking beside a blackboard explaining things as some kind of barbaric idiocy.
> the system is designed so anyone can keep up ... this principle applies to all of life, not just school.
Disagree. The incentives for school are such that it would honestly be surprising to me if the system were not designed for all to keep up. Adult, real-life, everybody trying to make money life is very different and this rule does not apply.
One of the really awful things that happens if you end up in the private sector is that the stupid speed limits come back—and this time they’re malevolent and political, so the smarter you are, the more eyes are on you watching for “bad attitude” when you realize you’re “not allowed” to learn at your natural rate of 10 times the prescribed one, and that this is not for your benefit but because some spreadsheet eichmann needs to get more grunt work out of you.
It sucks, but there are people out there no smarter than you yet more powerful, and sometimes they impose a speed limit.
If you get the opportunity though, I'd still suggest doing what the author did. No harm in learning something twice, particularly from two different perspectives.