| i suspect once anyone goes to a Deweyite-style school, they're doomed to misery if/when they get stuck going to a non-Deweyite school. I think of it as Montessori-style schooling -- except for all age groups -- not sure if that is accurate or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey#On_education_and_te... i'm sure that your case is relatively common, but i don't suspect the solution is well-known. what is the solution? i don't know. but i know i've read 'it' several/dozen times in the past. here i'm thinking of just conintuing to search for 'your path', working hard, following your interests, being bold, taking action, finding others to collaborate/work with, etc. cases of many of the big names in tech and elsewhere can be instructive in that, even if you don't share their values, you might be able to find some confidence in the way they went their own way. maybe it was steve jobs auditing classes and always asking, 'why not do sometihng _this_ way?'. maybe it was mlk saying, 'yeah, racism is really bad, but maybe we can get to an even-more critical/root problem by trying to tackle poverty?'. the author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, said he "designed his own major" in college. sounds reasonable. i'm a big Chomsky fanboi, and one thing he has said to students when asked what they should do to live meaningful lives was something like, "find things that interest you, maybe a problem or some problems, and work on understanding and then solving them". sounds simple enough, but maybe also correct? this video clip does not have that bit i just mentioned, but has other thoughts on education generally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1309&v=DdNAUJWJN... i think you can seek out people in a few ways: 0) change your major to non-STEM. that shit just boring. or, do the James Clear thing. 1) advertise -- literally start a club or similar; friday night paris salon for those interested in being interested 2) go meet some theatre/drama/english/entrepreneur majors. take some courses. switch to those majors. esp English. and theatre/drama. 3) take some philosophy courses also, if you start working on a problem, any problem, you might end up attracting people who are interested in working on the same problem -- or just people, like you, who are like, 'is anything _happening_ here?' i do think it's true to a certain extent that you can create your own reality, even in a 'boring' situation. i think of many hollywood-types that had umpteen 'failed' projects before they made anything that people would actually pay for. good luck! |