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I did not do well at school. I think I have some mild dyslexia that puts a cap on my reading speeds, and being in a lecture class of size 30 didn't work well for me. I recall getting bogged down by the slower people in class, so I'd start daydreaming about programming, and then be out of context when class started progressing again. Here I'm talking Jr High and High Schools. My kids are in an Expeditionary Learning school (based off Outward Bound), and I think that would have worked really well for me. Much more hands on, and a much smaller class size. They have K-12 in a school the size of my Jr HS. My daughter's graduating class size was less than twice the size of my HS Social Studies classrooms. But, I'm watching my son struggle in a lot of the same ways that I struggled. School is just something he does until he can get home and do programming. But in retrospect, I understand the value of figuring out how to do the boring things. I call it "making license plates". It's boring, you just pull the handle and crank one out, but it needs to be done. So I'm trying to both foster his love of the programming and computer stuff, while also trying to get him to have strategies for dealing with the boring stuff. I was quite lucky after HS. I thought I needed to go to college, so I tried to go down that path, but it just was totally the wrong path for me. Meanwhile, I had some connections that led to getting hired by Hewlett-Packard while I was still in HS. So, after trying a semester of Community College, which I totally failed at (in some ways it failed me, but let's be honest: I wasn't engaged with it at all). Through luck and connections, I was able to always be employed at something I love. For me, the work was engaging and educational. I always loved learning on my own, it was just the learning in school that was a problem. Today, in my 50s, I feel fairly well educated, still have a passion for learning, and have a good job and family. It's a different world now, in many ways. But, CS people are in high demand. In some ways, the traditional CS education is going to struggle with the new world. People need the foundations, in order to be able to leverage LLMs, but CS teaches through a lot of rote work that LLMs can do. It's a lot like embracing calculators in mathematics, which I remember there being two minds about back in my Jr HS era. Unfortunately, I think you're going to have to pick a path that suits you. |