| HN Mirror

It will feel like less of a waste, and be less of a waste, when you are doing more of the steering and putting in your creative energies rather than floating along. But it is natural to float along more at the beginning. And if you don't know what you are doing then it is still better to follow the rails than to just drift for years.

Please do question what you are told are the 'core values' because they are probably nothing but marketing. Just let those ideals be questionable and plan for yourself, it's no use being upset about it.

However, college does provide a specific set of goods, even if they aren't the purported ones. Here is one way to think about your level of engagement with your education:

Level 1: They make you go somewhere, decide what to study, then give a basic schedule and incentives so you will actually do something. Meet a few friendly people, even if you have little in common. At the end you have social proof that you have a brain and did not only just smoke pot for years, know a few things, can conform, are in a certain social class. All you have to do is reliably show up and work.

Level 2: academic and social context to spark your interests and make it easier to develop them. You have to find the interesting parts and put in a little extra work above assignments to cultivate those interests and learn more. When you leave you'll find this context missing. It gets harder to start in a new field and not so effortless to meet people.

Level 3: facilities like a good library, labs, subject matter experts actively engaged in their fields, maybe some smart peers. You can make yourself what you need to be by directly engaging with the subject matter. Having access to a good adviser who believes in what you are doing is very helpful. But you have to know what you need to be and have strong motivation. You don't have to be a genius in school in order to make yourself a good emulation of one down the line.

Almost any college makes all of these possible. I think the differences are in that 'level 2'.

At a relatively bad school, you will not be very encouraged by the context, you will constantly realize that the coursework is a joke and your peers don't care, the school may take an active interest in pounding students down into conformity and just making them slog through. so most will only engage at level 1 without ever realizing there is more, and many will quit since it seems pointless. While level 3 types will make themselves excellent using available tools others do not use, regardless of what the school prescribes. And won't necessarily be noticed because they are focused on ideas.

At a GREAT school ideas become fashionable and fun; it will do the opposite of pounding you down into conformity. you will come in with a feeling of esprit de corps, everyone will push you and encourage you, your workload will terrify you, you will be actively interested in things you never thought about, you will develop cutting-edge interests related to what your peers and favorite teachers are interested in (even if they are just dumb humanities stuff), etc. And you might come out smelling like a rose. But you are still ultimately carried along by the current. At level 3, where you are already tightly focused on subject matter, you may not derive that much more advantage from a good school, except that you will not have to prove as much.

Really excellent specialized people have to engage at that higher level at some point, whether they went to a bad community college or a top engineering school.

With this "level 3" concept I am not talking about HN's 1% A-player software architect rockstars - who often enough are just guys with industry experience and connections and nice looking blogs and interests in new tools. I am talking about the few people you will meet in your entire life who are so good they define a field, like Einstein or John Carmack or something. Those people get there by being totally focused on subject matter and efficiently improving their abilities and being absolutely dedicated.

Even if you choose something smaller, if you know what you want and work toward it single-mindedly out of your own drive then you will get a real education. And otherwise you will get a sort of crap education.