[amirhhz]

"My education taught me to value getting the right answer. (It also taught me to value prestige, prizes, etc.) So I worked hard at memorizing things, and anytime I wasn’t sure I’d get the right answer the first time, I’d be scared to try, in case I failed or made myself look stupid."

Here's where the above really starts to hurt: during high school, I got away with avoiding failure because everything is set up for you to 'succeed'. As soon as I went to University the opportunities for failure increased by an order of magnitude and at the same time there was nothing and no-one there to assure you that this is OK and part of the process of learning. The spiral of self-doubt, depression and fear that this created almost completely ruined my academic career.

I got lucky and it all worked out such that I am now a software developer who knows failure and experimentation (on almost any scale) are part and parcel of getting better at what you do, and the impact of this knowledge on one's emotional well-being is immense. It's what I would tell my 18-year-old self if I had the chance.

[shn]

You were lucky at least to find a better place in college. Although not all classes I took was as bad as high school, unfortunately I just graduated memorizing my way out of college most of the time. The idea and the gist of the subject was always elusive, there was no connectedness with anything else. There was no exploration however the workload was enormous, we were taking 5-6 college level math classes per term. Quantity ruled over quality.