This question has haunted me for years.
Not because I care about how I did in grade school and high school. Not because I wanted to get into a good college. And not because my parents were disappointed or worried about me. But because I want to know the specifics. I want to know why. And I want to know what has changed, and what may yet change, and why. I want to know why I was such a bad student, and why I’m so amenable to learning now. Why I spend so much of my free time studying, and reading, and taking online courses, and listening to lectures and such.
What’s the difference?
I suspect there are several.
And I also suspect that you, and many of my friends and readers, and lots and lots of smart people in general, will be able to relate to this question and these musings. We all know how it feels to underperform, and we all know how it feels to be pushed into something we don’t care about. And we all know that many of the legendary minds in the human race actually performed quite poorly in school, or dropped out altogether.
I’ve come up with several reasons. Several factors that were at play that have helped me make some sense of this question.
First of all, I’ve realized that the way I am wired is not conducive to long, monotonous stretches of focus and productivity.
Check out this Twitter thread from Sahil Bloom, which puts into words something I’ve been feeling for a long time:
I never quite had the words to express this. Work like a lion. I have always been this way. I cannot stand sitting at my work desk for 4 straight hours. Or working on a spreadsheet I don’t care about for 120 minutes without stopping. Or listening to teachers and professors lecture at me all day long. These experiences are just painful for me. They don’t allow me to focus. They make it impossible for me to focus.
To be honest, that has contributed to me being a smoker for this long. Smoking gave me an excuse to walk away from my corporate desk, stretch my legs, and renew my focus. It gave me an excuse to take a break. To refresh and re-energize my capacity for attention, instead of asymptotically slowing all day long and ending the day barely even doing any work.
I once heard someone say that we ought to work hard for 20-25 minutes at a time and sprinkle in tons and tons of 5-minute breaks. And you know what? I agree. That keeps me sharp as can be. That keeps me energized. It helps keep my attentiveness at peak levels and reduces the cumulative drag of extended effort. Work like a lion. Sprint when inspired, rest, repeat. This is precisely how I work now, and I’ve never been happier or more productive. Some days I’ll sit around thinking or doing something unimportant for a while, and then I’ll be struck by motivation to do something - to write something, to research something, to listen to a lecture about a topic - and I’ll go do it at an almost-frantic pace. With elevated and prolonged enthusiasm. Just like that. I let it strike me, and when it does I immediately throw myself completely into it.
Now don’t get me wrong - when I am inspired to write one of these blog posts, I will often type for 2 straight hours without stopping. Because I’m in Flow. I’m in my zone. And it just pours out of me. And that’s perfect. That’s fine. I only take breaks when I feel I need them - and one of the biggest reasons I love being an independent trader is that it allows me that luxury. I can dictate when I take my breaks. What an unbelievably, ridiculously useful thing. What an unheard-of luxury for 90% of people.
And I also give myself mandates and rules, such as “spend a minimum of 2 hours a week writing” or “write something even when you don’t feel like it.” These skills and self-disciplinary measures are equally important to doing creative sprints when I do feel like running.
Another thing that played into my poor studentness was the dramatic variance in teacher quality. Now this, along with pretty much everything else I talk about here, may sound like an excuse. And of course it’s an excuse. I’m a weak, lazy bastard. I’m just trying to figure out to what extent it was an excuse, and to what extent is it a very real and problematic factor in learning.
I had some really solid teachers in school. Some really inspiring, high-quality communicators. Some outstanding storytellers, some joyful individuals who took great interest in their students. They made my learning effortless. That is, when I actually showed up to class - which again asymptotically decreased over time. Funny story, I almost didn’t graduate high school, because of attendance. But these exceptional teachers made me want to be present. That’s the thing about a great teacher - they make me want to learn about whatever it is they’re talking about, even if it’s not in my wheelhouse. Even if it’s not necessarily my cup of tea. A good teacher is a gift. A great storyteller, educator, or mentor is a rare and indescribably valuable thing.
So, given that most teachers are not quite so excellent, it really made school a chore for me. It made me dread each day, and almost every class. It made it really, really hard for me to stay tuned in and connected. A lot of the time I ended up drawing, writing, zoning out, passing notes to pretty girls, or playing games on my TI-86 calculator.
A bad teacher is not good at helping pass information to me and helping me store it. Not good at painting pictures and making subject matter exciting and engaging.
A great teacher uses various skills to help me receive, organize, and attach feeling to thoughts and concepts. When I listen to a teacher who attaches stories and analogies and metaphors to what she’s teaching, it takes everything to a whole new level. When a teacher uses inflection and movement and enthusiasm, it makes me listen. She is helping me receive the information. She is helping me organize a filing cabinet system in perfectly coherent order, so that all of the information is ready for recall at a moment’s notice. She is helping me build mental models of what she’s talking about - not just getting me to memorize facts. She is helping me build out an entirely new framework for thinking and understanding something inside my head.
That is the difference in having a great teacher versus having a mediocre teacher. One helps me pass a test; the other helps me engineer and build out fresh mental infrastructure. Infrastructure upon which I can easily continue to build and expand. This difference cannot be understated - it is the difference between timeless curiosity and “high school sucked.” It is the difference between a love for learning and a distaste for learning.
Excellent teachers are worth their weight in gold.
Or Bitcoin.
Another thing that dragged me down was that the classroom environment was terribly boring and sterile to me. So uninteresting. So “compliant.” So politically correct, so “I’m the teacher and you’re the student, so be quiet.”
I used to love when teachers would do group activities and classroom discussions, and when they’d joke around with us and invite our opinions onto the floor. Man, did that make a difference to me. When a teacher treated us kids as equals, worthy of laughing with and listening to, it completely changed the experience. It made school feel less like a child’s chore and more like an adult’s privilege. An interactive, mature experience.
I never liked feeling like school was my full-time job. Like I was a cookie-cutter working-class peon, going through my K-12 outfitting to become an Educated And Compliant Citizen. To sit in front of mediocre teachers for 7 hours a day until I was 18 and a half years old, being constricted into submission and dullness just like everyone else. To go through “the system,” with the only end goal in sight being that I could graduate into the next level of “the system.” Like, Christ man. How dull. How uninspiring. How devoid of individualism and hope.
In modern times, it’s quite silly to me that we still have such bland and uniform educational systems and environments. I mean… we have the technology to link up people across the globe, to create entirely new digital financial systems, and to automate just about any task we can think of. We have 415 different kinds of personality tests and we can inject new instructions for cell reproduction directly into our bodies. And yet we haven’t found a way to make education more versatile and individualized. It baffles me. How have we not begun to design educational programs that work for various kinds of learners? At least not at any sort of large scale?
Artists do not learn the same way as accountant types. Jocks do not learn the same way as chess players. There’s no reason to treat these different types of people the same - and teach and test them the same way. I mean sure, everyone should have to be able to pass standardized tests - that’s why they’re standardized. And there’s good reason for that. But we have basically “standardized” everything, even when research has made it unequivocally clear that all students are not guided by the same mental rails. All students do not thrive in a “sit there and be quiet while I read out of the textbook for 53 minutes” environment. That’s bland, unimaginative, and completely inappropriate for an advanced human society.
Since I try to avoid idle complaining, I’ll offer an idea:
I suppose one system we could try in public schools is to have different settings/styles for a handful of student “classes.” And when I say “classes,” I mean aptitudes/learning styles. For instance - a standardized aptitude test is given to all students at the end of each school year. The results will suggest one of three or so “classes” or “communities” for the following school year. Let’s say in this example there are three communities for each grade: Creative, Academic, and Active.
Maybe the Creative segment is for students who like to learn with stories and art. For students who are strong at picking apart ideas on their own, and maybe students who struggle with teamwork. They’re often more geared towards quiet, solo learning.
The Academic crowd might have no problem with extensive lectures and note-taking. Maybe they score high in conscientiousness on the Big Five test, and their learning environments can be more traditional and direct.
The Active crowd is more extroverted, and should include lots of team activities, maybe even lots of field trips and team-building exercises. A secondary and less-critical workload for them could include creative thinking and studying literature as maybe these are more of a weakness for them.
Each community could include teachers, activities, routines, classrooms etc. that are geared towards the strengths of that segment of the students. Maybe all teachers could even use the different class periods to cycle through each of those communities, routines and systems each day. That might be good for both the teachers and the students. And each community could also include secondary workloads to work on weaknesses and supplemental skill sets.
This is just a rough example - but you see what I’m getting at. We’re not all graduating grade school and going to work for Henry Ford anymore. There’s no reason for our educational environments to be structured this way anymore. We need to explore more options for our youth to learn effectively and become outstanding thinkers, producers, and citizens. I mean for crying out loud, we live in the “richest and best country in the world.” Our education system does not reflect that at all.
Another issue with my own learning: I was so young, so inexperienced, so lacking in gratitude or a sense of direction. I truly was not mentally amenable to learning about things I didn't care about. It wasn't possible.
I did not know yet who I wanted to be, nor what I wanted to be. I did not know towards what I was working. I am eternally envious of those few of us who knew from age nine “I want to be a nurse” or “I want to design bridges.” It took me until I was 30 years old to realize any sort of direction or goal for myself, and changing one’s trajectory at that age comes with much more significant risk. If I already had kids or other complications, my ability to take tremendous risk would be near zero.
I didn’t find any value in school, because I didn’t feel I was working towards anything other than “this is what people do. And it’s what my parents and teachers want me to do.” For the creative and curious mind, “because you’re supposed to” is not a good motivating mechanism.
(If you haven’t realized by now, I was a difficult kid - I had good manners and treated people well, but I did not ever do anything unless I had a good reason for it. In other words, if I didn’t want to do something for my own reasons, I just wasn’t doing it.)
It’s not that I was some creative, scheming little rebel. It’s more like - I had no sense of identity or direction, so everything in my life felt pointless. Everything felt like nothing more than a mandate - something I was just doing to please everyone else or just to not get detention.
And I got lots of detentions anyway. Surprise.
Another thing that was missing, for me, in my school days was a satisfying social structure. A satisfying social aspect of learning and growth. I always had trouble making friends as a kid. Maybe it was my dry sense of humor, or the fact that I didn’t care about things other kids cared about like sports and gossip. Maybe it was the fact that I was an old soul trapped in a young body. Or maybe it was that I was thirsty to have deep and meaningful conversations all the time, rather than just small talk and jokes. And most kids just don’t connect with that. Most kids want to be entertained and liked - not to explore philosophy and psychology.
That’s another thing that has been given to me by the internet - Discord communities and other outlets have provided me the social aspect of life that I was always missing. I have found my way into a few small, high-quality groups of young men and women where I finally get to have those conversations. Where I finally have peers who care about more than sports, beer, and girls. Where I feel my interests and desires are actually understood and shared.
It’s actually because of my friends that I started this blog in the first place - they understand the way my mind works, they understand my rants and musings, and they encouraged me to put it into something organized and creative. So… a blog. Why not. It is critical, essential, to be around people who understand you and drive you to be better and to do what works for you. The conversations and debates I have with my closest friends and colleagues are pivotal in my learning and my ambition. They cultivate that inside me which wants to grow. Most of them are smarter than I am (they are some damn impressive people), and I get to bounce ideas and questions off of them as I learn something. Plus, there’s a simple and irreplaceable social aspect to human life - you learn about yourself by sharing your thoughts and ambitions with others. I never had that in school, but I have it now. Very grateful.
Getting decent grades (or just surviving high school) is a hell of a thing to ask from a child when he has no strong force behind him, pushing him (or in front of him, pulling him). Especially if he, like me, is lacking in either purpose or obedience. You can get by with one or the other - but I had neither.
But look at me now. After having discussed all of this, I realize now that it’s not just me that was broken, and it wasn’t just the school system. It was both of us. As with most things in life, it takes two to completely ruin something.
I’m absolutely amazed at the education I’ve been able to give myself for free on the internet. All of the issues I’ve just talked about have basically been solved by the internet. The University of YouTube is the lowest-barrier-to-entry, widest-reaching educational phenomenon I think we will ever see. And it comes at the low, low price of selling our personal data to giant tech and advertising conglomerates who manipulate every action we take every day with subliminal collective conscious control.
But if you can work really really hard to resist that, I think you’re in great shape. There are a million ways to get educated online - and, unless you simply cannot find one, there’s almost always a free option. YouTube, Coursera, edX are all amazing sources for leisurely educational activities. Not to mention a cornucopia of high-quality podcasts. I recently finished a Harvard course for free on Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies, and now I’m taking one from Columbia University on The Economics of Money and Banking. Fantastic courses, fantastic professors, and completely free and at your own pace. What a miracle. What an utter game-changer.
I think that’s my issue - I just needed to reach a point in my life where I wanted to learn. And I needed to have the freedom to do it at my own pace, take days off when I was focused on other pursuits, and allot my own chosen amount of time to it. Again, game-changer. I can go through these courses in 4 days or 4 months. It’s up to me.
I love reading. I love studying. I am an insatiably curious person. I was told all my life that I had “such potential.” But I didn’t take anybody’s word for it. I had to discover that for myself. I now have more potential learning energy than I ever imagined.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably like me. Make it a non-negotiable part of your weekly routine, and your yearly goals, to spend X amount of time learning. Or to take X courses for free on the internet (from top universities, no less). What a gift.
We may not get any college credit for these pursuits, but my sense is college education is no longer worth a whole lot anyway.
Does it make me weak, or soft, that I needed more freedom and self-reliance to really begin educating myself? Maybe. But I’m learning now. And that’s a hell of a good thing. I’m grateful for that.
“Don’t let your schooling interfere with your education.” - Samuel Clemens