Well, it's been just over 10 years since I graduated from highschool... What have I learned in those 10 years? Well, I'm sure more than I even realize. And I've forgotten at least as much as I've learned.

In highschool they badger you about grades, attendence, your appearance, your attitude, and so on. All are important things, of course. Sometimes they get sidetracked trying to convince you of other crazy stuff that doesn't matter. But they often forget to talk to you about why you are there in the first place.

Why do you go to highschool? Well, I've always believed that you go to highschool to learn how to survive after highschool. All schooling before highschool is truly irrelevant to life. It's a good knowlege base upon which to build and it's certainly important. But it won't help you survive in the real world. Survival in the real world seems to be the one thing the schools, as a whole, fail to teach. In highschool I'd often see teachers reprimanded for offering, what I realize now was good, advice to students. Often a student will get lucky and one or two teachers manage to do the job that the whole school system failed to do up to that point.

Things they probably won't bother to tell you in highschool:

• Your algebra teacher who's also the basketball coach doesn't even know algebra.
• Your highschool grades don't matter after highschool.
• Take as many industrial arts and hands-on classes as possible. The practical knowlege you gain from these classes will make you truly stand out in ways you can't even comprehend until you're older.
• Take a class where you have to fix problems. I took a 4-year electronics course in highschool. The most important thing I learned in those 4 years was how to divide and conquer complex problems and make them into a collection of simple problems. Once it becomes second nature it offers truly remarkable insights other people can't have. You can solve any problem 100 times faster than the average person.
  
• Take business classes if they are available.
  
• If you don't graduate you'll never get a real job. That diploma means you won't starve to death in 10 years.
  
• Even if you do graduate you're never going to make more than about $25,000/yr (unless maybe you're some weird freakazoid genius). You might edge your way up to $30,000 by 40. (Bearing in mind, with inflation that means you'll probably still be starving.)
  
• Go to college. Any college. Take some math, science, and business courses. You have to. Immediately after highschool. Don't wait. Don't assume you can work really hard and save money up for school later. You won't. Apply for all the financial aid you can right after highschool. Even if you don't get a degree it will erase the 4 years in highschool you wasted not learning algebra and such. You'll easily make $35,000/yr in a couple years. You may yet starve but you've probably postponed it a while.
  
• Don't get suckered into some non-accredited "technical school" that promises you a good job. Go to a real college of some sort. Technical schools arenothing more than a recruiting center for employers. Those schools exist for the benefit of employers rather than the students. Sure, they'll show you figures like "90% job placement" but what they fail to tell you is that 90% of those job placements lose their job after their probationary employment period expires. If you go to a real collegereal jobs will be available when you're ready.
• Learn to write computer software and fully utilize basic technology. Don't just learn to use some program. Learn to make your own programs. Especially, if you aren't studying technology. A business major who understands technology is worth a fortune, for example.
• Take some basic computer science courses in college. Learn how computers and technology works.
  
• Always believe you can do anything if you put your full effort into it. If you start thinking you can't do something then you've already failed.
• Be the best at exactly one thing. Pick something profitable and learn everything about it.
  
• Be great at many things. Strive to be a Renaissance man (or renaissance person for the politically correct whiners)
  
• Don't memorize information. Your memory will fail you. Instead memorize how to find information. You'll find that sometimes you remember things anyway. But you should always verify your memory. Having an instinct where to find the correct answer will keep you from wasting away years of your life asking other people questions with obvious answers.
• Lastly, and this is the most important thing you'll ever do... Write down in a notebook (or preferably a computerized equivalent) every single thing you learn or do or problem you solve. Write it down in a way that you'll never lose in your entire lifetime. I use a simple text file on my computer. For the last 10 years I've religiously kept notes on everything I know in a single text file. And I can't stress just how vital this has been. A simple notebook will allow you to remember everything forever. And that's truly empowering.
  

Now, go find other people with advice about what to do during and after highschool. I may be wrong. I may be nuts. Who knows. But in the end you'll be better off if you start thinking about it sooner rather than later.

Labels: life the universe and everything