“What You’ll Wish You’d Known”

Reader Carla Shedivy suggests that this Paul Graham essay “What You’ll Wish You’d Known” is a must read for high school freshman:

But there are other jobs you can’t learn about, because no one is doing them yet. Most of the work I’ve done in the last ten years didn’t exist when I was in high school. The world changes fast, and the rate at which it changes is itself speeding up. In such a world it’s not a good idea to have fixed plans.
And yet every May, speakers all over the country fire up the Standard Graduation Speech, the theme of which is: don’t give up on your dreams. I know what they mean, but this is a bad way to put it, because it implies you’re supposed to be bound by some plan you made early on. The computer world has a name for this: premature optimization. And it is synonymous with disaster. These speakers would do better to say simply, don’t give up.

One thought on ““What You’ll Wish You’d Known””

  1. Graham’s essay “Why Nerds Are Unpopular” may also be of interest — and bring reassurance — to some readers and their teenage children.

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