The fact that this bogus story has 61 points and is on HN's coveted home page is just unbelievable. Are you kidding me!?
From Wikipedia:
Pavlina was a student at University of California, Berkeley in the early nineties. He performed extremely poorly in his studies, because he devoted his time to shoplifting. Pavlina claims he then went on to earn two degrees (computer science and math) from California State University, Northridge in three semesters (also incorporating advanced placement credits for courses he had taken in high school).
1. He's claiming this and it's never been proven, despite how easy it is to actually prove. If he truly did this and people didn't believe him, he can simply show proof. (if you read the post, just like he showed proof to the people that doubted how many classes he was taking).
2. IF it is true, then it's widely fudged. The guy had APs and (bad apparently) college credit. This "3 semesters" claim is akin to someone going to school for a couple of years, accumulating a lot of credit, transferring to another school and graduating in 1.5 years. Seriously not that impressive.
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There are great blogs with successful students that went to extraordinary lengths in college. But this just isn't one of them. He also seems to be someone who got rich by talking about how to get rich; excuse me for not admiring that.
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Aside from all that, here's the really important point I came to HN to make: instead of a 'do it now' attitude, don't rush it Seriously.
College is a few years of your life and an amazing experience. Our society has this issue of rushing things and making races out of events that weren't meant for that. This reminds me of Norvig's rant on books with titles like "Learn Advanced Java in 24 Hours".
Challenging oneself with more classes in college is one thing; taking so much that you couldn't possibly retain such knowledge is another. Slow down, concentrate, and actually learn the material. College isn't a race; it's a journey. I say make the most of it.
Take that rant however you want. As a recent college-dropout (start of 4th year), a lot of the celebrated and arbitrary things in college (from how many classes you're taking to how many majors you're studying to how fast you're finishing college) just don't seem that interesting 99% of the time.
From Wikipedia:
Pavlina was a student at University of California, Berkeley in the early nineties. He performed extremely poorly in his studies, because he devoted his time to shoplifting. Pavlina claims he then went on to earn two degrees (computer science and math) from California State University, Northridge in three semesters (also incorporating advanced placement credits for courses he had taken in high school).
1. He's claiming this and it's never been proven, despite how easy it is to actually prove. If he truly did this and people didn't believe him, he can simply show proof. (if you read the post, just like he showed proof to the people that doubted how many classes he was taking).
2. IF it is true, then it's widely fudged. The guy had APs and (bad apparently) college credit. This "3 semesters" claim is akin to someone going to school for a couple of years, accumulating a lot of credit, transferring to another school and graduating in 1.5 years. Seriously not that impressive.
----
There are great blogs with successful students that went to extraordinary lengths in college. But this just isn't one of them. He also seems to be someone who got rich by talking about how to get rich; excuse me for not admiring that.
---
Aside from all that, here's the really important point I came to HN to make: instead of a 'do it now' attitude, don't rush it Seriously.
College is a few years of your life and an amazing experience. Our society has this issue of rushing things and making races out of events that weren't meant for that. This reminds me of Norvig's rant on books with titles like "Learn Advanced Java in 24 Hours".
Challenging oneself with more classes in college is one thing; taking so much that you couldn't possibly retain such knowledge is another. Slow down, concentrate, and actually learn the material. College isn't a race; it's a journey. I say make the most of it.
Take that rant however you want. As a recent college-dropout (start of 4th year), a lot of the celebrated and arbitrary things in college (from how many classes you're taking to how many majors you're studying to how fast you're finishing college) just don't seem that interesting 99% of the time.