The talk is suitable for the target audience, the young undecided.
For the rest of us, especially here at HN, it would have been interesting to learn a bit more about how she got to that Fidelity job first and how she then "drifted" towards "her people", namely the startup people, and then the book and Y Combinator in specific. Some Y combinator early anecdotes would have been great, too.
I like the subway analogy. I'm sure I've heard some version of it before, but maybe because I was younger I didn't really get it. It really is a little strange to tell kids who have never really directed their own lives before to start doing it all of a sudden.
I wasn't expecting much, and I personally didn't get a lot from the article, but if I was in early 20s, I would've been hugely inspired. Jessica surely has a gift for clear and motivating writing.
As someone who has “reinvented” myself more than once (mostly due to school/job transfers), it seems what wasn’t said is equally if not more important.
Rarely can you “find your people” without letting other people go.
The unspoken truth in this article is that it’s just as important to be willing to let go of relationships that aren’t helping you grow.
Easier said than done.
Whether it’s the negative influence of a toxic friend, or the mediocre advice of an overbearing parent (who is just trying to keep you on the rails), other people rarely have your best interests in mind.
Losing the people who aren’t “your people” is (usually) a necessary step to finding the right people.
For what it's worth, I teach my students not to listen
to their parents, because while most parents want the best for their children, without doubt, their assumptions are typically outdated, and were probably already wrong when they were young.
As categorical guidance, that seems like a problematic thing to teach. First, parents don’t know everything, but they know their kids and have witnessed their journey, so they have a unique perspective to offer. Second, parents will begin to (justifiably!!) grow suspicious of your institution and develop resentment, which is a serious structural problem.
Hopefully what you mean is something like you teach them to think critically about their parents advice as one input among many, understanding where the advice comes from and its inherent strengths and flaws.
For what it's worth, I teach my children not to listen to their teachers, because while most teachers want the best for their students, without doubt, their assumptions are typically outdated, and were probably already wrong when they were young.
In my case, the subway crashed into the station at about 100mph, and I had to crawl out of the wreckage, and repair the damage, before I could proceed. When I did proceed, I had to buck constant headwinds.
It’s a lovely speech. I’m older now and can appreciate it. However, I’m not sure if I would have in my twenties. Unfortunately, some things can't be advised or taught - you have to discover them for yourself through trial and error.
Kids not feeling like they have agency is a huge problem in the asian community which likes to put their kids on steel tracks with 0 wiggle room, this speech resonated with me big time
The irony is that my parents were immigrant entrepreneurs and my grandparents were also entrepreneurs on both sides. Yet my parents pushed me towards medical school or a stable job at the least.
I think this was for a couple reasons:
1. Asian parents express their insecurities through their children. They wanted a stable and high income (which maps to "doctor") so they push their kids to become the version of them they never were.
2. Asian parents treat their children like status symbols. Nothing says "I am the best parent" than being able to say "my son/daughter is a doctor." Saying 'my son/daughter owns their own business" just does not have the same ring to it.
In asian cultures, status and conformity are very valuable, and those do not map to high agency.
Not Asian or South Asian. I'm sure what you're saying is true.
But having parents that are not involved enough to push their kids towards anything in particular is a much bigger challenge to over come.
If you have a degree from a prestigious university and the network that comes along with it, pivoting towards start ups or something more creative or entrepreneurial is a lot easier than if you never went to college at all or didn't finish high school.
Good speech. It makes me think of why the rich get richer though. More access to more types of people earlier and throughout one's life.
The best thing to give kids is access to a very wide—as wide as they can stomach—orientation of all there is in the world. It's not curation, it's not "the best". it's volume and contrasts.
I debate my friends about private school. they have kids, I don't yet. Private school is actually a narrow lens, is my argument.
I mostly agree with you, as a person who went to a middle-of-the-road public school.
I will point out though, anecdotally, my spouse went to the highest tier of public school in our city. She has a good balance of "seeing the world for what it is" while also having an edge of being personally networked to a ton of folks who are rich, well-connected, and capable.
I look at the friend groups I built when I was a kid, and then I look at hers.
- My old friend groups are all stuck in a range of poverty to lower-middle-class.
- My spouses friends are all doing very well for themselves, live all over the world, prestigious careers, active hobbies, highly intellectual, cultured, etc.
It's a stark contrast.
There is something to be said for ensuring your kids go to the best schools possible. Those early networks are pivotal in forming an above average life.
> There is something to be said for ensuring your kids go to the best schools possible. Those early networks are pivotal in forming an above average life.
I think this might be more of an American thing tbh. Having early networks can help grease the wheels for an above average life maybe but it's not so straightforward.
Personally, I went to an average public high school, I went to a small university (~9k students), and I'm now one of the top 3% of earners in my country just shy of a decade after graduating
I didn't wind up keeping in touch with anyone I went to any of my schooling with, honestly. I had to move away from my hometown to find opportunities so those bonds faded
It hasn't been easy for sure, it would definitely help to have that embedded network from childhood, but I don't think that is a requirement
Being competent and working hard can get you a long way
I went to a poverty level school, my partner went to one of the most elite schools in the US. My friends are also stuck in poverty or the lower-middle-class while my partner's friends are also seem quite conventionally successful. But several of my partner's friends are quite frustrated with their career choices. They feel like they were hemmed into high-prestige careers. A lot of them are not particularly successful in their careers because they don't feel the passion to succeed and feel like their choices were taken away from them. Many of them have very anxious memories from school of perpetually feeling like they were failing because of the high pressure of the school.
There are many aspects of my low-income schooling I would not want to pass onto a child but there are also aspects of my partner's schooling that I wouldn't want to pass either. I don't really know what the answer is, but I feel like being at either end of the normal distribution of schools here isn't good.
It’s certainly true that there are real downsides to both ends of the spectrum — but all things being equal I’d rather be wiping my tears with hundred dollar bills than tissues
Having thought about this a good amount and collected anecdotes over the years... I think the prioritization order should be (1) live in a location in which the parents feel their most authentic/happy/self-actualized selves, (2) send your children to the most geographically proximate school where they won't be (overly-)bullied for their identity (inclusive of class) one way or another.
Relative school quality (performance on standardized tests, admissions to fancy schools), and public/private are proxies for these more fundamental issues. Too many parents discount the value of (1) to zero, with the idea that they're "sacrificing themselves" "for their kids".
An example of one good reason to not send your kids to private school: Burning yourself out on a series of high-stress job to afford sending your middle-class kid to an upper-class private school will traumatize them. If not for their education/social experience at school, then for your lack of calming and positive influence on their emotional/relationship-forming lives.
I don't think it's necessarily "wrong" for some people to send their kids to a "narrow-lens" school, even if it's often wrong. It can be right for somebody else and wrong for you.
I think this is an excellent comment. Not enough people talk about living near other parents in this way, and you’re right that it’s a massive difference-maker.
Aside from the pure “networking” factor, the expectations/environment are a big deal too
I went to private school and in hindsight it pretty obviously altered my life for the better — I was a smart but lazy kid, and being surrounded by people who were dead-set on going to Harvard, and by teachers who expected excellence, was a huge factor in making me actually try hard.
If I was a smart lazy kid at a school where I had to try to find that environment, rather than being thrust into it, I would have had a much lower trajectory.
I was that other kid. Grew up in a pretty tough place, where dodging blades was no euphemism and emotional regulation was on permanent hiatus. Grew up with severe issues in personal life and balance of self, absence of anchors in family and social relationships. Was always curious, always loved understanding things.
When you don't have good people around, you pay the price in time and pain. Those people will save you years and hundreds of thousands - or even millions, simply by showing you the most egregious traps to avoid and the more virtuous behaviours to adopt. They'll make your success more predictable, less reliant on the specifics of your genetic makeup, domestic instability, and odd moments of luck.
I was a good kid. Didn't end up well at all. Figured I could at least try to be a good person to others as time goes on, and pass on the gotchas and virtuous habits I partly figured out myself.
I don't know what the axes are for your trajectory plot, but some of the people I know who seem to really enjoy their lives are not high achievers if you measure by status or finances.
It's hard to find things that all of them have in common. They all come from supportive, functioning families and all of them are artistic people working in technical fields and have high EQ. They are all very curious but not scattered or unfocused.
I didn't know if I should write creative or artistic above because they are so similar. They are different though, right?
> They all come from supportive, functioning families and all of them are artistic people working in technical fields and have high EQ. They are all very curious but not scattered or unfocused.
Seems like it wasn't too hard to find things all of them have in common.
Agree that a wide diversity of people is great. Disagree on the private school - it is a narrow band, but so is public school. I think ppl overestimate the diversity in public school and underestimate it in private school.
Neither is enough - def need to find ways to expand kids network, especially the network of adults they know.
I don't think anybody would argue that it's a narrower lens than public school, the argument is that it's better. Not just academically, although that's the case 99 times out of 100. But as you alluded to yourself in this very comment, the kids at private schools get access to other kids (and families) at that private school.
> The best thing to give kids is access to a very wide—as wide as they can stomach—orientation of all there is in the world.
This sounds good sure, but what if you give your child a wide orientation and they want to be an influencer, or club promoter, or grind it out in acting? They almost certainly won't want to become an accountant or nurse. Who would want to do that by choice?
But maybe an accountant or nurse is the path to a good life. The extreme is celebrity children which often have issues.
I think its good to have restraints. If you have an infinite bank roll and no real forcing function, you're likely to get lost
As someone who wishes they could realistically afford private school for their kids (public school leaves a lot to be desired for 'gifted' kids these days), I think you've got good points but I land on the other side. Using some of your quotes: private school is "a narrow lens", but that lens likely includes a high percentage of the "rich get richer" network. I think my ideal would be private school to help find a better match for my kids' brainpower (2 of them anyway, tbd on #3 :D) and make some good high-value connections, but still make a conscious effort to encourage them to interact with a wider variety of people (through travel, public sports teams, community service, etc.)
That was enjoyable, and I appreciated the overall message. A little bit trickier of a pitch to introverted people, maybe.
One bit though I'm interested in chatting about:
> The truth is there are thousands of different places you could go work, and you have to consider them all and figure out which is the best. But that sounds impossible, right? You only had to choose between 60 different majors, and now you have to choose between thousands of different jobs? How do you even do that? The first step, is to acknowledge that you have to.
Do you really "have" to? I guess we can relatively safely assume that basically 99% of those graduates have essentially the same life goals in terms of financial stability, retirement, etc. Lately though I've wondered about the basically unspoken premise we pitch to our kids from the get-go. I recently found a diary entry from me when I was 7 years old that had a line along the lines of, "I finally figured out what I'm gonna be when I grow up!" I noticed also that so frequently one of the first questions asked at parties or meetups is, "So what do you do for a living?" We really seem to be telling eachother that you go to school and then you do a career and that's how you define yourself, mostly. Differentiate based on hobbies you get to brag about during a "and tell us one interesting fact about yourself" portion of an icebreaker.
I have a friend here that teaches English about 15 hours a week. The rest of his time he spends painting murals on the riverside (unenforced here in Taiwan, graffiti is kinda just considered public art) or drawing people he sees on trains. I asked him why he doesn't take up more hours, he replied that actually he'd work less if he could, but he needs to hit a certain minimum annual income in order to be eligible for permanent residency. Once he gets that, he'll work even less. He's one of the happiest people I know.
I've been wondering if one of the responses to late stage capitalism will be more en-masse opt-outs. There's a recognized class of this in the PRC, called "Lying Flat People," or "Full Time Children," or my favorite, "Rat People." They scrounge together enough cash for a street BBQ and beers, and then spend their day just lounging, drinking, smoking, and bbqing. In Taiwan we have "Moonlight Tribe," people who spend all their money the second they get their paycheck and then live penny to penny until the end of the month. I'm guessing other countries have similar movements - I remember meeting vagabonds (their self-description) in New Orleans that were happily living a "post-capitalism" life.
It's maybe short-sighted since it basically guarantees you will die younger than most, but then again none of us are guaranteed to make it to retirement anyway so I can also respect the choice.
There seem to be a very small chance of changing one’s life trajectory after hearing these speeches. As it’s difficult to change a persons track they’ve been on for years. The uncomfortable changes you must enact immediately is difficult. None the less, a small conversion is huge.
It’s a great speech, but I’ve listened to this “chase your dream” thing for decades. I took career and personality tests but nothing in them fit. I don’t fit. I’ve gotten seriously jaded and live with crippling mental health problems and constant stress because I feel like I failed to find my people and now I just hide from my people.
So, as an older adult, I think maybe we need to be teaching more responsibility to kids today rather than this Disney fantasy. If people just focus on trying to do the best they can, that’s good enough. And spend that extra time improving your home, volunteering, and working on your finances like people did in the mid-to-late 20th century.
I came here to leave a comment related to this. This article has great advice, if you're normal enough that enough of "your people" exist to be able to find them and do something together.
But if you've spent your whole life being told by the whole world--even people you thought were really interesting and wanted to get to know--that you're "just too fucking weird," it lands more like, "Oh. More advice for other people."
Similarly, if you're a person who likes all kinds of things--but only for 6 weeks to 6 months and then becomes utterly bored of them--there is no stable group of "your people." There's just "these people, for now, I guess," and you hold them lightly because you know in a matter of months, when you don't share the passion for the one thing they're stably obsessed with, you won't have enough in common anymore for them to tolerate you.
I'm almost 40. I'm really at a decision point where I have to decide if I want to keep working on my underlying trauma wounds, in hopes that if I just work hard enough, I'll eventually break into the "fun kind of odd" category instead of "too fucking weird," and blend in enough to have "people," or whether I want to own that this is just how I am, and there's nothing to be done about it, so I should really do what I can to appreciate the fleeting tolerance of "people who don't know me very well yet" while it lasts, but invest most of my energy in trying to figure out if there's any way to be both happy and lonely.
I feel like I'm too thoroughly cynical and jaded to take the tropes in "graduation speeches" seriously. Bringing someone back in who graduated in a totally different time, to a totally different world, in a totally different competitive, political, and economic landscape, to ramble about what they did when they graduated seems kind of pointless. Is her (or anyone's) story from the 90s really useful for someone graduating today?
Ms. Livingston graduated around when I did. I can't think of anything that I (or she) did to launch a career, either pre- or post-graduation that would be applicable to someone graduating today. When we graduated, you could actually get an entry level job in an office as a generic English major. You were generally competing with others in your local area or state, not the entire world's best. You could spam a bunch of resumes out and count on a handful of interviews and a few offers. You had at least a little assurance that if you did a good job, you'd advance or job-hop your way to something better. Back then, your student debt was (usually) manageable post-graduation and not a ball and chain holding you back. With a little diligent saving, you had a shot at affording a home and getting on the real estate ladder. And, you could do all these things as a B or C student, without being the world's foremost expert in your field.
I don't think any of these are true anymore. Graduates today are entering a dog eat dog capitalist slugfest where a lucky few winners take all. They're graduating into relative poverty and crushing debt, with no realistic opportunity to save. The job prospects for people without experience are generally awful. You're up against the world's best, plus a growing number of privileged elite "sons of the right people" sponging up all the really good jobs. Crappy work as a temp worker if you're lucky, stocking shelves or waiting tables if you're not. Good luck finding an actual full-time office gig related to your degree, unless you're top of your class. And even if you do, you're under constant threat of PIP, downsizing, or AI taking your place. "Find the people that you think are interesting" is kind of tone deaf happy-talk in today's reality.
> Ms. Livingston graduated around when I did. I can't think of anything that I (or she) did to launch a career, either pre- or post-graduation that would be applicable to someone graduating today.
Really? Not a single thing? Not "work hard," or "be curious," or "be willing to fail or be wrong?" Those aren't genetic qualities, they can be taught and they can be learned.
I don't know when you graduated but I've been working professionally for nearly 2 decades now and I heard the same thing when I graduated - about how it was so much easier just 5, 10, 15 years prior, how I was in for a real battle, how I had an insurmountable amount of debt given my earnings prospects. And yes it was hard but I survived - I could have made smarter decisions to make it easier, I could have made worse decisions and ended up a barista in my late 30s. On a systemic level it might be harder now, it might not be. But they will survive as all previous generations have and will continue to.
There seems to be a bimodal distribution in people 20-30 years post-college discussing today's graduates. It's either "these kids are so lazy noboDY wAntS To WorK ANYMore just have a firm handshake" nonsense, or "these children will be wage slaves forever and it is undeniably the fault of capitalism/AI/Musk/whatever boogeyman."
I think it was hard when I started out. I think it's probably a little harder now. That doesn't mean it's any more of a "dog eat dog capitalist slugfest" than it was 10, 20, 30 years prior.
What counts as being curmudgeonly? Here's one heuristic: if a comment is flying close to the planet "Everything is worse than it used to be," then it probably is.
I'm sorry you felt targeted and promise you it's nothing personal. It's that we're trying for curious conversation, which the rigid-and-generic sort of negativity annihilates. There's not much room for curious response when a comment insists that the world is nothing but a "dog eat dog slugfest".
Btw, I believe that the deeper problem is that it's hard to tell how one's comments are going to come across. Most people underestimate the negativity they're contributing by a good 10x or so, which leads to quite a skew in perception. That could explain, for example, why you felt like I must be telling you to only do happytalk.
OK. The tribe has spoken. No more gloom and doom. I suppose there are other message boards for that. I appreciate the intentional and purposeful moderation here, even if I sometimes strongly disagree with the intent behind it.
I think the more accurate conclusion would be 'make your doom and gloom more interesting'. You can beat just about any of the local rules with interestingness, people do it all the time.
Also: the “find your people” advice would be far more helpful at the beginning of college so you can maximize the various high-leverage opportunities around you.
The talk is suitable for the target audience, the young undecided.
For the rest of us, especially here at HN, it would have been interesting to learn a bit more about how she got to that Fidelity job first and how she then "drifted" towards "her people", namely the startup people, and then the book and Y Combinator in specific. Some Y combinator early anecdotes would have been great, too.
I like the subway analogy. I'm sure I've heard some version of it before, but maybe because I was younger I didn't really get it. It really is a little strange to tell kids who have never really directed their own lives before to start doing it all of a sudden.
Refreshingly unpretentious and clear. Love it, thank you
I wasn't expecting much, and I personally didn't get a lot from the article, but if I was in early 20s, I would've been hugely inspired. Jessica surely has a gift for clear and motivating writing.
As someone who has “reinvented” myself more than once (mostly due to school/job transfers), it seems what wasn’t said is equally if not more important.
Rarely can you “find your people” without letting other people go.
The unspoken truth in this article is that it’s just as important to be willing to let go of relationships that aren’t helping you grow.
Easier said than done.
Whether it’s the negative influence of a toxic friend, or the mediocre advice of an overbearing parent (who is just trying to keep you on the rails), other people rarely have your best interests in mind.
Losing the people who aren’t “your people” is (usually) a necessary step to finding the right people.
> or the mediocre advice of an overbearing parent
For what it's worth, I teach my students not to listen to their parents, because while most parents want the best for their children, without doubt, their assumptions are typically outdated, and were probably already wrong when they were young.
As categorical guidance, that seems like a problematic thing to teach. First, parents don’t know everything, but they know their kids and have witnessed their journey, so they have a unique perspective to offer. Second, parents will begin to (justifiably!!) grow suspicious of your institution and develop resentment, which is a serious structural problem.
Hopefully what you mean is something like you teach them to think critically about their parents advice as one input among many, understanding where the advice comes from and its inherent strengths and flaws.
For what it's worth, I teach my children not to listen to their teachers, because while most teachers want the best for their students, without doubt, their assumptions are typically outdated, and were probably already wrong when they were young.
In my case, the subway crashed into the station at about 100mph, and I had to crawl out of the wreckage, and repair the damage, before I could proceed. When I did proceed, I had to buck constant headwinds.
Worked great. Would ride again. 10/10.
It’s a lovely speech. I’m older now and can appreciate it. However, I’m not sure if I would have in my twenties. Unfortunately, some things can't be advised or taught - you have to discover them for yourself through trial and error.
Kids not feeling like they have agency is a huge problem in the asian community which likes to put their kids on steel tracks with 0 wiggle room, this speech resonated with me big time
As a south asian person, I could not agree more.
The irony is that my parents were immigrant entrepreneurs and my grandparents were also entrepreneurs on both sides. Yet my parents pushed me towards medical school or a stable job at the least.
I think this was for a couple reasons:
1. Asian parents express their insecurities through their children. They wanted a stable and high income (which maps to "doctor") so they push their kids to become the version of them they never were.
2. Asian parents treat their children like status symbols. Nothing says "I am the best parent" than being able to say "my son/daughter is a doctor." Saying 'my son/daughter owns their own business" just does not have the same ring to it.
In asian cultures, status and conformity are very valuable, and those do not map to high agency.
Not Asian or South Asian. I'm sure what you're saying is true.
But having parents that are not involved enough to push their kids towards anything in particular is a much bigger challenge to over come.
If you have a degree from a prestigious university and the network that comes along with it, pivoting towards start ups or something more creative or entrepreneurial is a lot easier than if you never went to college at all or didn't finish high school.
This sounds wildly similar to Brazilian parenting
It’s a spectrum. Many parents, across all countries act like this.
dejavu :) Here something i told my mentees 4 years ago:
searching for answers.. does not make life interesting.
search questions.. then You become interesting.
and inconvenient. To the answer-manufacturers. (whole industries and institutions are dealing with only that)
which.. by itself.. IS interesting.
Most people are either answers - pretty boring - or not even answers.. only nondescript. banal.
incredibly predictable and.. like nylon bag, you see through it but cannot get through.
Search for people-questions.
Search.
----
Maybe it can help someone else too..
Good speech. It makes me think of why the rich get richer though. More access to more types of people earlier and throughout one's life.
The best thing to give kids is access to a very wide—as wide as they can stomach—orientation of all there is in the world. It's not curation, it's not "the best". it's volume and contrasts.
I debate my friends about private school. they have kids, I don't yet. Private school is actually a narrow lens, is my argument.
I mostly agree with you, as a person who went to a middle-of-the-road public school.
I will point out though, anecdotally, my spouse went to the highest tier of public school in our city. She has a good balance of "seeing the world for what it is" while also having an edge of being personally networked to a ton of folks who are rich, well-connected, and capable.
I look at the friend groups I built when I was a kid, and then I look at hers.
- My old friend groups are all stuck in a range of poverty to lower-middle-class.
- My spouses friends are all doing very well for themselves, live all over the world, prestigious careers, active hobbies, highly intellectual, cultured, etc.
It's a stark contrast.
There is something to be said for ensuring your kids go to the best schools possible. Those early networks are pivotal in forming an above average life.
Competency is secondary to connection.
> There is something to be said for ensuring your kids go to the best schools possible. Those early networks are pivotal in forming an above average life.
I think this might be more of an American thing tbh. Having early networks can help grease the wheels for an above average life maybe but it's not so straightforward.
Personally, I went to an average public high school, I went to a small university (~9k students), and I'm now one of the top 3% of earners in my country just shy of a decade after graduating
I didn't wind up keeping in touch with anyone I went to any of my schooling with, honestly. I had to move away from my hometown to find opportunities so those bonds faded
It hasn't been easy for sure, it would definitely help to have that embedded network from childhood, but I don't think that is a requirement
Being competent and working hard can get you a long way
I went to a poverty level school, my partner went to one of the most elite schools in the US. My friends are also stuck in poverty or the lower-middle-class while my partner's friends are also seem quite conventionally successful. But several of my partner's friends are quite frustrated with their career choices. They feel like they were hemmed into high-prestige careers. A lot of them are not particularly successful in their careers because they don't feel the passion to succeed and feel like their choices were taken away from them. Many of them have very anxious memories from school of perpetually feeling like they were failing because of the high pressure of the school.
There are many aspects of my low-income schooling I would not want to pass onto a child but there are also aspects of my partner's schooling that I wouldn't want to pass either. I don't really know what the answer is, but I feel like being at either end of the normal distribution of schools here isn't good.
It’s certainly true that there are real downsides to both ends of the spectrum — but all things being equal I’d rather be wiping my tears with hundred dollar bills than tissues
Having thought about this a good amount and collected anecdotes over the years... I think the prioritization order should be (1) live in a location in which the parents feel their most authentic/happy/self-actualized selves, (2) send your children to the most geographically proximate school where they won't be (overly-)bullied for their identity (inclusive of class) one way or another.
Relative school quality (performance on standardized tests, admissions to fancy schools), and public/private are proxies for these more fundamental issues. Too many parents discount the value of (1) to zero, with the idea that they're "sacrificing themselves" "for their kids".
An example of one good reason to not send your kids to private school: Burning yourself out on a series of high-stress job to afford sending your middle-class kid to an upper-class private school will traumatize them. If not for their education/social experience at school, then for your lack of calming and positive influence on their emotional/relationship-forming lives.
I don't think it's necessarily "wrong" for some people to send their kids to a "narrow-lens" school, even if it's often wrong. It can be right for somebody else and wrong for you.
I think this is an excellent comment. Not enough people talk about living near other parents in this way, and you’re right that it’s a massive difference-maker.
Aside from the pure “networking” factor, the expectations/environment are a big deal too
I went to private school and in hindsight it pretty obviously altered my life for the better — I was a smart but lazy kid, and being surrounded by people who were dead-set on going to Harvard, and by teachers who expected excellence, was a huge factor in making me actually try hard.
If I was a smart lazy kid at a school where I had to try to find that environment, rather than being thrust into it, I would have had a much lower trajectory.
I was that other kid. Grew up in a pretty tough place, where dodging blades was no euphemism and emotional regulation was on permanent hiatus. Grew up with severe issues in personal life and balance of self, absence of anchors in family and social relationships. Was always curious, always loved understanding things.
When you don't have good people around, you pay the price in time and pain. Those people will save you years and hundreds of thousands - or even millions, simply by showing you the most egregious traps to avoid and the more virtuous behaviours to adopt. They'll make your success more predictable, less reliant on the specifics of your genetic makeup, domestic instability, and odd moments of luck.
I was a good kid. Didn't end up well at all. Figured I could at least try to be a good person to others as time goes on, and pass on the gotchas and virtuous habits I partly figured out myself.
I don't know what the axes are for your trajectory plot, but some of the people I know who seem to really enjoy their lives are not high achievers if you measure by status or finances.
It's hard to find things that all of them have in common. They all come from supportive, functioning families and all of them are artistic people working in technical fields and have high EQ. They are all very curious but not scattered or unfocused.
I didn't know if I should write creative or artistic above because they are so similar. They are different though, right?
> They all come from supportive, functioning families and all of them are artistic people working in technical fields and have high EQ. They are all very curious but not scattered or unfocused.
Seems like it wasn't too hard to find things all of them have in common.
environmental expectations and accountability is a great point. hard to deny how wide the gap for various groups and organizations.
Agree that a wide diversity of people is great. Disagree on the private school - it is a narrow band, but so is public school. I think ppl overestimate the diversity in public school and underestimate it in private school.
Neither is enough - def need to find ways to expand kids network, especially the network of adults they know.
I don't think anybody would argue that it's a narrower lens than public school, the argument is that it's better. Not just academically, although that's the case 99 times out of 100. But as you alluded to yourself in this very comment, the kids at private schools get access to other kids (and families) at that private school.
> The best thing to give kids is access to a very wide—as wide as they can stomach—orientation of all there is in the world.
This sounds good sure, but what if you give your child a wide orientation and they want to be an influencer, or club promoter, or grind it out in acting? They almost certainly won't want to become an accountant or nurse. Who would want to do that by choice?
But maybe an accountant or nurse is the path to a good life. The extreme is celebrity children which often have issues.
I think its good to have restraints. If you have an infinite bank roll and no real forcing function, you're likely to get lost
As someone who wishes they could realistically afford private school for their kids (public school leaves a lot to be desired for 'gifted' kids these days), I think you've got good points but I land on the other side. Using some of your quotes: private school is "a narrow lens", but that lens likely includes a high percentage of the "rich get richer" network. I think my ideal would be private school to help find a better match for my kids' brainpower (2 of them anyway, tbd on #3 :D) and make some good high-value connections, but still make a conscious effort to encourage them to interact with a wider variety of people (through travel, public sports teams, community service, etc.)
That was enjoyable, and I appreciated the overall message. A little bit trickier of a pitch to introverted people, maybe.
One bit though I'm interested in chatting about:
> The truth is there are thousands of different places you could go work, and you have to consider them all and figure out which is the best. But that sounds impossible, right? You only had to choose between 60 different majors, and now you have to choose between thousands of different jobs? How do you even do that? The first step, is to acknowledge that you have to.
Do you really "have" to? I guess we can relatively safely assume that basically 99% of those graduates have essentially the same life goals in terms of financial stability, retirement, etc. Lately though I've wondered about the basically unspoken premise we pitch to our kids from the get-go. I recently found a diary entry from me when I was 7 years old that had a line along the lines of, "I finally figured out what I'm gonna be when I grow up!" I noticed also that so frequently one of the first questions asked at parties or meetups is, "So what do you do for a living?" We really seem to be telling eachother that you go to school and then you do a career and that's how you define yourself, mostly. Differentiate based on hobbies you get to brag about during a "and tell us one interesting fact about yourself" portion of an icebreaker.
I have a friend here that teaches English about 15 hours a week. The rest of his time he spends painting murals on the riverside (unenforced here in Taiwan, graffiti is kinda just considered public art) or drawing people he sees on trains. I asked him why he doesn't take up more hours, he replied that actually he'd work less if he could, but he needs to hit a certain minimum annual income in order to be eligible for permanent residency. Once he gets that, he'll work even less. He's one of the happiest people I know.
I've been wondering if one of the responses to late stage capitalism will be more en-masse opt-outs. There's a recognized class of this in the PRC, called "Lying Flat People," or "Full Time Children," or my favorite, "Rat People." They scrounge together enough cash for a street BBQ and beers, and then spend their day just lounging, drinking, smoking, and bbqing. In Taiwan we have "Moonlight Tribe," people who spend all their money the second they get their paycheck and then live penny to penny until the end of the month. I'm guessing other countries have similar movements - I remember meeting vagabonds (their self-description) in New Orleans that were happily living a "post-capitalism" life.
It's maybe short-sighted since it basically guarantees you will die younger than most, but then again none of us are guaranteed to make it to retirement anyway so I can also respect the choice.
You may die younger but is slaving away in an office to make money for someone else for most of your waking hours really living?
There seem to be a very small chance of changing one’s life trajectory after hearing these speeches. As it’s difficult to change a persons track they’ve been on for years. The uncomfortable changes you must enact immediately is difficult. None the less, a small conversion is huge.
It’s a great speech, but I’ve listened to this “chase your dream” thing for decades. I took career and personality tests but nothing in them fit. I don’t fit. I’ve gotten seriously jaded and live with crippling mental health problems and constant stress because I feel like I failed to find my people and now I just hide from my people.
So, as an older adult, I think maybe we need to be teaching more responsibility to kids today rather than this Disney fantasy. If people just focus on trying to do the best they can, that’s good enough. And spend that extra time improving your home, volunteering, and working on your finances like people did in the mid-to-late 20th century.
I came here to leave a comment related to this. This article has great advice, if you're normal enough that enough of "your people" exist to be able to find them and do something together.
But if you've spent your whole life being told by the whole world--even people you thought were really interesting and wanted to get to know--that you're "just too fucking weird," it lands more like, "Oh. More advice for other people."
Similarly, if you're a person who likes all kinds of things--but only for 6 weeks to 6 months and then becomes utterly bored of them--there is no stable group of "your people." There's just "these people, for now, I guess," and you hold them lightly because you know in a matter of months, when you don't share the passion for the one thing they're stably obsessed with, you won't have enough in common anymore for them to tolerate you.
I'm almost 40. I'm really at a decision point where I have to decide if I want to keep working on my underlying trauma wounds, in hopes that if I just work hard enough, I'll eventually break into the "fun kind of odd" category instead of "too fucking weird," and blend in enough to have "people," or whether I want to own that this is just how I am, and there's nothing to be done about it, so I should really do what I can to appreciate the fleeting tolerance of "people who don't know me very well yet" while it lasts, but invest most of my energy in trying to figure out if there's any way to be both happy and lonely.
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I feel like I'm too thoroughly cynical and jaded to take the tropes in "graduation speeches" seriously. Bringing someone back in who graduated in a totally different time, to a totally different world, in a totally different competitive, political, and economic landscape, to ramble about what they did when they graduated seems kind of pointless. Is her (or anyone's) story from the 90s really useful for someone graduating today?
Ms. Livingston graduated around when I did. I can't think of anything that I (or she) did to launch a career, either pre- or post-graduation that would be applicable to someone graduating today. When we graduated, you could actually get an entry level job in an office as a generic English major. You were generally competing with others in your local area or state, not the entire world's best. You could spam a bunch of resumes out and count on a handful of interviews and a few offers. You had at least a little assurance that if you did a good job, you'd advance or job-hop your way to something better. Back then, your student debt was (usually) manageable post-graduation and not a ball and chain holding you back. With a little diligent saving, you had a shot at affording a home and getting on the real estate ladder. And, you could do all these things as a B or C student, without being the world's foremost expert in your field.
I don't think any of these are true anymore. Graduates today are entering a dog eat dog capitalist slugfest where a lucky few winners take all. They're graduating into relative poverty and crushing debt, with no realistic opportunity to save. The job prospects for people without experience are generally awful. You're up against the world's best, plus a growing number of privileged elite "sons of the right people" sponging up all the really good jobs. Crappy work as a temp worker if you're lucky, stocking shelves or waiting tables if you're not. Good luck finding an actual full-time office gig related to your degree, unless you're top of your class. And even if you do, you're under constant threat of PIP, downsizing, or AI taking your place. "Find the people that you think are interesting" is kind of tone deaf happy-talk in today's reality.
> Ms. Livingston graduated around when I did. I can't think of anything that I (or she) did to launch a career, either pre- or post-graduation that would be applicable to someone graduating today.
Really? Not a single thing? Not "work hard," or "be curious," or "be willing to fail or be wrong?" Those aren't genetic qualities, they can be taught and they can be learned.
I don't know when you graduated but I've been working professionally for nearly 2 decades now and I heard the same thing when I graduated - about how it was so much easier just 5, 10, 15 years prior, how I was in for a real battle, how I had an insurmountable amount of debt given my earnings prospects. And yes it was hard but I survived - I could have made smarter decisions to make it easier, I could have made worse decisions and ended up a barista in my late 30s. On a systemic level it might be harder now, it might not be. But they will survive as all previous generations have and will continue to.
There seems to be a bimodal distribution in people 20-30 years post-college discussing today's graduates. It's either "these kids are so lazy noboDY wAntS To WorK ANYMore just have a firm handshake" nonsense, or "these children will be wage slaves forever and it is undeniably the fault of capitalism/AI/Musk/whatever boogeyman."
I think it was hard when I started out. I think it's probably a little harder now. That doesn't mean it's any more of a "dog eat dog capitalist slugfest" than it was 10, 20, 30 years prior.
> today are entering a dog eat dog capitalist slugfest where a lucky few winners take all.
If you believe that to be true, perhaps it might be worth trying to become one of the few lucky winners.
Or come on, learn some Python and take the second prize with a six digit salary in a corporation, private health insurance and benefits plan.
This is the kind of comment that the newest HN guideline is designed to discourage:
"Don't be curmudgeonly." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What counts as being curmudgeonly? Here's one heuristic: if a comment is flying close to the planet "Everything is worse than it used to be," then it probably is.
There's also this one, btw: "Please don't fulminate." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Well, that one's news to me, thanks for pointing it out. Huh. I feel... mildly targeted, actually! We only want positive thoughts now, I guess.
I changed my mind. The speech is great. New graduates should totally listen to it and follow it's extremely relevant advice.
> We only want positive thoughts now, I guess.
Not so! Check out the next sentence: "Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm sorry you felt targeted and promise you it's nothing personal. It's that we're trying for curious conversation, which the rigid-and-generic sort of negativity annihilates. There's not much room for curious response when a comment insists that the world is nothing but a "dog eat dog slugfest".
Btw, I believe that the deeper problem is that it's hard to tell how one's comments are going to come across. Most people underestimate the negativity they're contributing by a good 10x or so, which leads to quite a skew in perception. That could explain, for example, why you felt like I must be telling you to only do happytalk.
OK. The tribe has spoken. No more gloom and doom. I suppose there are other message boards for that. I appreciate the intentional and purposeful moderation here, even if I sometimes strongly disagree with the intent behind it.
I think the more accurate conclusion would be 'make your doom and gloom more interesting'. You can beat just about any of the local rules with interestingness, people do it all the time.
Also: the “find your people” advice would be far more helpful at the beginning of college so you can maximize the various high-leverage opportunities around you.
What would you tell the graduating students?
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