Comments by "L.W. Paradis" (@l.w.paradis2108) on "TED"
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How are so many people missing the point?
It's simple. Let's say you get a minimum wage job. Great! No problem: you work X hours, you must be paid for X hours, under the Fair Labor Standards Act. You are protected by law. You WILL get what you deserve for sure, based on your work.
But you have higher aspirations. You work very, very hard, and become truly outstanding at what you do. But does that mean you'll be admitted to school, or that you'll get the job? No. There are 100 applicants like you, for fewer than ten seats, and at least 20 or 30 of these applicants are as outstanding as you are, and possibly a little more.
No one is suggesting hard work is not essential. It is all the more essential. But it is "no guarantee." That was the point. More than that: a society where larger and larger numbers of deserving people get less and less is not going to work out, yo.
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I can relate to these sorts or reversals. I've had a cascade of "impossible" events happen, one after another, many times. Please listen to this advice:
First, take the long view. Whatever career you may embark upon before age 40 you will be doing for three decades. So, you have got plenty of time. A lot of people do not really know what they want to do early on, and may not be ready to make a real commitment before age 30. So let go of the past, it matters far, far less than you may think. In fact, being older when you graduate could be an advantage. Just ignore the people who got lucky and went straight through. They are not common in any case, they do not matter -- and they are not you.
Now with that out of the way: Take care of your health. Good food, sleep, exercise -- no shortcuts. You have to. Remember, here, too, being a little older is advantageous. It will make it easier for you to focus and follow through. People are often still a little fragile in early adulthood and don't hit their stride or their prime before their late twenties, or even later.
Third, every major urban area has some pubic university that is essentially open enrollment, and offers night classes. Find the best teachers at that university and study with them -- remember, the teacher is even more important than the subject. Find the right teachers and get the most you can out of it. Don't worry too much about your major right now, or getting a degree -- focus on rebuilding, and being excellent in your work. AND did I mention, studying with the right teachers?
Once you do these things, you'll be in a position to come up with new ideas. You'll see. What happened to you is really unfortunate, and it has disrupted your life, but it does NOT have to determine your future. A lot of people have disrupted lives at the moment. Sometimes disruption is the prelude to new opportunities. This is a good time to take a pause. Your health is your foundation. Put your focus there.
Having some art in your life is also important. What was your favorite thing to do when you were a child? This is an important question to return to from time to time.
One other thing: if you have bad grades on any college transcripts, consider petitioning to have them removed. State your case, make sure they know what happened, and stress that your goal is a true fresh start. Ask someone who is good at this, find out exactly where to address your request and how to write it up, and get it taken care of.
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@zawyehtike3089 Hmm . . . Not sure where to start. I base my comment on reading, and meeting and talking with Finish college students studying in the US. The Atlantic ran probably the most extensive series of articles on the Finnish educational system about five years ago, and some of what they said was slightly exaggerated. The series is not a bad place to start, and then you could look for more nuance elsewhere. I guess I would say that a lot of what they do strikes us as counterintuitive, yet there is no doubt they spend the least per pupil of any European Union country and consistently score at the top in the PISA tests. They used to be first in the world; now they are "only" first in Europe.
Entrance into the teaching profession is about as competitive as law or medicine (below the top 10% means you probably won't make it), all teachers must have at least a Master's degree, but once attained, the teachers are regarded as professionals and given tons of autonomy -- and then the schools themselves are highly egalitarian. It is ironic. They simply don't encourage competition, but cooperation, and do no standardized testing as we know it until about 6th or 7th grade. Everyone gets meals in school. Everyone gets 15 minute breaks every hour. School days start later and finish earlier, school itself starts at age 7 and is no longer mandatory after age 16 -- but most kids choose to continue, and a large proportion go on to college. They do not do a lot of homework, but are expected to study quietly during several time slots in class every day, so in a sense they have homework sessions in class, with immediate feedback.
There is a lot of variety in the curriculum, but also uniformity, in that it is simply expected that everyone should and will attain a certain solid foundation in every academic subject, and be given an opportunity to practice various arts. They don't do tracking in the way we know it, or hear about it in Germany. Kids at different levels who are in the same grade study together in one classroom. Kids may even have the same teacher throughout most of elementary school, until their first serious standardized test at around age 13. They don't have private academic preschools or cram schools. All the kids become bilingual Finnish-Swedish, and most also learn English, so they graduate trilingual, but are not tested in English for their final high school exam ("matriculation"), only Finnish and Swedish.
They do not allow corporate influence or control, or business-speak, to influence their profession. There is no notion of the student (or parent) being a "client" or "customer" in any sense; educators do not "deliver" the curriculum to students. Their system assumes corporation heads are no more knowledgeable about education than they would be about medicine. Teachers are really put on a pedestal, at least in that sense.
I don't think any other high achieving country runs their schools that way. Most people -- even the egalitarian Finns -- believe that the single most important factor in their success is the thorough professionalizaton of the teaching corps. It is a really hard profession to enter.
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@andersonandrew112 I am already very close to certain that you are a white American. Nowhere else have I found a mass obsession with "competition," so called. It's like a weird religion. Well, if you don't see the effects of this vaunted "competition" yet (which in itself is astounding, but such are the effects of indoctrination), you are about to. If you think growing inequality, the opioid crisis, financial manipulation on a grand scale, youth depression, extremist militias, and mass shootings have been bad so far, well . . .
We'll see how "successful" people are if the U.S. embarks on more costly and dangerous wars, and the dollar loses the reserve currency status it now enjoys.
But even in the best of times, there is a problem with "competition" that even Socrates saw: there are two ways to come out on top. The first is to make yourself as excellent as possible. The second is to undermine everyone else. Socrates lived in a society where more and more people took the second route, and we all know how that turned out . . . the same way it always does.
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@aerodylluk2543 It isn't ignorance of how to get out of poverty that keeps people poor. It is the fact that no matter what they do, they keep getting the same result. They keep getting discounted, disrespected, and dismissed.
Look at it this way: if a person works hard, will they be noticed, and rewarded? They may be. Let's say they usually will (not evident, but possible). The result could also be quite different: the hard worker may be viewed as a chump, and people may smirk behind their back. Or the boss may decide, "this person must be after my job. Why else would they work so hard?" I think we all know what happens next.
Even a small amount of prejudice can have a massive impact. (Look up "sensitive dependence on initial conditions." It's not just a concept in physics, it applies to all sorts of complex systems.) Working hard is essential, but it will not be rewarded -- it may not even be understood -- outside of the right context. The hard work has to occur where hard work matters, and where other people understand its meaning and are willing to honor it and reward the hard worker. In a lot of places, that does not happen. In a lot of places, politics matter far more.
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@andersonandrew112 Most new businesses fail, no matter what their founders do. We're about to see a whole bunch of them fail pretty soon, in fact.
Also, no one works 70+ hour per week for years on end, or even for months, without respite. That does not happen, due to diminishing returns based on sheer fatigue. The body and brain can't function, the risk of a car accident goes up, etc.
When people exaggerate about how hard they worked, and you sense they are angry (the discourse almost always includes a phrase like "busted my butt," or a swear word, or both), underneath that you very often find deep resentment, because they really weren't enjoying it at all. No one can sacrifice their whole life pursuing money. They end up resenting everyone -- those with more, and those with less. Everyone else is to blame, for something or other. If nothing else, then for "high taxes." How is that better than "blaming the system?"
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