Paul Graham has a great web-site full of thought-provoking essays. Some of them were collected into his fascinating book “Hackers and Painters.”
One of those essays, “Gateway High School, 1981” talks about our high school, which I in fact graduated from in 1981. The picture above is from that essay; it’s the Chess Club picture from the 1981 Gateway High School yearbook. I’m the one at the bottom left seated at the chess board; Paul is standing at the top left.
If you read Paul’s description, or read his famous essay about “Why Nerds are Unpopular,” my high school sounds very grim, but I really didn’t experience it the same way. I honestly had a pretty good time in high school; maybe that’s why I’m the one who’s smiling in the picture above. I even loved rooting for the football teams (both the Steelers and the Gators), and trace my football fanaticism to those years, when the Pittsburgh Steelers were a dynasty.
When I arrived at Harvard in 1981, I was at first a little intimidated by some of the other students who went to better high schools, but I soon realized that I was easily well-enough prepared. And I was hungry to learn.
Nowadays, I’m most concerned that high school students are so driven to perform in order to be accepted into the elite universities, and that many high school teachers drive the students so hard with homework, that by the time they get to college, the students can have had the natural desire to learn drummed out of them.
Tags: high school, Paul Graham
Nerd Wisdom 
August 13, 2007 at 7:56 pm |
The last paragraph is insightful and a bit frightening. I certainly see in recent graduates (new hires) in industry a certain lack of intellectual curiosity. Until now, I have attributed that to my becoming curmudgeonly. You suggest it is a real trend?
August 13, 2007 at 7:57 pm |
Go Steelers!