We wish we had been but we didn't live in the right time or place for an upbringing like this. I remember stealing my dad's college textbooks on mechanics and applied mathematics and sneaking them off to school; taking out Byte and Compute issues from the library when they were available... just starving for more all the time. Astronomy club. Chess club. In high school I went to night school with my friends' mom at the university in the big city when I wasn't working to help pay the rent. You just couldn't get the breadth and ease of access to information you can today. It was slow and laborious back then.
But a world like this? Today? Amazing. You don't even have to leave your house. He is lucky. I'm 33 now and I'd kill to be able to study mathematics full time and be a professor some day. It just wasn't in the cards. Parents, circumstances, life and all of that.
Yes... we'll envy stories like this. More of us could have been this hungry. We just couldn't get there.
I have full confidence most people are capable, but they would need some exceptionally staunch parents and finacial stability. Plus a lot of drive to accomplish these goals (it is not for everyone).
> Thats why most of us attend public school.
You say that like they're necessarily causal/correlated.
When I was in high school I was clinically depressed, smoked weed every day, shoplifted whenever I could just for the thrill of it, failed most of my classes, and in my afternoons, late nights, and sometimes up to 6am, I was contributing to opensource, writing phpBB mods that thousands of people were using in their bulletin boards. My most popular mod had over 10,000 downloads. They even accepted me into the official mod approval team for a while.
And despite my obsession with coding and working on my career, I was also an adolescent delinquent.
Life is funny that way.
Learn from your past, take things from where they are today, and change the things that you can, now, going into the future.
There are other people like you today; some of them will do that, others will only continue to live in regret.
10 years from now you can be the person that they will look at and say "if I had only..."
From the more practical side- the time you spent 'wandering' can pay big dividends over those who are more tightly-focused, when you get to a more strategic role. Having tons of varied experience makes you a better communicator, teacher, & leader...
We came to the conclusion that no matter the path of life you end up taking, you'll regret missed opportunities. I could have studied hard since 9 years old, skipped high school and be a PhD now or something, but then I'd probably talk with some people and start regretting that I haven't the time to read the books and watch the movies that could have shaped my imagination.
So the real advice is - instead of obsessing over the road not taken, focus on what comparative advantage you got from your experiences. Even if you "wasted" half your life drinking with random people, there's still a lot to learn and use from those experiences. The reason we have brains is to figure out how to make the best of what we have.
I decided to become a musician when I was 15 and wasted 6 years pursuing the unrealistic dream. I somehow managed to gave up the dream and became interested in computing in college. I sometimes wish I had become interested in programming instead of drums in junior high, but those 6 years of hustles taught me a lot about team management, entrepreneurship, and how to learn new things. So I don't think I wasted 6 years. As Paul Graham says, you should explore when you are young.
There's nothing to prevent you from studying those things today, within the constraints of your spare time. If you find the study intrinsically gratifying, I see no reason you should enjoy it any less because it probably won't result in a professorship.
When I do have spare time you bet you'll find me working on a problem, reading a paper, or studying. It's almost like regret knowing that I won't be able to dedicate my life to something I love for the mere circumstance I come from.
When I read about stories like this one I can't help but feel happy for them. They're lucky! They got exactly what they wanted and needed! Not all of us can say the same.
We are all lucky and unlucky relative to someone else. I think time used on regret or "longing for what could have been" is simply time misspent, much like you might regard your childhood. Best of luck overcoming this natural tendency.
Life is nothing but an inevitable race to the end. I try to take it slow and steady. Having some regrets is unavoidable! But it makes stories like this all the more sweet. Not all of us had the same chances but someone made it through and that brings a smile to my face.
Providing an amazing environment for my children has erased all regret for my own childhood. I can see a new hope filled future with new eyes.
Update: Also... kind of terrified of the public education system. No time for home schooling though. Damn circumstance!
So far, it seems to work - the children have a certain detachment to the school environment and a mindfulness about them when they talk about their situation.
I started my PhD in math at 36. Admittedly, I made some life choices (savings, no kids or mortgage) that kept options like this open.
For now I content myself with following my fancies and working on digestible problems in my spare time (devoured ONAG a couple of years ago, graphs, sets, concrete mathematics... found Martin Gardner and enjoying devouring his recreational maths books). When I get the chance in my work I tend to enjoy the maths more than the programming... distributed systems, computer graphics, compilers. But most commercial programming is book keeping.
C'est la vie.
I certainly wish some of my teachers had spent more time teaching the people that cared and less time helping the D students that didn't. It definitely resulted in a few wasted years of education for me.
That said, most of the "critical periods" for learning are over by the time you hit puberty and the ability to learn advanced knowledge, like the kind taught in college, doesn't decline that much with age so I wouldn't worry about it.
It's not a question of being a kid, it's a question of living your life as a neurosurgeon because you decided that sounded cool when you were 8, and never really rethinking it until you had a lot of debt.
Sure, if this is what they really want then great. But, thinking this is a good path and they would be wasting there potential being a raft guide is terribly hollow. Getting out of high school at 15 is cool, starting collage is not a goal just a path to something else.
To pick up on the racing comments from above, one should keep in mind Tal Ben-Shahar's warnings about the rat race happiness archetype, where one sacrifices in the present for perceived benefits in the future.
Given an MIT course at that age I probably would have ignored it in favor of playing outside.
Five year old me would've loved a higher level of education though. School was incredibly boring.
Granted our stuff was just introductory stuff but I doubt I'd care the slightest between AND and OR and associate them with intersection and union if it wasn't for the teachers.
Now my professor in college who teaches operating systems? She could not be more of a downer. You go ask her a question and she says "I can't answer any questions off the top of my head. I am not a genius." Never has she ever said "let's see" or "let's try to figure this out". Her level of enthusiasm makes me wonder why she even teaches at all. She appears exhausted and sad.
To go a little off topic, I want a universal basic income (and universal free healthcare) so that people who don't like the jobs they do or would like to take a break can do so without worrying about money.
Well, I guess my point is school can be boring or interesting depending on the teachers around you. This seems rather obvious. My hypothesis is that teachers who want to teach are likely to be better teachers than those who are just there because they need money.
I never thought of telling anyone that I was working through the rest of the textbook just to keep myself occupied in class. I just kept my head down and did my best to un-bore myself.
Which bit me in the rear end when I got to University and started taking classes that required studying.
Instead of stretching mundane material that could have been taught in a week or two (calculus, etc.) over a period of years, I would have much preferred taking all of my engineering courses then. That would have left plenty of time in undergrad to learn topics as diverse as representation theory, semidefinite programming, quantum information theory, lambda calculus, etc. Instead, I have to learn these things on my own as a grad student in an ad-hoc fashion. Occasionally, courses on these topics become available, but they pop up at random semesters and you can't take all of them.
He's a minority immigrant that fled poverty and homeschooled himself. Please clarify in what ways this was an advantageous upbringing over say an american native raised in the suburbs by a wealthy family who attends the best public schools, few if any of whom enter MIT at 15.
Consider a similar situation where a five year old wants to take college courses through an online program in an american native family that is wealthy, except instead his parents dismissed that idea on the sheer ridiculousness of a 5 year old taking online college courses. Or his mother not taking time from her already limited schedule to continue trying to find material for him to consume. This hypothetical child will be advantaged in other aspects of their life to be sure, but they probably won't be accepted to MIT at 15.
“When I was five years old my mom told me ‘there’s this thing called OCW,’” says Rungta, who was homeschooled. “I just couldn’t believe how much material was available. From that moment on I spent the next few years taking OCW courses.”
For Rungta’s mother, the biggest challenge to homeschooling her son was staying ahead of him, finding courses and materials to feed his insatiable mind.
When Rungta turned 12, his family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, as his parents realized he needed to be in a more intellectually stimulating environment. He also wanted to live closer to MIT.
Later that day, Rungta saw an Indian restaurant in the Student Center that had been closed down. He suggested to his dad — a chef who owned a restaurant in Lowell — that he look into reopening the café. His father soon became the manager of Café Spice, and the family moved from Lowell to Cambridge. Rungta studied in the Student Center every day while his father ran the café.
Reflecting on his journey from Calcutta to Cambridge and the many intersecting moments with MIT, Rungta is grateful to his parents and to MIT for being responsive to his needs every step of the way. “MIT has been my middle school, my high school, my entire education. That’s pretty amazing. Some people think I’m gifted, but I don’t think so. OCW was a gift to me. I was lucky to be born at the time MIT was opening up education to the world and extra lucky that OCW brought MIT and me together.”
If the commitment these parents showed to their son's upbringing and education doesn't strike you as absolutely extraordinary, I'm happy for you. But my own opinion is that they went far above and beyond what any ordinary parents would do, including the vast majority of wealthy parents who live in the suburbs. And it's worth pointing out that we can acknowledge this fact while also recognizing this young man has accomplished something exceptional.
Whereas many working class families toil long hours and weekends at minimum wage jobs just to be able to pay the rent on their small house or apartment and so that they don't lose what little they have, those who have fallen upon hard times (particularly through misfortune, rather than their own laziness or fecklessness) have the opportunity of taking greater risks and investing more in themselves and in their future.
It leads to this weird kind of envy where poor natives look at wealthy second-generation immigrants whose parents fled poverty (often becoming the landlords of the poor natives) and wonder where the hell they went wrong.
“(...) Had we not devoted our attention as children to, say, petty family turmoil or a hedonistic preoccupation with computer games (...)”
I'm a more complete (and interesting!) person because of all that.
I think our view of this gets skewed by sports because it really is an edge case where you have to achieve a certain level of performance in a very specific time period because your body isn't in peak condition forever. Talent may mean you pick up those skills faster and hit that narrow target window. That constraint doesn't seem to be nearly as present in other areas to the same degree: if it takes somebody 5 extra years to become a superb programmer, that won't absolutely kill their chances of having a successful career at it even if they needed the extra time to get there.
Perfectly summarized by one of the inspirational banners at my gym (a local independent that caters heavily to student athletes) reads, "Hard work beats talent when talent isn't willing to work hard".
Today I can say that I would love to have had such an upbringing. At the same time, I can also say that my 5 year old self would have hated it.
I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm guessing you're pretty young. The older you get the less a year or two matters matters.
By the time you're 30, no one (not even yourself) will notice that you are 2 years behind your peers (based on whatever metric you're using). In fact, the older you get, the harder it is to measure what being 2 years behind even means.
And, just think about the huge variations in life span. Say, for example, George finished college 2 years later than Bob. However, George lived to 90 and was able to do productive work right up to the end, and Bob died at 78. George had an entire extra decade, even though he had a slightly later start.
However, I think it's important to be able to look back at everything and find the positives as well. I think you should take pride in where you are and where you come from. This kid has his story, and so too you have your own, just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad, it's just who you are, and that in itself holds a lot of value.
Losing these regrets have made me much much happier and I enjoy a lot more of life now.
EDIT: and no, I didn't mix up b and d when i was 5 years old. I was able to read fluently and to write pretty well. Who cares if I wasted my youth on videogames, I'd do it again.
I was raised in an environment (and at a time) when there were no games like this and I filled the time doing other interesting things that were not only fun but lead to me being able to earn a good living after college.
There is a lot of benefit to the singularity of purpose at the same time there are a lot of side effects. To give you one example, homeschooled kid lacks good social skills, which are more important to success in life than mere intelligence or knowledge.
Definitely not the case, and I wish this tired cliche would go away already.
My homeschooled sister is far more social than I am (I did the normal school thing), although we're both fine at it. Homeschoolers probably have a lot more realistic socialization opportunities, as it's all based around common interests and skill levels, just like the real world, rather than being packed together with a bunch of people whose only trait in common with you is their age.
Stereotypes like this are broad generalizations and generally not representative of the facts... sort of like saying that all Blacks are criminals, all Muslims are terrorists, or that Gays are child abusers - none of which are generally true.
Most of the homeschoolers I have known have excellent social skills, and further, even the few "creepy" homeschool kids that are really awkward socially tend to grow out of it completely within a couple of years of college.
Also, you get to interact with only about 20 other random people of the same age with the same skill set (by definition). For 10 or so years. Very realistic, totally happens in real life.
I mean, schools are terribly inefficient at teaching skills/knowledge, but they are clearly even more terrible at teaching social skills.
They all seem like pretty good social skills to me.
I think this impressive achievement is more a testament to the role that aspirations acquired during childhood play in determining a person's success than it is a reflection of this young man's intelligence. Yes, the latter is necessary, but it isn't sufficient. I have little doubt that there are many 18 year olds entering MIT's class of 2019 who could have entered at 15 had they been provided a similarly advantageous upbringing.
These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had been raised similarly. Had we not devoted our attention as children to, say, petty family turmoil or a hedonistic preoccupation with computer games, perhaps we would have progressed through life with a singularity of purpose and self-confidence that would have situated us in a better position today. We might have been spared years in our teens and twenties trying to find a sense of meaning in our work, unlike this fellow, who seems to have it figured out.
I won't speculate about his social skills. I've met college students his age running the gamut from borderline autistic to social butterfly. Yes, the sense of "peerlessness" must be a bit alienating, but many of us have had this experience without leapfrogging high school.