I think your missing the point of this nice little story. A student is asking for (an presumedly got) some slack because of conflicts with the student's outside business activity. The student then writes a note 2 years later validating the professor's decision.
Its not data or a trend, its just a thank you.
I'm the author of this post.
I agree that there is thin line dividing the positive or negative sentiment towards schooling here.
In some ways school was incredibly valuable, I met my co-founders at Rutgers and this class specifically helped develop the company.
At the same time the classwork was getting in the way and I needed to push it aside to help get the company off the ground.
You seem really unnecessarily angry. Not every single post that has to do with a VC or a startup doing well needs a grandstanding "this is horseshit; vc's are bloodsucking vampires; stupid kids get off my lawn" type of response.
Who is saying that this is data? It's just an inspiring little anecdote. Even if he hadn't sold his company the time spent hustling to get it started might still have been more valuable than getting A's on those article summaries.
Meh. This guy did well, and I thought the post was cute. You should try yoga, I think.
The discovery of the Higgs Boson was based on a 5-sigma outlier if my memory serves correctly.
Re:Dear Professor
by drjesusphd on Tuesday December 03, 2013 @01:17PM
(#6842021)
What 5-sigma means in that context is it would take a 5-sigma outlier to explain the observations by chance alone.
The vast majority of people who drop out of college (or let their grades slip) to launch startups end up in failure, financial hardship, and misery. You should not plan your life based on 5-sigma outliers.
The Internet is full of pro-startup propaganda and terrible advice. Move fast and ruin your life. It's bullshit.
No one is saying, "build your career, work hard and learn a lot, become really good at things, and get rich slowly." (In part, that's because venture capitalists hate the idea of a 15-50% per year growth company.) Instead, it's the "you could be a winner!" Tappy Tibbons nonsense.
Normally, this would just be a new generation of the same damn fraud that has always existed. However, given the perverted culture of age discrimination (chickenhawking) in the contemporary Valley it has become apparent that a whole culture has fallen for this "get rich quick, or you're a loser" nonsense and the massive wad of impractical, life-wrecking advice that comes with it.