I’d probably tell myself to take a different undergrad major (I did 4 years of military before college, so it would still be relevant.) That said, I don’t know that my 20-year-old self would listen to me any more than he did to anyone else.
When I was younger I could remember anything,
Mark twain
whether it had happened or not;
but my faculties are decaying now and soon
I shall be able to remember only the things
that never happened.
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled,
Plutarch [paraphrased]
but a fire to be kindled.”
Judge a man by his questions
Voltaire
rather than his answers.
Resist much, obey little.
Walt whitman; “To the states“
People don’t take trips —
John steinbeck
trips take people.
That’s not so much my problem. I’m a learning addict and get hooked easily. My problem comes down the line at the point where the once blurred edges between what is of value and what is bullshit in a given discipline comes into focus. It is that point that my enthusiasm wavers.
The one thing I learned in High School was that I really should have learned more than one thing in High School.
Please allow me a conjecture:
One Meerkat stood to give lecture,
But as with me, as a pupil,
Other Meerkats lacked the scruple
To make a show of listening,
Finding the walls more interesting.
Indiana University [IUPUI], Georgia Tech, and Georgia State.
Depends upon my age and phase [as in whether I wanted to be a cowboy, a doctor, a race car driver, Batman, or a misanthrope / rapscallion at that particular time.]
Generally speaking, I had the strange (not to mention unproductive) tendency for science to top of the list while mathematics was usually dead last.
What makes a teacher great?
If students choose the teacher, that is an excellent first indicator. In the typical top-down selection of teachers, it is easy to produce an abundance of shitty teachers. Of course, there is still the danger of charismatic bullshitters and easy people-pleasers, problems ever-present. But among students (as opposed to followers) they usually reveal themselves in time.
A psychology teacher taught us about what he called “the gestalt of expectations.” It’s when one builds an alternative reality in one’s mind (typically a worst-case scenario) and then one acts as though it is a reality, when – in fact – it is not. (Though sometimes it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy situation, which — of course — triggers selection bias in people of the unexamined life.)
It was my introduction to what I would come to know as the most fundamental insight of human existence — i.e. that one’s experience of the world is not the world itself, and while one has minimal influence over the latter, one can have tremendous influence over the former. One can even train oneself to perceive difficulties and sorrows as learning and growth opportunities.
Computational Fluid Dynamics. Also, Nuclear Lensing.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 