As a Graduation Speech? Too Late.

Via my favorite idling spot, Hacker News, I got wind of a speech venture capitalist Paul Graham prepared as a commencement address -- but then was criminally not allowed to deliver. Thanks to the marvel of the internet, it's accessible to anyone in its entirety from his web site.

I know I could have used it. With a few unimportant exceptions, this speech is a treasure trove, in my estimation. I liked the following the most, but it was a contest that was close among many entrants.

Image by Cole Keister, via Unsplash, license.

Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they tell you, and don't just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can even work on your own stuff while you're there. [bold added]

In case you were wondering how Graham came up with such good advice, he went around asking his friends what they wished they had known when they were in high school.

If you're around that age, I recommend it; if not, I recommend keeping it in mind for the time you have children that age, or wish to help someone you know of that age.

And, as the title implies, I wouldn't wait until the end of high school to bring it up.

-- CAV

Updates

8-27-19: Removed duplicate title from first line.