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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1066 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 29, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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We know the common cliche of a guy (or girl) who's "the brain" at their school but has a major crisis when they find out they're merely average compared to everyone else when they start university. I'm curious how many folks here were nothing special in elementary and high school but went on to achieve something substantial academically?

I did mostly decently in school but was never anywhere close to a top tier student. Barely got into the high school I wanted, ie. the one with the shortest distance from my home (Finnish high school entrance is determined by your grades in 9th year). Had to settle for my second choice in university (EE) because I couldn't get in to study CS (and the actually hard to get in programs would have been right out). I went on to publish a couple of semi-influential papers in a subfield and AFAIK my professor still considers me one of his star students even though I never ended up doing a PhD (and let me tell you it's really fucking weird to keep receiving fan mail about a publication for a full decade from random people who've gone to the effort of figuring out your twice changed email address just for a single message).

I'm curious how many folks here were nothing special in elementary and high school but went on to achieve something substantial academically?

I feel like this describes me pretty well: my parents put me in the normal public school track through third grade, and none of my grades were particularly outstanding. None of the work was hard, but it was darn boring: who wants to sit there practicing adding multi-digit numbers together or "silent reading" for 30 minutes while the teacher focuses on the couple students having trouble with the concepts. I didn't do a good job doing the work and only got mediocre grades and messed around more than I should have, and nothing looked too unusual until I finally took a standardized test (the Stanford series) from the district and I scored remarkably well.

At that point, some combination of the teacher and my parents decided that maybe I'd do better in an advanced program, so I transferred to a different elementary school with such a program, and I immediately did a lot better academically because I found the work more challenging (although getting dropped into a new school always has its challenges), and I continued in advanced programs through high school and went to a rather well-ranked university, got a graduate degree, and now I do IMO complex engineering stuff for work. At each point in there, I'm rather proud I was (generally) able to rise to the challenge and perform well, although I'm certainly no von Neumann or Shannon, and I have a sense of the limit of my abilities.

I'm a firm believer in magnet programs, though.

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