519: 11th Grade

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11th Grade

Title text: And the ten minutes striking up a conversation with that strange kid in homeroom sometimes matters more than every other part of high school combined.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: One-liner that glosses over the commentary on education. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Idly messing around in Perl (a programming language) was a lot more helpful to Randall's career than his high school education.

Transcript

11th-grade activities:

[Bar graph y axis: Usefulness to career success.]

900 hours of classes [small bar.]

400 hours of homework [small bar.]

One weekend messing with Perl [huge bar.]

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Discussion

There's no claim in the title text about gaining "social skills and new perspectives". I suspect it's more about the chance that "that strange kid" might turn out to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, or some such. Wwoods (talk) 21:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Or Eric Harris / Dylan Klebold. 108.162.216.54 20:44, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Yep. Or that he knows a guy who can find you your first job. Or he's the one who tells you about his interest in x topic and sparks your interest in it as well, and maybe it turns into your future career. It could happen. 108.162.221.33 01:50, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I thought the comment about "that strange kid" was about Randall himself. 108.162.212.36 07:18, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Usually I'm that person people treat as "that strange kid." Really hoping to kick some serious ass in the future. Mostly the asses of all the rudefucks that bullied me all throughout grade school. In space. XD International Space Station (talk) 06:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Funny, with a 'hmmmm....' that makes you ponder. The hovertext, to me, can be an afterthought, or a rimshot, or a deeper layer of the onion. I took 'career success' as one's career through life, as in path through life. Most of public instruction is outside->inside...putting a structure into someone. One weekend, you're intrigued by something, and you pour yourself into it to the exclusion of all else. This is inside->out, and that changes everything. And the strange kid in the corner might be you. Jorjor (talk) 15:19, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

I can think of 2 possible things it could be: Either the "quiet kid" who ends up committing a school sh00ting, or a future spouse/love interest -- XB70Valkyrie (talk) 00:09, 2 September 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)