A ton of teenagers are mindlessly floating through life right now, i'd argue that the majority of them actually are - and that maybe 5%-10% are mindfully performing actions in their day to day lives, with a small cohort (1%?) that live up to their full potential, or atleast try to. I'm talking about the kid that studies 10 hour days on the holidays and every waking hour during school days. That's one path that would lead to a moderate amount of success, that's for sure. Regardless of what your thoughts on academia are, the 1% of academic warriors that are able to develop skills such as discipline and fundemental hard work end up flourishing in whatever field they choose to endeavour. For a lot of them, they choose Finance.
This all begs the question: What is the most efficient use of a teenagers' time?
I, a teenager myself, sometimes sit back and try to think about where my life could end up. Most of the time, the outcome of this mini thought session is blank. I don't know where I could end up, everything seems unstable to me, with constant stimuli trying to appeal to me from all directions (develop my financial future right now, or chase academia? how about work an internship during the summer? what outcome has teh best results?) it usually becomes quite tiring for me to reliably chase my dreams. If I venture out from academia and chase finance right now, and risk potentially becoming a millionaire before I'm 25 with slim odds at success, I've got my parents on my back constantly pressuring me to focus on academia in order to get into a college that I know they won't be able to afford. I don't want the student loan, it's too much for too little. What's the point of spending all that time in college just to basically duplicate my years in school but this time with "a career" being the next ladder to climb? It all goes from "You need to be one of the best national scorers academically to get into your dream college" to now being in that college, and then being forced to study 3-5 more years for "a job" that i'm supposedly going to love.
I've never really said this before, but I had recently gotten a 19/45 on my academic mock exams in the IB diploma. It is a 2 year course for highschoolers, an alternate to the standard GPA/American scoring system that promises higher returns on investment, and is specifically designed to entice to the ivy league colleges.
Just so you know, this is the marking system:
I scored at the bottom 3%.
I know that it states a 16% fail rate, but I failed so horribly to the point where less than 3.2% of students score the same as me or less. I am the literal defenition of a struggling/retarded student by international standards. I know people that got a predicted grade of 38 with no studying whatsoever, I got a 19 with no studying whatsoever. See where I'm going with this? I could make excuses and say that the students claiming not to have studied probably just have a high benchmark for what they consider "active studying" which likely only leaves 1 conclusion on the table where they study without knowing it - or they're just lying. I don't like making excuses though and I suppose that it's all led me to where I am today.
You might asking yourself, what the hell I did instead of study. I did many things. I learnt alot as well. More than any academic program could've ever taught me - ever.
In the past 2-3 years of academia, which had mostly consisted of me not opening a single textbook and not performing a single sheeet of homework, I've gotten over 13 million views on reddit and quora combined, contributed to over 3 million roblox game visits as a developer to small startups, indie studios, and private developers, tens of thousands of dollars in robux revenue for these developers, and a ton more such as how I own several servers on discord that collectively hold 5,000 members (4,600) all together. Not to mention how I had earnt over 515$ in the first 4 months of 2022 through affiliate marketing and lead generation for small startups that had owned domains and ad spaces, and also earnt 300$ 1-2 months after that during July through an actual, legitimate crypto play to earn game that was bought out from me after experiencing rapid growth to over 500 members on discord, a Marketcap of $3,200 during my reign as it's founder and nearly 29,000$ directly after selling it. I'm not sure where It is today as I haven't been keeping track, but the person I've sold it to seems pretty happy, and I've got 0 regrets. Not to mention the COUNTLESS associations I've made with up and coming developers in the roblox space, a few big time developers, and most importantly, the CEO of Coursera. Yes, a billion dollar company. I've talked to the CEO and even made his wikipedia page for him just to see if It'd be a fun past-time, exchanging a handful of emails in the process. (he's pretty darn busy, pretty lucky I had been able to talk to him.)
It was all one massive learning oppurtunity and had blatantly exposed me to the realities of the world. (Lesson I Learnt: Money matters.)
As a result of all of the above, I have earnt roughly 5,000$ as a 16 year old at the sacrifice of grades and school, and most importantly, the sacrifice of my short term future. My parents no longer trust that I am "capable" of getting high grades, this is because I had kept promising them that I'd get good grades, fully personally knowing that I'd end up not studying as I had more important matters to attend to.
I genuinely did have more matters to attend to.
Only recently did I begin to shut down all of my money makers. Today, I no longer make money outside of this publish0x account. I still have evidence of a vast set of experiences that I had partaken in these past few years, and I know that if I choose to get a 45/45 in IB, i might just be able to get into any ivy league college I want. The only reason I write on publish0x is to keep my writing skills sharp as I fear they might degrade with all of the academic material I'll be digesting. (I've already noticed a decrease in my talkativeness...)
All I have to do is study for a minimum of 8 hours a day, implement smart and efficient learning principles, and most importantly, do my homework.
More on the consequences of my decisions in part 2 of this blog post.
Part 2: https://www.publish0x.com/factualopinion-articles/part-2-teenager-paradox-xyqpgjv
