As someone who was incredibly lazy intellectually in high school, I can't imagine what would have got me motivated beyond time and growing up.
I did nothing in high school and then by 19 for fun on Saturdays I was checking out 5 non-fiction books from the library and spending all Saturday reading.
There was no inspiring teacher or anything like that for me that caused this. At 16 I only cared about girls and maneuvering within the high school social order.
The only thing I can think of that would have changed things for me is if the math club were the cool kids and the football team were the outcasts.
At 16 anything intellectual seemed too remote to bother. That is why I would suspect the real variable is ultimately how much the parents care about grades. Mine did not care at all so there was no way my 16 year old self was going to become intrinsically motivated to grow intellectually.
All AI would have done for me in high school would have been swapping a language model for copying my friend's homework.
> The only thing I can think of that would have changed things for me is if the math club were the cool kids and the football team were the outcasts.
For background I grew up in the US, my wife grew up in China. And how she grew up (in a high tier Shanghai Highschool) she says that is kind of how it was. Top social order was basically Rich and politically connected (not different from anywhere I guess) but also really good students. Where the best students are looked up to. But also just everyone asks you how you do all in school all of the time. There are students who focus more on sports and go to sports schools, but unless they end up going to the Olympics or something, its really looked down upon compared to those who specialize in STEM or more difficult subjects.
In my high school, honors/AP students weren't outcasts, we were kind of just a separate set mostly our own clique with some being popular and some not independently of being AP students. Like I happened to be Football Team Captain and in AP classes, 3 other Captains weren't in AP. Academic success was just a non factor.
I did nothing in high school and then by 19 for fun on Saturdays I was checking out 5 non-fiction books from the library and spending all Saturday reading.
There was no inspiring teacher or anything like that for me that caused this. At 16 I only cared about girls and maneuvering within the high school social order.
The only thing I can think of that would have changed things for me is if the math club were the cool kids and the football team were the outcasts.
At 16 anything intellectual seemed too remote to bother. That is why I would suspect the real variable is ultimately how much the parents care about grades. Mine did not care at all so there was no way my 16 year old self was going to become intrinsically motivated to grow intellectually.
All AI would have done for me in high school would have been swapping a language model for copying my friend's homework.