Thoughts after Reading Hillbilly Elegy 🌱

I just finished listening to Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, which made me reflect on the mentors who have guided me in my life and those around me who gave me good examples of how to behave, pursue personal growth, and treat others well. I want to maximize my learning, but I also want to be an effective and helpful mentor to others. When you have someone approach you who is. I explained in [[ Whats a better way to teach people ]] how the incredibly motivated Maria Konnikova was able to become a professional poker player dispite no prior experience in poker because mentor. But, the only reason that her mentor’s lessons helped her was because she had a tremendous amount of GRIT and was eager to pour hours into doing her own research. If someone is like her where they possess the desire and drive to do their own research and seek out learning opportunities, then they will be greatly benefitted from mentorship. But, how can you help people who are not really interested??

Often, when I speak with some friends they come to me asking for some advice, when they already know the answer and what I tell them won’t change their perspective.

I think that people have to realize for themselves what they want to learn. When I was younger, my dad would lecture me about finding my passion and working hard, but what he said never resonated with me. I didn’t really care too much about learning, as long as my grades were good I would basically do the bare minimum. I had never really given serious thought about what I wanted. This completely changed when I was a senior in high school and I decided that I wanted to attend the University of Pennsylvania. I looked back at my accomplishments in high school and thought, ‘what the hell have I been doing this whole time?’ A fire then lit under my ass, and I started working hard by reading every day and finally studying for the SAT. Sadly a couple months of hard work weren’t enough to get me into UPenn, but I also started working on a research project with two of my friends which completely changed my life.

I had to realize for myself the . Or at least, something had to be shown to me in a way that made sense in my mind that working hard and making connections is the way I wanted to live. I remember hearing when I was younger work hard and get good grades and good SAT scores to get into a good college. I believe this was the wrong way to think. In my mind, I could get good grades and get scores and then go to a good college. I never really thought about what I wanted. Or maybe an intrinsic reason to take certain courses. This was a major reason why I felt it was so hard to work hard in high school. Even with my extra cirricular activities, I would do something like speech and debate or tennis, but I would pretty much half ass it. I would think: do I really want to work so hard on this thing when I don’t really care about it. This was especially heightened because I didn’t really have a mentor in any of these activities. So, when making my case for speech and debate I didn’t know how to properly structure a case because no one told me. Tennis I had a lot of lessons, but I never put myself out there to be better, I was always doing the minimum I needed to get by. I was also embarassed to ask for help. I didn’t realize that there was a system made to help me. I didn’t know that I could ask for help until I got to college. Asking a teacher for help seemed insane to me.