so in light of the recent reports of the pay-to-play admissions scandal (or rather, pay to 'pretend-to-play' varsity sports, if you get my drift) -- just wondering what are some of the most useful things everyone learned at school that apply to trading?
a few things that stand out to me are,
a) picking the right opportunities
at one point ppl in my major had to enroll in a pretty much mandatory upper level math course that was offered at 2 time slots - one with a 'new'ish/untested professor at an inconvenient time slot & another with a guy who was famous for being a tough grader/set hard exams, etc. due to the tough grader's reputation, some of us decided to just go with the new guy and the inconvenient time slot, who actually turned out to be quite alright. over several weeks, more ppl joined our group despite the inconvenient timeslot, etc - but one of my friends, let's call him Doug, decided to stick it out for the 'education' of the rigorous proofs and perspective. He ended up disappearing for most of the semester & was cagey when ppl asked him about it afterwards.. The rest of us stuck together for the study/homework sessions and got mostly good grades, & i don't think our class learned any less than his either
--> sometimes it's like there are no bonus points/ extra credit for picking the hard stuff to do
b) RTFM usually isn't too bad/ as agonizing as it sounds
one of the courses we had was with a lecturer who basically had you learn everything yourself, lol. the in-class sessions were just Q&A for the most part, where ppl asked questions about this and that, socratic method maybe works for a few humanities/philosophizing courses but not really for STEM, esp. in upper division course with ppl of different backgrounds, etc. so after being confused for some time, i decided to just block out time to read the original texts instead of relying on bits of q&a that seemed to be disjointed, and even though it took a lot of time at first, slowly things started to make sense. then things got easier to understand. but of course, most ppl didn't do that so he curved everyone upwards anyways
c) things that are 'too good to be true' occasionally are...true
this is somewhat random, but one time close to finals i got a phone call with a out of state caller ID and sales-y voice saying i won a macbook. lol, i was super busy & had no time dealing with that nonsense so just hung up. then the person called again - and again - and then left a voicemail. i was kinda annoyed but didn't think much of it. until they tried again at lunchtime a couple days later using another line, this time with a local phone, so i picked up & when i heard their voice again i could feel my temper rising. then the caller maybe expecting my reaction calmly asked if my student id was XXXX etc and then explained the situation - i'd participated in some random study a bit earlier that semester walking through campus when they asked you a few questions etc, and somehow out of the hundreds/thousand plus students they surveyed, i actually won the computer they had as a prize (which i didnt know even know about either). Lol, then they had me go into the office, where i was kinda embarrassed to meet the sales-y voice in person & smile & say thanks, etc. Got to say, i felt super apologetic / thought they were very decent for letting me keep the computer when they have easily 'moved on' to the next name on the list after i'd hung up then ignored their calls multiple times
--> sometimes there are instances when the money/reward/opportunity just presents itself for the taking and all one has to do is maybe not 'hang up the phone' on the caller
