"Steve Pavlina - Personal Development for Smart People"

[cw42]

I discovered this website last week, and have started reading alot of the articles that this guy wrote. There's a ton of good, and interesting info. This guy graduated college in only three semsters! He was taking like 30-40credits/sem, full-time work, and with no summer courses!

So, for anyone wanting to better motivate yourself, improve your time management, and many others things here's a good site for u.

http://www.stevepavlina.com

 

[DurocShark]

Not for you, eh?




(I'm not clicking that link. I'm afraid it's a goatze pic or something...)

 

[EyeMWing]

He was taking like 30-40credits/sem, full-time work, and with no summer courses!

So he was essentially spending 144/168 available hours in a week doing some sort of work - sleeping 3 hours a night.

Yeah, he's a real smart person. College isn't just about the material - it's about the social interaction - and I'm not talking about having friends - I'm talking about making connections. And if you're so gung-ho about getting it all done NOW that you're taking a bajillion credits a semester, then why take the summers off? Could've been done in under a year.

Based on that blatant ignorance alone, I won't click that link.

 

[cw42]

Look, the point isn't about being super smart. From what I read, when he was college he did some bad things, almost ended up going to jail for two years for grand theft because he liked to steal things. He turned his life around, got smart, and set goals. The point I was trying to explain with him graduating in 3 sem was that he obviously did something right by learning how to manage his time. Another thing he did was that he never attended all his classes, alot of the time his excuse was that he already understood how to do things, or learned it better on his own - plus he felt that some of his time was better spent doing more productive things. I'm not saying everything should take it to that degree, but there are some pointers for people that would like to know.

"I accomplished my goal by graduating with two Bachelor of Science degrees (computer science and mathematics) in just three semesters without attending summer school. I slept seven to eight hours a night, took care of my routine chores (shopping, cooking, etc), had a social life, and exercised for 30 minutes every morning. In my final semester, I even held a full time job (40 hours a week) as a game programmer and served as the Vice Chair of the local Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) chapter while taking 37 units of mostly senior-level computer science and math courses. My classmates would add up all the hours they expected each task to take and concluded that my weeks must have consisted of about 250 hours. I graduated with a 3.9 GPA and also received a special award given to the top computer science student each year. One of my professors later told me that they had an easy time selecting the award recipient once it became clear to them what I was doing."

 

[Jassi]

I want to call shens really bad but I bookmarked the site for later.

 

[miniMUNCH]

I'm going to go ahead and call bullsh!t on this guy...notice all the advertising he has on his site.

1st. I don't find it possible to take 8-10 class per quarter or semester. I don't think one could accomplish that with just the course scheduling conflicts...let alone the insane amount of work (unless he cheated half his courses).

2nd. If he did get two B.S.'s in 3 semesters...that school must be absolute crap. At most decent schools, C.S. majors with a regular course load can hardly find time to breath let alone have a social life and sleep 8 hours a day. I know at Carnegie Mellon that is the case for most all students...and CMU enrolls the creme de la creme for CS. Companies like Intel, Amazon, Google, MS, IBM etc. pay sh!t loads of money to rent office space @ CMU so they can tap the student populace here @ CMU.

3rd. I am not saying that two B.S.'s in 3 semesters at a mid or top tier school can't be done. But if it could be done, that person most likely would not develop a self-help website with advertising all over it. They'd be smart enough to do a good start up venture and make some real money.

 

[cw42]

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH
I'm going to go ahead and call bullsh!t on this guy...notice all the advertising he has on his site.

1st. I don't find it possible to take 8-10 class per quarter or semester. I don't think one could accomplish that with just the course scheduling conflicts...let alone the insane amount of work (unless he cheated half his courses).

2nd. If he did get two B.S.'s in 3 semesters...that school must be absolute crap. At most decent schools, C.S. majors with a regular course load can hardly find time to breath let alone have a social life and sleep 8 hours a day. I know at Carnegie Mellon that is the case for most all students...and CMU enrolls the creme de la creme for CS. Companies like Intel, Amazon, Google, MS, IBM etc. pay sh!t loads of money to rent office space @ CMU so they can tap the student populace here @ CMU.

3rd. I am not saying that two B.S.'s in 3 semesters at a mid or top tier school can't be done. But if it could be done, that person most likely would not develop a self-help website with advertising all over it. They'd be smart enough to do a good start up venture and make some real money.

1. "It took a lot of convincing to get the computer science department chair to approve my extra units every semester, and my classmates often assumed I was either cheating or that I had a twin or that I was just mentally unstable (I get accused of that last one pretty much every week, so maybe there's some truth to it)."

2. He went to Cal State Univ, Northridge - From what it looks like, it was a very small school, and by no means a top tier univ.

3. Start up to make money? "The time management habits I learned in college have served me very well in building my business, so I want to share them with you in the hopes that you'll find them equally valuable. They allowed me to shave years off my schooling while also giving me about $30,000 to start my business (all earned in my final semester as a game programmer, mostly from royalties)."

According to Alexa, his site has been getting well over 300 million visitors a month. He's obviously doing something right, and making a ton of money from the ads.


I'm not trying to suck this guy's dick or anything, but i'm just annoyed by the responses i've gotten in this thread. I hate to come off as some kind of finatic, but I just wanted to let others know of his site because there's alot of quality content up there. I'm not gonna bother to post in this thread anymore to continue these arguments.

 

[PrinceofWands]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing

He was taking like 30-40credits/sem, full-time work, and with no summer courses!

So he was essentially spending 144/168 available hours in a week doing some sort of work - sleeping 3 hours a night.

Yeah, he's a real smart person. College isn't just about the material - it's about the social interaction - and I'm not talking about having friends - I'm talking about making connections. And if you're so gung-ho about getting it all done NOW that you're taking a bajillion credits a semester, then why take the summers off? Could've been done in under a year.

Based on that blatant ignorance alone, I won't click that link.

You have a very limited view of things. I am doing my Bachelors in 30 months, since I need to go on thru my Masters as well. It would be ridiculous of me to spend 48 months in undergrad work. Networking is largely useless for teaching, and the extra credit load didn't stop me from serving on student government or debating, holding a job, or doing community work. Being a returning student I don't need the same things that a 20yr old who'd never been out in the world needs.