{"id":743,"date":"2006-10-23T09:08:26","date_gmt":"2006-10-23T09:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/23\/letter-to-the-past\/"},"modified":"2006-10-23T09:08:26","modified_gmt":"2006-10-23T09:08:26","slug":"letter-to-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/23\/letter-to-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Inspired by a thread at Fark, <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/strangerfruit\/2006\/10\/advice_to_a_12_year_old_me.php\">John Lynch asks an interesting question<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If you could go back in time and tell your 12-year old self one thing, what would it be?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/ethicsandscience\/2006\/10\/what_i_would_and_would_not_tel.php\">Janet has some thoughts as well<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving aside obvious stuff like &#8220;Buy Microsoft stock,&#8221; what I would say to my twelve-year-old self is this: <\/p>\n<p>Get over yourself.<\/p>\n<p>(Continued&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re not getting picked on in school because your classmates are jealous that you&#8217;re smarter than they are (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulgraham.com\/nerds.html\">nerd apologia<\/a> notwithstanding). You&#8217;re getting picked on because you&#8217;re <strong>annoying<\/strong> about it.<\/p>\n<p>You can be the smartest guy in the room without rubbing it in people&#8217;s faces. You can listen to people talk about topics that don&#8217;t interest you without showing contempt for their interests. Yes, <cite>The Dukes of Hazzard<\/cite> is the stupidest show on tv, but there&#8217;s no good purpose served by <strong>saying<\/strong> that. You may not be a fan of professional sports now (that will change, by the way), but that does not mean that other people are stupid for liking football or baseball.<\/p>\n<p>In short, your life will get a whole lot better the minute you acquire some social skills. Work on that, will you?<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and buy Microsoft stock. Trust me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inspired by a thread at Fark, John Lynch asks an interesting question: If you could go back in time and tell your 12-year old self one thing, what would it be? Janet has some thoughts as well. Leaving aside obvious stuff like &#8220;Buy Microsoft stock,&#8221; what I would say to my twelve-year-old self is this:&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/23\/letter-to-the-past\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Letter to the Past<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}