Archive for January 2010
Low Tolerance for Boredom
Lisa Nielsen stumbled across my psychological testing results from when I was 7 years old and wrote about it. She is giving a talk about innovation in education and asked me to share my story, so here it is.
I’m 26 years old. When I was 23 I founded a software company that was recently acquired by Google, and before that I went to MIT where I got a degree in mathematics and nearly perfect grades. None of my early teachers, however, would have predicted this.
At Estabrook Elementary School, I lit fires and sprayed graffiti in the bathrooms. At Diamond Middle School, I stole all the mouse balls from the computer lab, prompting an all-hands meeting of the students and teachers in the cafeteria. I was permanently banned from riding the school bus for doing something I am too ashamed of to publish on the web. In 7th grade, I sold a 3″ Israeli army knife to Matt Fallon, who pulled it out during English class. These are just some of the things I remember getting caught doing. Detention, suspension, and attempted expulsion where regular occurrences in my early life.
Everything changed during the summer before high school. My dad suggested I read the book Hackers, by Steven Levy. I was already interested in computers because they provided a great source of stimulation at a pace I could control. But after reading Hackers, I had a new purpose in life.
I wanted to go to MIT and be a hacker myself. In order to get into MIT, I realized, I needed good grades and a clean academic record, so I made that happen. I was fanatically motivated to go to MIT, and this created a goal toward which I could leverage my energy and learn to control my impulses.
I’m not saying it was OK that I acted like a hoodlum in middle school. I feel bad for my teachers and my parents for all the grief I caused them. But I also suffered. I had a tremendous amount of energy and a craving for challenge and stimulation, yet I was forced to try to sit still in a classroom and passively take in information at a slow pace. School was a boring prison for me, and I did what I could to bring excitement into my life in an environment that seemed designed to prevent it.
At 26, I still have a low tolerance for boredom and consider this a virtue. It’s what led me to entrepreneurship and gives me a healthy appetite for risk.
I don’t have all the answers for how to fix the situation for other kids like me, and I don’t know how common my situation is. My message to educators is simply to keep an open mind when it comes to rambunctious little problem students. Maybe they just have a low tolerance for boredom.
