Proxies and Learning

As a 21-year-old — old enough to be aware of my ignorance but nowhere near old enough to put a dent in it — I think a lot about education. Unfortunately, when I attempt to chart a path towards the future I often find myself striking the wrong heading, optimizing for the appearance of learning instead of learning itself. Luckily, as technology changes, it changes the broader societal environment, and the recent wave of technological change has begun to better align personal development with signalling value. This broader change has been mirrored by a shift within my own life. Now, instead of focusing on established metrics, I have begun to define my own and elevated my learning along the way.

I didn’t always take a holistic view of my own education. The issue of signalling, optimizing for the appearance, has come to shape our entire school system, and I was not immune to its draw. I was a high achiever, seeking perfection in school and chasing flawless transcripts, drunk on illusions of cheap superiority. As my education progressed, my curiosity dampened. I accepted excellence in the metrics afforded to me and became complacent. This complacency slowly gave way to apathy. My ego rested firmly on my own intellectual superiority, one which I defined myself through proxies — success within the system. I got straight As. Regrettably, my proudest accomplishment used to be my SAT score.

Such reliance on external measure proved to be a fragile thing. My shoddily constructed edifice of self-worth came crashing down my senior year of high school. I didn’t get into Stanford, which I applied early to. I remember opening the rest of my applications, one by one, and watching the rejections roll in. I got into one school, was rejected by the other 8, and was waitlisted at Brown University where I was eventually accepted. Although things turned out alright in the end, this experience shattered my superiority complex. The measuring stick which had validated me my whole life how swung back and sliced me at the knees. I hadn’t created anything during my time at high school and all I had were a set of numbers that meant I could play the game. To achieve such a definition of success, I played within the narrow bounds of my comfort zone. In high school, success is nothing less than perfection. I nearly achieved this, but it cost me, particularly opportunities for growth and my general wellness.

This avoidance of failure was necessary to get to Brown University where I am now. In the college admissions process, outside of rare cases (especially when applying from coastal hubs), a B meant you were fucked. Anything other than an A (and the occasional A-) threatened to shut you out from the ivory tower. I spent my first two years at college unlearning the mindset that got me there so that I could actually begin to learn. As I began the process of unlearning, I suffered a crisis of identity and of direction, of which I am still plagued with aftershocks.

The academic game is not the learning game. The capitalism game is not the fulfillment game. We confuse one for the other, having been raised that way and afraid of the existential void that accompanies the abandonment of the given metrics and the choosing of freedom. The academic game demands tough course loads and perfect grades. The learning game demands exploration, failures, and risk taking. It demands time spent outside of your native system to gain perspective. Time spent with friends instead of studying. Time flirting with various philosophies, looking at the sky, and watching ants gather food. In academia, we succeed by perfecting the game given to us. In life, we succeed by understanding and consciously choosing the games we play. The search for meaning is much more abstract, free form, and personal than the quest for traditional success.

In order to succeed, it used to be much more critical to succeed within the academic sphere. Communications technology was primitive, and a potential employer knew little about you except what was said by various trusted institutions — in other words, your university. They had little ability to view your competence more directly, as your projects were marooned by immature communications and trust technology. Luckily, the burgeoning world of the internet has given us the signalling tools to transcend the academic game. In a world of free distribution and automated plagiarism checking, I can share my projects with the whole world freely, without the need for the traditional stamp of approval. Instead of a diploma verifying that I can do good work, I can share the work itself. When I have a portfolio — a github, a blog — my transcript quickly loses relevance.

We can now signal direct competence instead of proxies for competence. Those who continue to optimize for proxies do so because that allows them to minimize risk or signal above their competence. Those who directly optimize learning and competence will still have lower signalling value (as the world still expects the maintenance of 20th-century metrics), but the gulf is beginning to tighten, and even reverse in the case of highly talented and well-informed individuals. The greater one’s confidence in oneself, the lower the necessary signalling value. There is a necessary threshold (that at which one can get an interview, and hopefully a first job), but beyond that, direct competence trumps proxies. It is important to understand the systems that came before and be able to move within them, but we should not enslave ourselves to them. Instead, we only need the credibility required to recruit them into the future we build. The old guard has resources and control of the current systems, but we will build the future.

Not only can we signal competence directly, but we can increasingly reap the fruits of our own labor directly. The internet has made available infrastructure that used to cost millions. Instead of printing presses, we have WordPress and MailChimp. Instead of an accounting department, we have Stripe. Instead of an ad team, we have Facebook self serve ads. The playing field is levelling and the field is opening up. We can now choose from an increasing number of games, or even build our own. The tumult, though painful now, will yield the many more levers through which one may vault oneself to a beautiful life.

Freed from the confines of a particular definition of success, we now face the problem of defining our own sticks by which we measure ourselves. When I see friends getting jobs at Goldman Sachs, or working at Facebook, or doing any other strain of hyper-achieving things, I experience a twinge of jealousy, my old personality raising a temporary complaint at my own perceived inadequacy. In these moments, I worry that I’m being left behind. However, I also remember the frustration of building a resume instead of building myself, and above all, the crushing depression of striving for a life that doesn’t fit. Signalling is important, but the realm of opportunities to do so is vast, and I would be doing myself a disservice not to widen my vision. I believe that we now have access to tools through which signalling value becomes an emergent property of self-growth — we need not sacrifice the latter for the former.