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Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

(cs.stanford.edu)
674 points peterkshultz | 2 comments | 19 Oct 25 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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kevmo314 ◴[19 Oct 25 18:11 UTC] No.45636467[source]▶
> All-nighters are not worth it.

I disagree. I made some of my best friends through all nighters and continue to occasionally pull them because they reinvigorate meaning into my work as they did my coursework.

If your only metric for success in school is your GPA, then yes all nighters aren’t worth it. But climbing a metric leaderboard isn’t the only measure of doing well in a course.

It is curious because Andrej recognizes this with his comments concerning coffee.

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orev ◴[19 Oct 25 18:35 UTC] No.45636700[source]▶
Why do friends need to be made through all-nighters? Could you have made the same friends by organizing study groups during regular hours, and then doing something else fun with those people in the evenings?
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1. kevmo314 ◴[19 Oct 25 18:43 UTC] No.45636778[source]▶
They don't have to be, nor am I claiming that all nighters are unilaterally positive. But they were an integral part of my college experience and many of my friends' and I enjoyed them in a type 2 fun kind of way.

Asserting that they're not worth it misses the broader picture.

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2. skirmish ◴[20 Oct 25 06:29 UTC] No.45640605[source]▶
Like in army training, shared suffering helps comradery.