My reaction seems to be less enthusiastic than most people's. I think that if you can graduate in two years, you should have gone to a school that was more challenging to you.
This is probably a result of my own college experiences. I coasted through high school pretty easily (eg, doing tomorrow's calculus homework in class while it was still being explained). Then I went to a pretty good college, with a bunch of other people who were skilled enough to coast through college.
I got my ass handed to me. We all got our collective ass handed to us. It was humbling. It was also glorious. A year-long back-of-the-room calculus class was turned into a very engaging first 2/3 of a half-semester calculus class. Then, a year's worth of math at that pace was compressed again into six weeks of summer school thick enough to kill a man. I didn't put in extra effort learning beyond my classes, because the classes themselves kept me up til four in the morning.[1]
So, in short, I agree with the title of the post, you should be learning/acting at your level, not below it. However, I disagree with the main corollary of the post, which is that school is insufficient to reach that level, and you should buck the system because it's not good enough. There are schools good enough. I think it's better to find the appropriate system than to buck a normal one, because you have a much more support.[2] Slamming through four math courses in a month is a lot easier when you have four professors and a dozen peers who are all on the same page as you. You also happen to learn a lot about teamwork and collaboration that you might not by going solo.
[1] Which is not to say that every waking second was spent working; I covered 6 seasons of Deep Space Nine and 4 seasons of Babylon 5 in a year. Rest is more important than sleep.
[2] The better support is also self-reinforcing of the quality of the peers. If there are students performing below the bar, a school that can raise those students up doesn't have as great a need to lower the bar for them.
FYI he went to the Berklee school of music. There isn't a better music school in the country. (Other subjects it is mediocre to non-existent in. Musically it is top notch.)
As I understand it Julliard's got more of a classical emphasis, whereas Berklee's likely a better choice for someone aiming to be involved with rock, jazz, etc.
This is probably a result of my own college experiences. I coasted through high school pretty easily (eg, doing tomorrow's calculus homework in class while it was still being explained). Then I went to a pretty good college, with a bunch of other people who were skilled enough to coast through college.
I got my ass handed to me. We all got our collective ass handed to us. It was humbling. It was also glorious. A year-long back-of-the-room calculus class was turned into a very engaging first 2/3 of a half-semester calculus class. Then, a year's worth of math at that pace was compressed again into six weeks of summer school thick enough to kill a man. I didn't put in extra effort learning beyond my classes, because the classes themselves kept me up til four in the morning.[1]
So, in short, I agree with the title of the post, you should be learning/acting at your level, not below it. However, I disagree with the main corollary of the post, which is that school is insufficient to reach that level, and you should buck the system because it's not good enough. There are schools good enough. I think it's better to find the appropriate system than to buck a normal one, because you have a much more support.[2] Slamming through four math courses in a month is a lot easier when you have four professors and a dozen peers who are all on the same page as you. You also happen to learn a lot about teamwork and collaboration that you might not by going solo.
[1] Which is not to say that every waking second was spent working; I covered 6 seasons of Deep Space Nine and 4 seasons of Babylon 5 in a year. Rest is more important than sleep.
[2] The better support is also self-reinforcing of the quality of the peers. If there are students performing below the bar, a school that can raise those students up doesn't have as great a need to lower the bar for them.