Austin Scholar #162: The importance of rules and my thoughts on The Sovereign Child
& how to get an internship at NASA
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: How to get an internship at NASA
The importance of rules and my thoughts on The Sovereign Child
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been thinking about…
Happy Easter Sunday everyone! I hope you’re having a truly beautiful day. I’m so blessed to be able to spend the day with my family – I came back to Austin this weekend! It’s been a truly crazy first few weeks back at school and I’m super excited to have a chill, relaxing time with my family before midterms start up again. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m always talking about taking midterms in my update section :) For this round of midterms (I have math this week, then CS in two weeks, then math again the week after that), I’m studying three ways:
Post-lecture reviews
I’ve been super organized these last few weeks because after every lecture, I write the main concepts and takeaways in my own words and screenshot the most important slides that I should review for exams. So step one is to review my lecture notes.
Practice tests
As per usual, I’m loading up on practice tests to prepare. While this is (already) going to be my third time taking a Stanford math midterm, I’m currently taking my first CS class and don’t know exactly what types of questions I’ll be asked on the exam – so practice is critical. If I’m comfortable enough with answering questions and I understand what the professors are looking for, I know I’ll do a lot better on the actual exam.
ChatGPT!
ChatGPT will always be my best friend while studying. For this prompt, I upload all of the lecture slides and ask the following:
I’m preparing for my [class] exam. You are the TA for [class]. Use the lecture slides to come up with practice problems for me. Ask me one at a time and if I get it wrong, ask me guiding questions to find the solution – DO NOT tell me the answer. Keep asking questions until I’ve gotten at least five questions correct in every lecture topic.
Austin’s Anecdote: Advice from a Stanford freshman
Earlier this week, I talked to one of my good friends Giselle Ransom, a Stanford freshman who interned at NASA.
I asked her about the two pieces of advice that she would give to parents who want to help their kid achieve things on a similar scale. Here’s what she said:
“Create a reward system in which students are actively incentivized to work. My mom encouraged me through paying for As.”
I’ve talked a lot about creating a reward system (starting all the way back with this newsletter), so I love that this is something Giselle also found encouraging. I think this highlights part of the “high support” aspect of parenting that Dr. David Yeager discusses in his book, 10 to 25 that I break down in this newsletter, in that you’re constantly encouraging your kid and providing them with motivation to achieve hard things.
“Do not create a toxic environment in which a student lacks ambition. Ambition is necessary for long term success and achievement in my eyes.”
This is where I think the “high standards” part of Dr. Yeager’s philosophy comes in – you have to teach your kid to want to do hard things and achieve greatness. If that’s not a value in your family, your kid won’t care.
If you’d like to dig deeper into Giselle’s story, she also has a YouTube channel, where she posts videos about Stanford and gives advice for college admissions. You should definitely check it out if you have a high schooler.
The importance of rules and my thoughts on The Sovereign Child
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d been introduced to the book The Sovereign Child by Aaron Stupple, and this week I wrote the promised newsletter diving into my thoughts on the book.
Let me start by saying that there is undeniable value in letting children make their own decisions and experience the consequences. This is something many parents struggle with, and those who master it give their children a powerful gift – the ability to learn through trial and error.
However, I’m not convinced that the solution is to eliminate rules altogether. Whether you’re like me (someone who learns by following the rules) or like my sister (who learns by breaking them), rules provide a framework for understanding the difference between “healthy” and “unhealthy” choices.
In my view, the issues Stupple raises aren’t caused by the existence of rules, but by how they are enforced. Stupple seems to catastrophize the impact of rules on children, suggesting that they inherently damage parent-child relationships and stifle creativity. I don’t think this is exactly true.
Rules don’t have to be harmful or authoritarian. Parents can use them as starting points for conversations, not as absolute barriers. When disagreements arise, rules can be productive rather than destructive.
The key is how parents react when their rules get broken. If the response signals a willingness to discuss and negotiate, it allows your kids to still be active agents in their own lives, which means their autonomy and creativity can still exist.
Also, there definitely doesn’t need to be a million rules controlling every move your kid makes; I’d argue it’s more helpful to have a few core rules to guide their overall choices, and to let them experiment with the stuff that doesn’t matter as much.
For example, these are the rules I’ve mentioned before that my family had:
If my sister and I had an argument, we had to hug it out (Mom enforced)
If we’re out late, we have to text our mom and let her know where we are and what we’re doing (Mom enforced)
These two rules emphasized the value of family and staying connected – something that has become deeply ingrained in my own outlook on life.
No sleepovers on weekdays (Dad enforced)
No drinking or drugs (Dad enforced)
You can stay up however late you want, as long as you’re reading and as long as you don’t complain about being tired the next day (Dad enforced)
These rules emphasized both the value of working hard (in that during the week, we had to stay locked in), but also the value of playing hard (in that the only real rule we had about hanging out with our friends was that we couldn’t drink or do drugs). That was the line – everything else we could work out.
This is what worked for my family and what helped guide my sister’s and my behavior throughout childhood. Now, let’s dive into the first five chapters of The Sovereign Child and my thoughts on each chapter.
1. Eating What They Want