Wow, (at the risk of breaking the anti-meta rule) this is the kind of comment I love and come to HN for.

This entire topic has been heavily on my mind for the last few months as I'm transitioning to legal adulthood and am in the college application process. Questions about who and what I am as a person and what I'll do for the rest of my life have been prime things in the back of my head throughout the day, and along with it, a lot of existentialist crisis.

I've spent the last 7 years at the same 2 public schools and community college, and before that 6 years at private/theme/charter schools that had unique teaching styles and freedoms that they gave their students. I felt like I matured better there than during my time at public high school and middle school. Yet during the last two years at community college (I was/am dual-enrolled) the new feeling of freedom from inane rules like asking for permission to do real silly and small things like going to the bathroom, getting up to sharpen my pencil or blow my nose, and daily attendance to classes I had limited choice over was exhilarating at first. Having all this freedom all at once after 11 years of harsh rules however proved to be too much of a rush and with little to no accountability to authority figures who were always checking on your work and setting soft/easy boundaries on assignments and guidelines to be strictly followed...I lapsed into a phase of constant gaming and wasting time on other non-productive things (like HN ;).

After my grades came back that first semester, along with it was a cold slap of reality and a realization that I had to take responsibility over my own education and learn and excel in everything I do for my own sake. This is when I began to learn Python seriously, treat school as a day-job that I did well on. In normal school, there is little to push the person to do more than what is required after a certain "honors" level (the kinds of classes I took during my first two years of high school before transitioning to dual-enrollment). I never really thought of learning pure math recreationally, or that was A Thing even.

I think Heidegger's idea you mention is a great way to describe the feeling of "becoming" into someone/something that I'm not sure of yet. This idea is explained in pretty-good manner here[1] by Mac thecaster, a really interesting guy who has been lifecasting his own development in life for quite a few years now since he was 15 and now is about 19/20.

Getting involved in real-world activities as a teen has also helped me develop better as an adult; I've worked jack-of-all-trades at an ethnic restaurant, and learned to haggle/negotiate while buying meats, sell products to potential customers, treat them well so they spend more and often, and how to clean many types of things. I've learned from criminals, former DJs and salesmen, and auto-mechanics while working side-by-side with them washing dishes, grilling large orders of steaks, and had many more experiences while being treated as an adult than before in my life.

This is partly why I believe most people who go on summer trips with programs like People to People[2], and EPGY[3], and other summer learning or traveling retreats are more wholesome and well-rounded people. Considering the formidable costs associated with these organized trips and learning retreats, the mostly affluent/well-off kids are able to actually go to them, or even be aware of their existence (from siblings or peer-networking amongst parents from the same socio-economic class). This can be correlated with the recent post about[4] how more confident and successful children born into prosperous families are and decides a lot of things for them in the long run.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRgxp71tDgk

[2]: http://www.peopletopeople.com/Pages/default.aspx

[3]: http://epgy.stanford.edu

[4]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2296550