Updates

Is it just me, or did the month of April actually zoom by super fast? I haven’t had a ton of psets either, so I’m not too sure what I’ve been doing with my time.

I’ve been continuing to take my productive thinking walk every day, and I’ve kept some of my habits up more or less. Still a work in progress though.

High Resistance

These past couple days have been pretty interesting since I’ve had on and off days of working the whole day, and then the next I won’t feel like doing anything. Today was a day where I didn’t do much––I was conscious of the resistance, but I really couldn’t find something to do. This is my way of breaking that unproductive streak however.

The missing chip

A while back during senior year, I got rejected from colleges that I didn’t feel like I should’ve been rejected from. I had a really large quantity of acceptances, but ultimately you only go to one school anyways. And I felt like I didn’t achieve what I was hoping for––I know my mom was clearly super disappointed in me.

I’ve heard a lot of stories of people who go to their dream school who eventually fade into obscurity because they just become content with their goal/haven’t really developed true work ethic outside of their pursuit of prestige, and I’ve also heard of a lot of people who worked their assses off due to some chip on their shoulder.

I don’t feel like either person. After enough reflection, I’ve realized that who I am is more than the school that I attend––I don’t feel a need to prove something to anyone, since I personally don’t value the opinions of people who attribute my worth to the name of my school rather than what I’ve actually accomplished. Yes, the name of your school can often be an indicator of what you’ve done, but that’s all it should be: an indicator. It shouldn’t be an item on that list of accomplishments.

I’ve talked before about how I don’t really agree with the current college education system. This quarantine has really exposed some of the problems within it––I talked briefly before about how the power dynamic between colleges and students are off, but I think people are starting to realize that college degrees are scams.

If you can accomplish online learning and that still attributes itself to a degree, then what’s the point of attending a random college for your degree? I believe that there is worth attending a school such as Columbia, but there are so many for-profit universities out there that are little more than con jobs using the allure of a prestigious “college degree” to make investors richer. I truly believe that so many people would be better off going to a trade school and learning what they can from the web, rather than entering into crippling debt for a realistically useless diploma that offers little real learning.

Before you rip me of coming from a position of educational privilege, consider the individual who spends years of their life accumulating student debt to ultimately get a bachelor’s degree from a for-profit institution that few employers have heard of versus the same individual picking up tangible skills from a trade school in far fewer years and at a lower cost. I hope that quarantine makes abundantly clear that a huge percentage of college educations don’t actually teach you much that you cannot learn on your own––this highly contrasts to trade school.

Codex

Some of you may know that I’m currently working on a startup project called Codex that hopefully will solve a lot of the barriers surrounding online learning. This relates to what I was talking about because I believe that the modern education system is rather antiquated, and the internet is this marvelous place full of potential that should be infinitely better than a college education is (from the sake of learning, not social/networking benefits). Classes comprise only a small percentage of my learning, and learning from the web is another large percentage of my learning. Hopefully, I can translate some of the problems I’ve faced while trying to learn from the web into solutions that will benefit everyone.

I will most likely make a post on Codex and other startup ideas I have.

Chips again

Sometimes I wonder if I would be better if I had a chip. I’d probably accomplish more, be more driven, and overall be in a thereotically higher spot in society right now. I know plenty of my peers who are in such positions.

But being in this continual spot of yearning to be higher feels really bad––I’m lucky in the sense that I’ve realized all of this at a relatively early age, and I’m able to focus on being happy and enjoying my success, rather than being in a state of continual frustration with my apparent lack of progress.

With the end of my undergraduate degree coming up, I’ll start pushing myself more in the future to work harder, but at least I’ll be working hard with a smile in my heart. :)