I was asked by The Exonian to write an op-ed piece reflecting on life since graduating from Exeter in 2010, and any tips I have for this year's graduating seniors. The following is what I came up with. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Very strong PG and James Altucher influences. Thanks to my friends Dan, Hanif, and Caroline for reading it.
I dropped out of college to start FamilyLeaf, a Y Combinator-funded startup. More info here.
I have always been one to take risks, but they've never seemed very risky to me. I came to Exeter from Seattle just for senior year, against my parents' best judgment. I picked my college program just for the three required semesters of study abroad. I gave up a killer summer internship to work on my own web projects. I took a leave of absence after my first year-and-a-half at NYU to run a funded startup. I don't plan on going back anytime soon.
Here I'll share a few lessons I've learned since leaving Exeter two years ago. As a graduating senior, you're blessed with unusual wisdom for your age. You're in for decades of learning. You're one of the only high school audiences in the world who reads that last sentence and smiles knowingly.
Your Harkness skill set might make it easy to coast along and get good grades. Resist the urge to just go with the flow, academically or socially. If most of your friends are doing something, it's probably too easy and you should do something different.
The most important goal in college is simple: find out what you want to do with your life. This might happen much more outside the classroom than in it. Indulge your interests.
Live in an exciting city, but don't let it make you edgy or jaded. Live in a beautiful suburban town, but don't become complacent.
There are no certainties. You'll grow to define yourself less by how well you adhered to the status quo and more by how you defied it, majestically and with permanence.
Most people wait for the right opportunity to present itself. The adventurer, the inventor, the entrepreneur, the artist is always on the lookout. They know their limitations, and purposefully defy them.
Take the time to self-reflect. Understand what you want to accomplish, even if vaguely. Learn from how others got there, and recognize that your path will be different. Try to hit a perfect mix of floating down life's river, and decisively aiming for something.
Work forward from promising situations. Look at your available options, and choose those that will give you the most possible freedom moving forward. Don't shoehorn yourself.
Make things. Please, make things. Extrapolate "make" as broadly as you'd like. Just don't lead a life of pure consumption. It's easy to mistake consuming as growing -- the more you know about cultural touchstones or esoteric subjects, the smarter you'll feel. It's nice to feel smart. But when you wake up each day, do things. Write something, run somewhere, sketch out an idea. Do something new every day. It will make the days pass more slowly. It might bring you love and contentment.
Be in awe of the infinite beauty of the world around you. Take public transportation.
Your qualifications don't matter; your books don't matter; your body doesn't matter; your friends don't matter; your successes don't matter. Your conversation with yourself matters. Your choices matter. Remember that you are going to die.
And when you recognize a moment approaching its natural ending -- seize it. Don't look back.