Leanpub: Publish Early, Publish Often

Part 3 : Graduate School

The place you go when a bachelor’s wasn’t enough, you were fired, or you’re not ready for the real world

Chapter 16: Graduate School - Applying

“If you want to make money, you don’t need a Ph.D. If you want women, you don’t need a Ph.D. If you want freedom, then a Ph.D. will help.”-Slava, the co-worker

Why apply.
Studying for tests
Personal Statement
Experience
Contacting professors
When to apply
What if grades are low
Master’s or PhD

Those were the words of Slava, one of my mentors during my undergraduate days. He has a soft-spoken, calm, and quiet demeanor. He is one of those who sits, observes, and makes a decision carefully. He gets his work done without a fuss. Why does a Ph.D. get you freedom? “It makes you think clearly and forces you to question everything.”

When you question everything, you do research and when you do research you surpass ignorance. When you are no longer ignorant you know reality, and when you know reality you can make better decisions. When you make good decisions you are in control, and when you are in control, you are free. Out of all the PhDs, I’ve met not one regretted getting a Ph.D. Not everyone can get a Ph.D., but like my other mentor, Professor Fainman said when I asked him if it’s possible to do a Ph.D. later in life, “Anything is possible if you have the focus.”

Taking Tests

Many of my friends took entrance tests, most of them took them more than once. I took mine more than once. Most of us did the same thing, we didn’t study because we thought we were geniuses. But we did poorly and by the second time around we studied our hineys off. At the time, I was unemployed and spending 3-6 hours a day studying for my GREs. I’d do a practice test in the morning, study during the day then take another one or two during the day and or at night.

This paid off and after I took the test I began to take grad classes through my employer. I was lucky they were flexible, allowing me to drive to college at lunch or during the day, paying for several classes. This wasn’t easy and I wished I had taken the advice of other Ph.D. students, mainly to go straight from undergrad to grad school.

Read about how to prepare for a test in detail in the Appendix.

When To Apply

When you’re out and working, you get used to having money, having your schedule, and working a lot less than when you were in college. You don’t have finals, you have free weekends and you can take off on vacation any time you want instead of during designated times.

When you go straight from college to grad school it means that you’re already used to living poor and working hard, so there’s no period of adjustment. You are surrounded by people like you and that helps a lot. When you’re older than everyone else, you feel out of place and the people your age that you know will be a lot less understanding of what you’re going through at school.

If you’re tired of school, just think how you’ll regret not pushing yourself an extra year or two later when you’re working and feeling like you could have had another degree. Just a year or two more and your checks will be bigger and a lot more opportunities will be open. Just look at job openings in your field, the vast majority ask for Master’s candidates. So suck it up and do it!

Personal Statement

A grad school personal statement is not at all like the personal statement for undergrad. The graduate school could care less about how unique you are or how hard your life was. What they care about is that you can work hard, that you have passion, and that you know what you want. They want that because that is the kind of people who thrive in grad school because that is the type of people who can focus.

For this reason, look up some successful statements and model yours after theirs. This is how they will look:

I first began to like subject A when.

I worked on subject A an undergrad with Professor B.

My grades in this area were C.

I have done work on the subject, I read the papers on the subject and I intend to work on C in subject A at this school because A, B, C

That’s it.

Contacting Professors

Do it early. In fact, do it right after taking a class where you did well and the teacher will remember you.

Give the professor a pre-written letter for them to edit and sign. This will ensure that they get to it in their busy schedule and maybe embellish it because you have shown you care for their time. Even if you worked for the professor, pre-write the letter because they don’t remember what you did because they barely remember what they did.

This is how the letter will look:

Dear Univ of X,

A worked in my lab from A to B and was in my class for D. She was a hard-working student having completed all assignments on time and showed the ability to perform in class by earning an A and in the lab by quickly picking up the skills and performing them on time and with great quality. She is motivated by C and sees a future for herself in this area of research.

I recommend this person for your program as I believe they will be able to perform and excel given their talents, skills, and passion for C.

Sincerely, Prof Y.

That’s all. Just be honest about your work and let the professor embellish it if need be. Just don’t put anything that you wouldn’t put for others because then you may never hear from the professor. After all, they are too “busy”, missing the deadline and opportunity for grad school.

Grades/Test results too low

Never take no for an answer. If you can work hard and have focus, apply to all schools, and if you do not get into the school you want to go to, appeal. My friend Ash had a 2.5 GPA and was able to convince the Dean to let him into the Ph.D. program. He wasn’t regular, he had a patent and a start-up under his belt, but neither are you, that’s why you’re reading this to learn before doing. So make sure that you are aiming for the fruit you are qualified for. Otherwise, there are plenty of less competitive programs where you might be a good fit.

Hopefully, you are reading this before you let your grades fall so low that you have to resort to appeals and begging. The best thing to do is to study hard and work for things. Don’t slack off or you will come to regret the time wasted and the poor grades as each C is a potentially closed door in the future. There are no do-overs in life. I’m not lecturing, I’m just telling you how it will go.

Master’s or Ph.D.?

A Master’s degree is great for getting extra pay when you get out of school and for having a little extra qualification when looking for jobs. It prepares you for more than a mere Bachelor’s, but it is expensive. What many don’t know, however, is that you can get a Master’s via a Ph.D. program. In the United States, there is a shortage of PhDs, so it is easier to get accepted into a Ph.D. program, which is usually free to the student and after you pass your prelim test which is about two years into the program, you get an automatic Masters. At which point you can decide whether to go on or to stay.

Chapter 17: Law School - Three Years That Can Ruin Your Life

I introduced my law-student friend to a lawyer once. He gave advice to my friend: “Quit now.”

Applying/Choosing
Studying
What to do after

I did not go to law school, but I know a lot of people who did. So this is a chapter that should not be followed but rather skimmed by anyone actually wanting to go to law school. Anyone who just wants an introduction can read through and if you’re serious, then maybe consider reading and talking to people who are actually experienced.

Applying/Choosing

As with most graduate schools, law school falls into three tiers: the first tier is for the good students from good colleges with great LSAT scores (Law school entrance exam). These students will get a great education with great professors who will get a great job and pay off their debt without much of a problem. They are a great investment and the amount they charge doesn’t compare with the amount that you will make when you finish.

Of course, the job you take on after finishing a school like that will expect massive billable hours and expect it to be your life. This is why it makes sense for the uber ambitious person who is fine with not having another life except work for ten to twenty years until they make partner.

The second-tier school requires decent LSAT and decent grades. These schools are semi-competitive, have decent BAR exam passage rates (the exam you take after Law School that allows you to practice law), and generally will allow you to get an average job that will pay off the average loan. It’s a good deal if you are not super ambitious and just want an upper-middle-class life.

Third-tier schools are for the people who picked a crappy no-work major in college, barely tried and got passing grades, didn’t try on LSAT, and are only doing Law school because they can’t think of what else they can do or to please their parents. These schools are barely accredited and are happy to take your money while barely teaching you and often not even preparing you for the Bar Exam. If your parents want to pay your way through a law education that you will never use, feel free to go to one of these. If you are paying for this, don’t waste your money and look for another job. The money you spend will never be recouped.

A good friend of mine went to one of these schools that ended up having its accreditation taken away and went bankrupt. He is now an Oscar-nominated movie editor. Law school helped him realize what he should not do.

Another good friend of mine went to a second-tier school. He has his own firm, works 30 hours a day, has a million-dollar house, and a great life. He had to work hard but not too hard to build up his family practice law firm but he is very happy not having to do billable hours.

Lastly, another friend of mine went to a top-tier school where he met his wife. They both lived in Washington DC where they both worked many many hours. He now works for the Attorney General of California, they own a home in DC while living in California. His wife quit the high power attorney job and watches the kids. They are generally happy but in a sense, she is spoiled. She cannot take a regular law job because she is used to having the prestige of working at a top law firm.

Studying

Studying in Law School is important in the first year. This is the year that defines your scholarships, your internships, and the rest of your schooling and career. It is also the toughest year. So one should prepare well and talk to other recent students about their strategies.

The second-year is generally a lot easier and the third year is all about getting ready for finding the job and passing the bar. It is really important to get a good internship. The tier one students are usually looking for a clerkship with a famous judge. The tier two law students are looking for a company. One of my friends from tier-one went to Miami and clerked for a Supreme court in Florida while my Tier two friend took internships at large companies and small firms to see what he liked. Where you intern will determine your pedigree and options, so aim high!

After Law School

When you graduate, your grades and internships will determine what to look for. Some people will go into the government and become district attorneys or public defenders, some will go into corporate law and work billable others while others will join small mom- and pop offices where they will do family or personal injury, immigration or bankruptcy law.

It is all about what you want to do and where your passions lie. I have one friend that became a public defender and loved it, another climbed the ranks to become a well-known immigration lawyer while another became an assistant district attorney. The friends who never liked law found something else, like running a bar or like the one I mentioned earlier who became a movie editor. Whatever happens, it is not the end of the world. Follow your passion and talents, and they will help you find a way.

Chapter 18: MBA or Master of Bullshit Administration

“When you had a BS, you knew how to bullshit. With an MBA, you’re now a Master of Bullshit Administration. This means you’re still full of BS, but now with much more confidence.”

Why MBA
Types of MBA
Getting In
Getting the most out of it.

Why MBA

There are 30 million businesses in America. Half of all businesses fail within the first five years. Why? Because MBA students make up half of all statistics. But the real reason is that people who start a business have one goal, to be their own boss instead of making the business work and bring in money. But bringing in money is not trivial. You have to know how to manage people, how to understand marketing, operations, and finances.

This is while an MBA is always something people make fun of, it is something successful businesses take very seriously, often even paying their top performers for that education so that their employees have the knowledge and skills of how to run a business like a professional.

When I was running my startup, I already had a few years of experience as a project manager and a business owner. I thought I could learn things on the fly. I would grab an accounting textbook and read it as if I was reading Top Sawyer or Lord of the Rings: cover to cover. But I realized that I was wasting time. In college we did not read books, we skimmed them and augmented them to the lectures. We read the parts we didn’t understand after a lecture to help us do the problems.

I remembered how in college I would go through 12-16 massive textbooks a year as that’s how many classes I would take. This means my learning was at a much faster rate. I realized that I was also learning only the things I thought I didn’t know or needed to know at that moment. There were times that I would make a mistake and I had no idea that it was a mistake and so I wouldn’t learn about it.

At the same time, I also noticed something about successful entrepreneurs, most of them (unless they were a complete genius) actually were older and had an MBA; including Jeff Bezos Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, and Jim Koch of Sam Adams Brewing. I thought about how to be an engineer one had to get a four-year engineering degree because it simply takes too long to learn to be an engineer “on the job”.

No one wants to trust someone with a bridge design with “on the job training” and same goes for business, why would you trust someone with running a large, important, big stakes business with someone who learned something “on the job”? So if it takes too long to learn in engineering, then same goes for MBA.

Types of MBA

So there are many types of MBA. There are joint degrees with Law and Master of Science or Engineering, there are Part-time and Full-time, MBA directed towards policy, non-profits and even health and even ones specifically catered for Executives. I won’t go into all of them, you can research on your own, I’ll just tell you that all MBA programs unlike law or MSc/MA programs prefer you to work a little while after you get your BS because they want you to know what you want.

Generally, however, a part-time MBA is cheaper but it takes longer than a full-time and the networking opportunities are fewer, it doesn’t require an internship and you don’t get the college experience out of it. Executive MBA has classes that are shorter and are geared for older professionals who already have a lot of experience and may not need a full class. This MBA can be covered by an employer and may be very worth it for people who need a larger network as they grow older.

One thing that wasn’t covered in the previous section is the network. It sounds like an arbitrary thing but in business, the network is everything. The network is the lifeline of every business and so the more people someone knows from diverse backgrounds and industries, the more they can leverage that network to help the business grow and survive.

This is because, unlike an engineer who has all the tools they need in a lab or on a computer, a business requires many other businesses to survive and those businesses react to each other based on personal relationships. So an MBA is a great place to create a network.

Of course, the strength of that network depends on the school. I had a choice between San Diego State University, which is regional, and an Executive MBA class of 15 with a cost of $65,000 for two years. Or I could spring for a second-tier $180,000 for a Singapore/UCLA program with national prestige and a semi-international network, or a Kellogg Northwestern $210,000 which is a top-ranked international MBA with an international class size of 500. Here, like in law school the rank matters. Less than in law school because even bottom-ranked University of Phoenix will get you a job, but a top-ranked will connect you to a top-ranked network and get you trained by top-ranked professors. I got into all three and chose the top-ranked. Of course, paying off that top-ranked requires you to then get the top-ranked job with top-ranked pay but also top-ranked expectations.

Getting into MBA

So getting into an MBA requires having good grades, a good resume, good references, and a good GRE/GMAT score (Appendix D). With some programs like an Executive MBA, a good resume and a great intake interview can be more important than a good GPA (as was in my case). In fact, the process can feel more like trying to get a job than getting into school. Approach it from a perspective of getting the most amount of “offers” than about getting into one school and you will have the most amount of choices to pick from. How to pick a graduate school can also be tough but I would create a similar system as one described in Chapter 0.

Getting Most out of MBA

When I started the MBA, I wanted to get the most out of every class. I spent hours with books and assignments, with a goal of at least a 3.5 GPA (I should have aimed to hire) and making sure I get every bit out of the professor as I could (to justify spending the money). But I screwed up. It is far more important to work during an MBA (outside job) where you can implement the lessons. It is far more important to network and interact with the students and professors and build friendships and relationships. The learning is often not so intense (in most classes) that it can’t be done at end of the semester and it will stick with you.

However, you can’t redo the time in school, you can’t redo the relationships and connections. Those are made in class and outside of class during that MBA class, and if you do not find the people who get you and people who you can rely on for the rest of your career, and be someone for those people to make their network stronger, then you may have wasted the money and should have instead done an on-line program, where you get the knowledge but not the network.

Final Thought

In my MBA, in addition to entrepreneurs and corporate white-collar executives and workers, there were MIT professors, physicians, engineers, and scientists. The people had small businesses and large businesses or they were simply running non-profits. Whatever it was, they were smart and passionate people who were running organizations with passion. An MBA can be a great investment or a waste of time and money, that all depends less on what you do before you start the MBA but entirely on what you do after and the network you build during it. So be confident before you start on why you’re doing it, but on what you envision doing with that knowledge and network. You will still be a Master of Bullshit Administration, but you will be qualified to do it.

Chapter 19: Master’s or Ph.D. Doctor or Meh.

Ph.D. or M.Sc. or M.A.
Home or Abroad
Getting Through

I’ve spoken a bit about Ph.D. in the Graduate school chapter. I’d like to also go into a Master’s here because, in a sense, there’s an option here to go Master’s, Ph.D., or both.

Ph.D. or M.S.

In the United States, you can have a choice, to go Master’s and have it convert to Ph.D., or go Ph.D. and leave early with a Master’s. Going in for a Ph.D. in technical majors means your Master’s is paid for whereas in liberal arts and arts you have to pay for it.

Ph.D. is a way towards teaching, research, and expertise. Master’s is a better qualification for many jobs and entrance qualification for some. My wife for instance is a Speech-Language Pathologist. This is a job that in some countries is good enough as a BS. In America, you need an MA in this field. A Master’s in Biology, Chemistry, or Environmental Science is often an entry-level degree while in Physics a Master’s is unnecessary and if you will do a graduate degree then a Ph.D. is fine.

You will have to take a GRE to get in and you can read Chapter 16 on how to take that test. It is important to know what you want to study and who is doing what you want to do so you can apply to their lab. When I applied for my MSc, I contacted about 6 professors and two of them were interested in my background and in the end, I got one to sponsor me. Thus, while you think you will work on disease A, chances are that you will be working on something completely unrelated.

A student in one of the labs where I worked had no intention of working on measuring CO2, he wanted to work with animals. But, the animal labs were not interested in his background but the CO2 lab was. Thus he ended up getting a Ph.D. in measuring CO2. He wasn’t happy about it but such is the path of many researchers and many lives, sometimes your path is as you envision it, but that is very rare, most often chance and serendipity drive the way.

One thing to consider is that M.S. is usually two to three years, a Ph.D. can be four to six. That’s a long time to not earn money. Although I’ve never heard a Ph.D. complain about their money, it is something that one must consider that you most likely will be poor for a long time.

Home or Abroad

There are often options to study in a foreign country. You will rarely see your family but you will get to have a great life experience. I studied in the Middle East for my MBA and MSc and it allowed me to have a unique life experience to travel, get to know a different culture, and save a lot of money as often the same degree can be cheaper or free in another country but carry the same pedigree and learning. This is great if there’s a specific expert in your field who is in another country or you just want to live somewhere else for a while. Many international students come to America to get their graduate degrees every year, but few Americans take that opportunity.

One of my friends got his Ph.D. in Scotland. He found a University in a city with a Ryan Air airport which allowed him to travel all over Europe on the cheap every weekend. Another friend of mine went to a school in Tel Aviv. She got her graduate degree there and built up her resume and grades and found a husband before going back to the US for Vet school.

One thing to be careful about is that a foreign country is foreign, don’t expect the school to be accomodating or easy. There will be a culture shock. My school in ME was difficult to navigate especially administration, it took some time to get used to the fact that they expected me to figure things out. So we ended up creating a What’s Ap group with other international students and helping each other. Of course, that meant that we were always hanging out together instead of with the local students, so one must be careful not to create a mini-community of people just like you and not take the chance to be with the locals, which is half the point.

Graduate School Mindset

I’d like to end this chapter with a reminder that graduate school is not like a Bachelor’s Degree. It requires more autonomy. If you do research it requires long hours in a lab where the professor will not hold your hand. You will have to rely on fellow students and independent learning.

The tests and material will be less chewed for you but tested at a higher level. You may need to work as a TA that requires a lot of hours while still expected to keep a high GPA and make progress on your thesis.

It is important to pick a thesis that your advisor can help you with. I picked one that I did not have the expertise in and I after six months of no progress realized that I will have to abandon it to finish on time.

Graduate school will change you from someone who does classes and homework to someone who can be an independent thinker. Someone who can read scientific and high-level literature and write at a high level. This requires commitment and work. So what helped me is to create a note for myself when times got tough. My note said: I am doing this because I am changing who I am. I imagined that my brain was being transformed into a scientist, that my ability to think and work was stretched just like a body of a scrawny guy into the body of a bodybuilder. If you can think this way, it will allow you to keep going, push through and finish.

Lots of people are smart enough to get into Graduate School, but not everyone can work hard enough and persist long enough to finish it.

Chapter 20 Writing a Thesis/Dissertation

“I’m not afraid of the Thesis” said Luke Skywalker. Yoda- “You will be…”

Writing a thesis is no cakewalk. People can spend anywhere from weeks to years working on their Master’s Thesis. The reason why I think it can be so difficult is that at no time in our graduate education does anyone teach us how to write one, how to prepare for one, and therefore, nothing really prepares you for it.

I attempted to work on my methods and outline and introduction a year into my thesis. It was for nothing. For one thing, you may not truly understand your thesis as a Master’s student because you work on a project for a graduate student or professor who has years of thought behind the project. Another reason is that your methods and ideas are ever-changing. The third reason is that the research brain is so different from the synthesis brain and it is virtually impossible to use both.

This is what in part makes the thesis so difficult. Because as you write the thesis, a lot of times new ideas or thoughts will come to mind on data analysis, or perhaps you notice something in the data that is wrong. So you have to switch back to programming and coding and analysis that you may have in some ways forgotten after weeks of not touching the code. Then once you get the new data or plots, you go back to the thesis, where you have to again skip the papers, read what you wrote and try to make sense of it all.

For me, there was an added issue of becoming diagnosed with ADHD. People with ADHD fall into two categories: those who fail at life and those who continuously work to compensate for ADHD to marginally succeed if just avoid constant failures. My life was pockmarked with people thinking I was smart but lazy and careless.

This is normal for someone who has undiagnosed ADHD. It was normal for me to have slow starts, to be up until midnight before I start work ( I’m writing this at 1 am), it was normal to wait until the professor emailed me (deadlines are a godsend for ADHD people). So I will go over some of the tactics and strategies that I developed to make progress on my thesis. I was on medication for less than a week (it helped A LOT) but I couldn’t continue due to side effects, so all of these tactics helped me and will help you ADHD or not.

Read the book “How to Write a Thesis” by Umberto Eco

This is an old book but he writes so well on why you write a thesis, how to make a bibliography, how to create a logical dissertation, how to spend time writing etc etc etc. This book just makes you feel more prepared and like you know what is expected and where you are going. I read it months into the process and once I did, I feel it accelerated things.

Keep a notebook and write in it

Having a notebook helped me have a place where all information was placed but also where I could write ideas and tasks. There are many good resources. A book by Fitzgerald said to put in KP for key point, * for Action Item and ! for an important idea that allows you to see what you have to do. One problem for me is I forget to read my notes, but it is good to have them.

Journal

Writing in a journal was very helpful to keep my thoughts in place, to review what I did, the mistakes I made, and what else I have to do. Even a short entry of “didn’t get anything done” was great because then I would think why I didn’t get done. One of the issues of ADHD is a lack of introspection and understanding of what you’re thinking, doing, and why. Journaling helped with that.

Deadlines I hate talking to people about failing, but as months dragged on I realized that I need accountability. As it turns out, accountability is great for people with ADHD as it puts a fire under our buts. I told my professor that I would let him know about my progress every Tuesday, not for his sake but for mine. It helped a lot!

Spreadsheets Spreadsheets with as much information as I can get on my experiments that I can quickly look up. Each tab in the spreadsheet had important information about the files, about the data. The more organized it was, the easier it was to go back and find the information I needed in my writing. Overall my files were a mess and it was hell to find things, but the spreadsheet with all of the plots and data simplified things. I still made many copies and screwed up and got lost, but it was better than nothing.

Support Network The draft I sent to the professor is atrocious. One issue with ADHD is being terrible at editing because of a lack of ability to sight details. So I had to enlist friends (those poor souls) to read my terrible writing to help me find the logical missteps and terrible grammar and spelling. The more people read the thesis the better.

To help them out, I would send a section at a time, and then as they worked on the next, I’d fix the one they sent me and then forward it to the next person. This way I was going through several rounds with every person. One thing I did was to have people who understood the science least edit first so that clarity was fixed as well as grammar and spelling and then I would send the drafts to the people versed in science who I would not want to torture with bad grammar but instead want to review my scientific thought process.

Routine The more you can create a routine the better. Running, meditating, lack of drinking, working all day, making sure some work gets done, writing out a daily plan, and then working to stick with it are all things that helped me make progress. I even had a plot with the number of hours worked per day to show myself if I am doing better or worse. There is nothing harder for someone with ADHD than a long-term project that requires a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and a lot of thinking, so the more systems you can create, the better. People with ADHD have to move, it helps us think but humans, in general, do better after moving, exercising, calming. Making blood blow through the brain and then taking some time to just sit and de-stress is helpful for all people, but it is a must for anyone with ADHD. When I did not do this, my progress slowed to a crawl.

Print Out The Papers

I had to read over 100 research papers. Because of my terrible memory, I needed to take notes. I also needed to print them out, (it’s not the same as reading them on a computer) and I had to review them over and over again. So if you have to read a lot of research papers (and you will), get a printer and print them out. It will help. An additional thing that helped me was stapling a blank piece of paper to the front of a paper. On this front page I wrote the name of the paper, the name of the first author, the year, and then important notes and references. This created a one-pager reference (learned about this from Astronaut Chris Hadfield) so when I was writing and needed to find the reference, I just went and found it by looking up the first page.

Side Projects (For ADHD People Only)

My wife hates them but the more things I had to do, the more progress I made. When I had all day to work on the thesis, my brain which is incapable of keeping track of time would waste the day. But, if the day was filled with things to do, it would get more work done on the thesis. It created more pressure and that helped me progress. I’m still not done with my thesis (although I’m closer than I ever was). I’m sure with medication, I would have finished a while ago.

However, I am also very proud that I’ve done this well despite not being medicated. The positive thing is that I also developed some techniques that I can use for the rest of my life with many other goals that I set for myself (like a Ph.D.) and perhaps help some of you. So if you have a thesis or dissertation to write, and you are taking a long time, check the problems you have, it may not be your fault, and design your own system that will help you finish your goals. It’s a lot of work, but if it was easy, you wouldn’t be doing it and if Master’s and Ph.D. were easy, everyone would have one.

Final Thought

The most important thing to remember during this process is that this is the reason for the degree, to learn how to read, research and present this research to the world. This is what seperates a Bachelor student from a Master’s student and a Master’s student from a Doctor. This. Not the classes. Not the labwork, the thesis. So as hard as it is, this is why you started the program and you can finish it, even if it takes you two extra years (or three). And to be honest, once you get it, no one will ask how long it took.

Chapter 21: Don’t Be Ambitious, Be Pura Vida

Costa Rican’s have a saying: Pura Vida, which roughly means Full Life. It is not necessarily a rich and successful life, an overly happy life, or life where your dreams are all fulfilled, it’s just full- a life lived to the fullest.

If you are going to college, almost everyone you have ever met told you to study hard, go to a good school, get a good job. But the people you probably wanted to listen to were the crazy ones, the ones who said: follow your dream. They both are crazy, and they are both full of shit.

The reason why neither following your dream nor pure ambition works is because, in the end, it doesn’t matter. In the end, the winners in life are not the ones who make it into the history books, or even the ones with millions in their bank accounts, nor the people with medals adorning their walls or smug with feelings that they “did something”. Those are the nice feelings their friends and family get, the pride and importance by association.

No, the true winners are the ones who will say, “I lived and I had a fucking blast.” Why? Because it doesn’t matter if you are poor, rich, successful, or a loser. What matters is that you lived a life of integrity and had a good time doing it. It means a life without guilt about not spending enough time with your family, no guilt about having fights with your parents, no guilt about backstabbing your friends, no guilt about failing on the job, and no guilt about having to do too much to impress people, including yourself.

At the end of the day, when you’re dying of cancer at thirty or a 100, if you get shot or rollover in a car, at that moment you will say to yourself, “Am I ok with dying? Did I live a good life?” Not, “did I write a book” or “did I make a million?” No, you want to think, “will my kids grow up ok because I gave them a good start, will my wife feel lucky to have married me because I showed her love, do I feel like I explored the world and found out what it is to live in the 21st century?” If you say yes to questions like that, then you won.

As far as picking a job goes, don’t do what others think is cool or what you think is cool. Dreams are made of bullshit. Do what you were born to do. If you like doing something and you’re good at it, make it a profession. If it is not a regular profession, try and find a way to make it one. If you are good at something and you love doing it, do it. And if all of a sudden you don’t like it, then find something else and do that.

Because doing stupid shit you hate is the antithesis of the good life, of the life well-lived.

So don’t be ambitious, don’t follow your dreams, don’t do anything that causes you to work for someone else (including yourself) so much that you miss the most important thing- living life so well that you love every freaking moment of it.

So stop chasing stupid shit, like pride and appreciation, chase Pura Vida.

But, should you ignore my warning, know that there is no greater feeling than finding out just how great your limits are, achieving goals and dreams. There is no greater gift to your kids than knowing that in their blood flows an ability to succeed, to do that which others thought impossible before.

It is that moment, that moment of accomplishment that is the true Pura Vida, and it is the high that people who achieved it chase until their death.

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Appendix