Why This Book?

Hellloo. You are probably a confused high school student, a bored college student, a scared parent, or an exasperated teacher.

Whoever you are, I wrote a book for you over three years ago. But because I keep getting sidetracked, I didn’t publish it.

Then I decided that each week, I would release a chapter. Doing this would get me to not only publish, and go through it, but also actually to get that information to you.

Please enjoy and feel free to leave comments, discuss, leave your advice and concerns and your stories. I love stories!!!

Thanks!

About

Seven Year Degree is a book about a unique college experience. It was written with the student, parent and teacher in mind, to help students with advice and suggestions on how to get through college.

Please feel free to comment, suggest and add your own insights.

Thank you for reading.

To connect with others on Facebook go to www.facebook.com/[sevenyeardegree] (https://www.facebook.com/sevenyeardegree)

Version 1- 2012 Version 2- 2015, slightly less douchy. Version 3- 2021, added portions on graduate school.

Introduction

Why would you read this book? You probably wouldn’t, if it wasn’t for the fact that when I was twenty-two, I dropped out of college because I was tired of only half-trying with no direction in mind. Instead of college, I began to work two jobs. I woke up at six am to slice lettuce and make sandwiches for minimum wage until two, then I would drive twenty miles to watch over a parking lot for another eight hours. I survived off of 10 cent cup-o-noodles and split a room with a student who stayed up all night playing video games.

I was working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day to save money just to go back to school. Before this experience, I was a lousy student, working half-heartedly without any real motivation. After six months of tasting the prospects of unskilled labor and working as hard as I did, I realized that I did not want to work like that for the rest of my life. I realized that I needed an education, more importantly, now I knew why I needed an education: because by comparison to life without a degree, college was a breeze.

Working after college as an engineer, 40 hours a week, in an office with coffee and perks, earning four times as much as working at that deli, traveling the world, eating out, while enjoying fun social life was the reward.

If you’re reading this, I’d like to remind you that you are an amazingly lucky person. You are about to become one of the very small percentage of human beings in the long history of civilization who have been blessed with the opportunity of pursuing a formal education. In four years you will know more and be able to do more than most people who lived on earth before you ever imagined was possible. You don’t even have to be a genius or do something that dramatically changes the world, for you will know more than many past geniuses and you will change the world simply by going to work every day after you graduate, possibly even before then.

The choices that face you will challenge you, but whether you make the right one or the wrong one, it won’t matter because all of them will help you to grow as a human being. I’m sure the many choices you face already seem disorienting, but by taking them on one at a time, by sticking to some while changing your mind on others, you will slowly begin to realize your true self.

You may be like me: an idealist, perhaps you are under a lot of parental pressure to do something that may not be right for you, but unlike me, you will have this book to help you avoid the pitfalls I fell into. You will avoid many mistakes by using my story to anticipate the many challenges and to prepare for any obstacles you may face, allowing you to live well and to tap your fullest potential. I may not change the world, but if I can help you on your way to becoming your best, I will be happy with my contribution to our planet.

Why I wrote this book

As a senior in college, friends of the family came to me over and over again to ask the same questions about college. They may have gone to Universities in their native countries if they were immigrants, or went to college so long ago that they forgot how it used to be and can no longer give relevant advice; they were clueless as to how they best ought to prepare their kids for college and how to talk to them in a way that would actually get through to them.

I graduated by overcoming the many pitfalls I faced along the way by learning from my friends and from my own personal mistakes. So, I decided that while my memory is not too rusty and my contacts have not taken their last exams, I ought to write a little guide to college for kids and parents from the perspective of someone who did not take the traditional way there.

I wanted to provide a guide that is in my opinion far more relevant to the many people who, like me, enter college with no idea as to what they want to get out of it and are struggling with direction and motivation. This is a guide that shows that even if you’ve struggled for a year or two and changed your major more than once, you still have a chance to find success and enjoyment in your college experience.

I begin with my story as an illustration, but feel free to skip around and read the individual chapters as needed, to keep this book as a reference as certain topics become more relevant to your situation. One thing that seems to always hold true is that one cannot accept advice until one is ready for it. Some people, however, never are. However, I hope that you can take this advice and avoid the heartache and struggles I went through.

Part 0: Before College

First you gotta get in and pick one.

Chapter -1 - High School (or BS) and Entrance Exams

When you are reading this, I hope that most standardized tests will be gone, as most of them are just a way to keep poor and dark people out of college. But, if they are still around, you might as well learn how to study for one without paying thousands of dollars for expensive tutoring.

The first thing to know about standardized tests is that no one does well the first time. Not me, not my friends who went to Yale or Harvard, not those who went to a local community college. The difference between the Yale and the community college grad is that the Yale applicant took it a second time.

The first time you take the standardized test, you are calibrating. You are in a stranger’s room doing strange things. You will look around you, you will look at the test, you will look at the proctor and all these things will make you do worse because they will distract you. You should expect to do poorly as much as a first-time Olympian.

So if you would like to do well on a test, what is needed isn’t intelligence, but discipline.

Step 1

What you need to do is first know where you’d like to go and what the scores they accept.

Step 2

Once you’ve done that, take the test. After you take the test (and bombed it), that’s when you put that score that you researched on a post-it for the school you’d like to attend and paste it on your mirror or somewhere where you will see it every day.

Step 3

Get books from the library on the test. You may need to go to multiple libraries. Try to get the most recent books. At this point, you’ll probably be able to sign up on Princeton Review or GRE or GMAT or MCAT website for the test and they often have at least one practice test. If there are two, take the first one and save the other for right before you take the test again.

Step 4

Study with a schedule. Set a date for when you’d like to take the test, break up the reading of chapters and taking of practice tests, and set the time so you have to do something every day, at least one chapter. Plan on spending 2-4 hours a day. I did general studying during the day and slowly worked through the vocabulary at night. Working with flashcards. Often looking up word use through google helped remember words.

You will finish all problems and books and then start taking tests. Take the test with the essays. Take the test so many times you are tired of it. Register for accounts in the books which will often give more practice tests and take written tests and basically take so many tests where you are tired and bored of tests and then take some more. Take the tests timed and with breaks and no social media or distractions.

If you reach the planned date and you’re not tired of the test, extend the deadline. You want to be so practiced that you can’t stand the test and then take a few more.

Step 5

At this point, you should be hitting a good score all the time. You had gone through all the questions you got wrong and all the tests you could find. It is time to take the test. Make sure you have earplugs. Take with you warm clothes. Grab food and snacks during breaks and hydration. You need to be prepared like a mind olympian.

Now all this will be hard but you can do it. One thing that you will have to do is motivate yourself. What I did is motivate myself with idea that each point on the test could be worth thousands of dollars, major career opportunities, life-changing events. All you have to do is struggle for a couple of months, the reward will be years of better pay and opportunities. Do it!

Follow these steps and I’m sure you’ll do great. Send me a note from Harvard if this helps :).

Chapter 0: Still High School- Picking your ideal college and getting accepted.

In hindsight, I probably should have waited and matured a bit before starting college. My High School, a charter school located in an affluent area of coastal southern California, was more concerned with giving its students ample time and coaching them to pad their college applications than it was about teaching them how to work and study hard, thus I was able to just coast by and never had to actually do much work. As a result, while we all had exemplary applications and our school had high college acceptance rates into very good schools, I came into college completely unprepared for the workload. Frankly, I find it amazing that I even finished college. Even now, I still don’t know how to study efficiently and I’ve never really developed the ability to find my focus. I am not an A-plus student, nor even a B student. I did not have some higher calling to push me onward. I am just a regular guy, too foolish to know when to quit and a bit too ambitious for my own good. But if I had developed the skills to study, focus and find the drive to succeed, college would have been a lot easier. That’s why getting those skills early on will guide you better through college and life more than anything else in this book.

In spite of my shortcomings, through pure force of will and the desire to prove my naysayers wrong, as well as to vindicate those who believed in me, I managed to do what often seemed the impossible and completed my degree. I feel that sometimes, those who accomplish what they set out to do, don’t always start with great confidence; they learn to have self-confidence through a series of ups and downs. A good example is Marilyn Monroe, the shy and awkward stutterer, who re-engineered everything about herself in her quest to become an actress. Or even Abraham Lincoln. He was uneducated, poor, and belligerent, a troubled youth with some serious anger issues. Yet, he took the time to learn law and made himself one of history’s greatest leaders. I learned much from books, from friends, and from my own personal experiences. You will have plenty of experiences of your own to learn from, but by taking a look at my experiences as well, you will at least be one step ahead of me and won’t repeat my mistakes, though you will be making a few of your own mistakes instead!

There is no one right path to college

My parents are immigrants from Ukraine. They understood that I had to do well in school and that I had to go to college in order to have a good life, but they did not know how it should be done. Luckily, I learned from friends and counselors that there are certain requirements that everyone has to complete in order to attend a university: one must take standardized tests, one must do well in the required classes and finally, one must apply with a well-honed application.

Of coruse you also need a portfolio of accomplishments, volunteer work, leadership, etc. The thing that no one tells you is that how well you do in those extracurricular areas is not very important, because every college decides on an individual basis and makes up their mind according to objective and subjective benchmarks. So it is important to know what you want to do with your life, what kind of setting you to thrive in, and to pick a school that fits these goals and preferences. Once you know that, you need to find out what the particular requirements are to get into that school and make sure you have them all completed.

In my case, I knew that I wanted to go to Berkeley. But my PSAT’s (practice SATs) were sub-par and I had a poor start in my first year of High School. However, growing up in San Diego meant that I had been to UCSD on several occasions, not necessarily for academic activities, but at the very least for social ones.

I was there my senior year for a huge rave. The Price Center, the main plaza, was full of kids dressed up in costumes: big fluffy pants, fairy wings, loud banging music, and screaming kids. Nonetheless, my first choice was still Berkeley, for the atmosphere, prestige, and last but not least (and often the biggest reason for most): it was well away from home and gave me some distance from my parents!

To my disappointment, but not such a surprise, I did not get into Berkeley, nor did I get into UCSD. But, I did not give up that easily. I found out that one can appeal the decision. I wrote an appeal and sent it with letters of recommendation from my teachers to Berkeley. I didn’t care about my rejection letter from UCSD but under advice from my mother (listen to your mother), I figured I may as well bring an appeal to UCSD and since it is so close to my house, I came by on admit day and submitted it in person to one of the counselors.

Soon after, I received rejections from both and resigned myself to attending the one college I did get accepted to, UC Santa Barbara. A month later and about a week after sending my first check to UCSB, UCSD sent me a letter of acceptance. My dad was there when I opened it and when I read the decision he picked me up off the ground in a giant hug. I didn’t even know the little man had it in him. I think that was the proudest he had ever been of me, it certainly was the most he ever showed it.

My point here is that you don’t have to be the best, but you do have to persevere; don’t give up, and use every avenue available to you until you absolutely must move on.

Once I was accepted I had a choice between UCSD and UCSB. I made a matrix and for each college I gave ratings and assigned the varying aspects a number 1-5 from most important to least important, weighing the pros and cons of each school and tallying up the points. With the final counts added up, UCSD came out the clear winner.

At one point or another, we all must make a choice, and everyone has their own criteria. I made my choice to go to UCSD for various reasons. It was essentially the best place for me to go, given the choices I had. When parents and high school grads ask me how to choose, I would say that it depends on what’s important to you. I will go further into this topic and detail the criteria I think one should consider when making a choice in a later chapter.

Part 1: The College Part

The thing you have been told about but never told about.

Chapter 1: First Day

“First day in a new place everyone feels the same, a little bit weird.”

In this chapter we’ll cover:
* Making friends * Moving into dorms * Places to eat * Dances and parties * The crazy, weird, and religious People

How do you prepare for your first day of college? Clean shirt, shave, and a haircut- if that’s your thing. It really doesn’t matter. It’s like any other day, just in a new place. You’ll feel a bit out of place for a moment, but you will meet people with similar interests who are just as new as you, and just as eager to find new friends. Soon, you’ll get used to the new surroundings and then, before you even realize it, you’re good to go. The most important thing I learned is when I realized that the more I relaxed, the more confidence I had, the more that freed me to lose a critical, nagging voice in my head that echoed all the doubts of my past teachers and parents. And with that inner critic gone, the more I relaxed and felt in college. Just remember, free and relaxed doesn’t mean stupid.

Now the first day for most students is called “Admit Day” or something that sounds equally descriptive. If you’re lucky like me, you’ll be shown around the campus by a really cute orientation leader (this has nothing to do with orientation, you just might pay attention better if they are attractive). Admit Day is the day when most students arrive, move in and mingle. They go through orientation, the two days of get-you-acquainted-to-college frenzy, and the day you move in. It is also the week of parties before you start studying.

I don’t know if this exists in non-American Colleges but if it doesn’t, it should. In UC San Diego there are five colleges (now six). Some colleges studied and some partied; mine definitely studied, except for that first week, and that was the week to work making new friends, otherwise, it would be a tough go for the next year once people went into study mode.

About friends, if for whatever reason making friends in High School was not easy, you’re in luck, because nothing could be simpler in college. Everyone arrives with a blank slate. So be cool, be respectful, be yourself and if you still can’t find like-minded people, join some clubs. And of course, smile. People like smiles.

As I said before, at UCSD the window to make friends was limited to that first week. After that, people settled into their classes and formed into the groups they found that first week.

That first week, right before arriving at the dorms, you probably hope to have good roommates hope they are relaxed, honest and helpful, and you hope they turn out to be fun people to be around, and at the very least, know when to leave you alone. You hope that all of you can go out and have a good time that first week, meet all the girls/guys you can and make some good friends. You never know, you just might make the friend with whom you will eventually start a company as Steve Jobs did, and you’ll make millions of dollars together, or maybe you’ll meet that girl/guy you will someday marry. The probability is that you won’t, but one thing is certain, if you don’t go out there and meet people, you will have a lot less fun and have a much smaller support network.

As far as the clubs and majors go, during admit day you will have everything at your disposal. During admit day, they will show you all the departments, clubs and sports. You will get to see them and have a chance to ask questions and really open your eyes to all the available possibilities. You can go talk to professors from Cognitive Science or Humanities. You can check out the SAE (a club that builds cars) or the Koala club that writes a satire newspaper or even the DVC, a club for DJs. You can stop by the fraternity tables and see if that is right for you and they will probably give you an invite to their parties that week. See what’s there and then pick and choose. It’s about meeting as many people as possible so that you can find the ones that will make your college experience easier and more fulfilling.

On my admit day, I met a tall Sikh, Ronnie, and a girl, Natasha. I still keep in touch with them a bit today. Through them, I met other people who are still good friends with me today.

Even though I was a commuter student, those first weeks I would hang out in Ronnie’s room and we would go to parties with people in the dorms, eat together and even study together. Some of his roommates were in my classes so when I showed up to class, I felt comfortable knowing some people in the class because I had someone to sit with, exchange notes, and study.

The kids I met at the dorms would go out to eat together at the cafeterias as well as join up for parties, dances, and games. Some of their friends joined intramural teams and it really opened up options for things I could do. A lot of times we just can’t pick the activity, so we go along with what our friends are doing.

One thing I wasn’t expecting is the crazy, weird, and religious people. For instance, there was an older guy in the center of the campus wearing a suit. He would preach and yell for hours. His preaching consisted of him calling girls “whores” and shouting that all of us were going to hell. There were weird kids wearing weird clothes, sometimes bums came on campus, until after a while weird just became the new normal.

But this, in a way, was diversity. It wasn’t all bad, there were church groups and Muslim associations, and Jewish cookouts. Compared to high school, it really was a lot more than I anticipated. With 20,000 people, there was something going on for everyone all the time.

Chapter 2: Classes

“Work four years, coast forty.” -Mr. Carnevale

• Registering
• Which times are good
• Which classes are good
• How important are they

Remember the movie “Clerks”? If not, let me just tell you about the part where a guidance counselor is trying to find the perfect set of eggs. He is crouching on the floor of the mini-mart and he puts a carton of eggs through a set of ridiculous tests to find the perfect egg, as the other shoppers look at him, wondering why he’s doing all of this. One of the characters, Randall asks that if your job was as pointless as his, wouldn’t you go nuts as well?

This should be a guideline for you in terms of deciding which classes to take. Follow your gut or recommendation of other students, and forget the councilors. After listening to councilors and realizing that their advice was always wrong, I decided to never let anyone tell me which classes to take.

A lot of students, including myself, would take on a massive load of classes only to fail or drop most of them because the councilors pressured us to load up to graduate on time, or we would take the wrong classes, or even get coerced into the wrong major. Listen to yourself and believe in yourself. Take a few classes and if you do well, then challenge yourself and take more.

College is much tougher than High School, so don’t go all-in until you are ready for it and you know that you are passionate and interested in your major. There is no shame in taking the first semester easy while you get calibrated and adjusted to college life, in fact, it will put you on a much better path to success than loading up with soul-crushing basic requirements.

Classes, How important are they?

“Can you put up the circuit for an inverting amplifier and write out the equation for us please?” asked the manager. There were three other engineers in the room. They were all firing off questions one by one with various tasks for me to complete. This was my interview for a job and man was I glad that I had just gone over this question in class and paid attention.

If you put something on your resume, be ready to back up your claims that you took that course and learned something from it with concrete action. This is why you should take every course seriously, and if you can or won’t, then you are in the wrong place because you are wasting your time, your money, and your life.

All classes are useful, and the only people that say that they never use their classes are C students and teachers (sorry teachers). The people who say that are those who don’t use the classes because they never learned anything when taking them in the first place.

I use all of the classes I did well in, very often, if not daily. Because every time I watch TV, read news, read books, go to work, I use Humanities, English, Maths, Sociology and I use them in general conversations to understand people who are different than me.

If you never took Art or Acting, how do you expect to connect to an actor or an artist? You can’t (or at least not as well), and if you can’t connect to the people around you then you will not have a fulfilling life, and you will not do as well in life because it’s true, it’s not what you know but, who you know. However, to get to know people, you have to know a lot about everything.

Better grades also mean better perks (aka options)! When you finish high school, you want options. That’s why you work hard in high school, to have more colleges as options. When you finish high school it’s not the end, it’s just the beginning because you’re out of your parents’ house and now you’re free and you need options more than ever.

So if you want to pursue a good job or an additional degree, you want to be able to apply to as many places as possible. For that, you need to know a lot and get good grades! Because ultimately, grades really do matter if you want to get into good graduate schools, which will give you a lot more options in life.

These days, a bachelor’s degree is often not enough to secure a comfortable middle-class job, in many cases you need at least a Master’s degree or some sort of trade certification.

Good grades can also get you money. Not only can good grades get you scholarships, but they can also get you a better-paying job. Just think, a few years of hard work can allow you to party your head off later on if that’s what you want, working hard now, in the long run, will give you the liberty to buy a nice car or travel all you want without loans or worries about money. Imagine all the time you can spend studying instead of working to get better grades and get paid better than all those other students who sacrifice study time to work at the cafeteria.

Also, those who have better grades get front-of-the-line privileges when registering, so you’re not stressing out about your schedule and graduating faster. You can be in control of when to wake up when to study when to work and keep doing better in school.

For instance, everyone I knew who had 8 am classes, especially out of those who commuted, had difficulty making good grades in those classes. Imagine avoiding having to take those classes in the first place because you get preferential registration?

Which classes are good? Well, that depends on the professor. At UCSD we had C.A.P.E. reviews, but after I graduated we had websites as well where you could find useful information about professors. I would generally trust the A students more than C-students. C students hate most professors and blame everyone but themselves. So ask the best students you know and they will point you to the best professors and best classes.

Difficulty rating Classes are like video games, you set the difficulty rating too high and you’re not going to pass the level, set it too low and it’s a cakewalk without any true learning. Either way, it’s no fun. Forget about other students and your parent’s pride. Make sure you do well and make sure it is challenging to you but not impossible.

If it’s not challenging, then make it challenging by asking the Professor for more problems or harder problems. Don’t be a loser; learn something! And do your best to find a way to see how the class will be useful. If you hate what you’re studying, you will not learn well, you will not work well, and you will quit.

So get the worried voice of your parents out of your head and study that which you could study even if you weren’t paying for it. If you learn what you love, you will be good at it. The last thing we need is more mediocre people.

I remember some classes were required, and I struggled and that’s OK, some classes are required but I liked learning those subjects anyway. I knew it probably would come in handy even though I just didn’t seem to get it.

I knew Quantum Mechanics was necessary, even if I found it incomprehensible, but still, it was a must. When I went through my classes in Optics, I coasted because I was like a sponge, absorbing everything I could get my hands on. That’s the feeling you want to have in the classes relevant to your major, and if that’s not happening in your chosen subject/major, then for God’s sake! Get out and find something that does!!!!

Chapter 3: Studying, No One Wants To, But Some Know How-To

Why you study will determine how you study.

1. Why study?
2. Prep before
3. Review after
4. Notes during
5. Homework
6. Tests
7. Groups and distractions
8. Place of study
9. Asking for Help

There was this time that I was at an upscale bar, listening to music and watching women dance on tables. That’s when it hit me, if I didn’t have a degree, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford this bar, and neither would most other people there. Almost everyone in the bar, no matter what they did for a living, had gone to college. At the very least, education gives you the ability to afford a pretty fun life.

You got through high school and now you’re on to college; so long as you pass you’re good, right? WRONG!

Remember why you worked so hard through high school? Do you remember why you participated in ten clubs, three sports and practically killed yourself for the grades? Do you remember why you worked harder than the slackers to get into college?

I’ll remind you, you wanted a good job. You wanted to be able to live comfortably and not struggle for minimum wage. You didn’t want to sweep floors. You wanted money and a career and etc. So many of us lose sight of that fact once we get into college, taste freedom, and start to have fun.

But once in college, it is not over, you are not safe, you haven’t “arrived.” To get the job, you may need grad school, and to keep the job or to get through grad school you will definitely need a good work ethic and a solid foundation of knowledge to do well in school and secure a successful career.

So before you say, “After high school, I can relax, there’s no homework in college,” or “I’ll study right before the test,” buckle up, and get ready to study as you’ve never studied before. It may save you some bad grades, some study time, some good playtime and it may mean the difference between a dead-end job and a wide-open playing field.

Hitting the books If there is one thing you take away from this book, it should be that you have to wake up every day with the realization that you are at school to get your degree. You should always keep your goal in mind. This doesn’t mean you have to be boring and one-track mind. The hardest partying people in my fraternity were also the ones who studied the hardest. They simply prioritized things well, especially their courses.

Remember, you are there to do your best, to learn the most, to open doors, secure a comfortable future, and to have that piece of paper to show to employers and to yourself that you can do four years of intensive and hard studying and that you are up to the task at hand. However, there are easy ways and there are hard ways to go about it.

A lot of intelligent people whiz through high school and get into college without realizing the difference in what is expected of them now until their midterms or finals hit. Sometimes they never do. Old habits die hard and old thought patterns die even harder. Many times after coming home to a bad grade I thought, “Well, that sucked. I’m going to study hard for the next one. I’m not going to waste time next quarter,” only to have the same thing happen all over again the next time around. But because I never thought about why I studied, I would later just slack off and forget to take college seriously. I lost sight of the goal.

Studying is hard and unless you have a battle plan. Make a schedule of what and when and how you’re going to study because unless you create the right environment for success, you will not be successful. You have to know what you are working towards, why you are working towards it, and work every day to work towards achieving your goal.

You may be an 18-year-old, you may want to focus on the “four best years of your life” and feel that it’s all about fun, but you have to remember that that attitude will get you nowhere. College will go by and you will just have loans and debt. Instead, focus during college, study by yourself or with a small, focused group. Remember that you must earn your fun and that having fun that you’ve earned with hard work just feels so much better.

Plus, that best “four years of your life” is a lie. If you do it right, your time after graduation will be amazing. In my mid-twenties, I traveled the world, partied with friends all over the United States, went on road trips and weekend getaways. I was able to do it all with cash I earned from jobs that would have been unattainable had I not worked hard in college and finished my degree.

How to do it
Everyone has their own system, but I will tell you first the systems that do not work, no matter how much you fool yourself into thinking they do.

The first failed system is studying with your friends. Unless that group is quiet, without internet or social networks, without chatter, and with books out in front and with a solid goal of how long and how much to study. If you do not have a plan, you are not going to be productive, but will only waste valuable study and playtime. Avoid those groups.

The second path to failure is studying with the TV or Internet on, as well as most kinds of music. They are distractions. Coffee shops are distractions, especially ones which are not specifically catering to people that want to study. There you will hear other people, be constantly hungry and your focus will be constantly interrupted by gossip, phones, and the conversations around you.

If you are studying a difficult subject, find a quiet place or a place with some white noise where you can have at least fifteen minutes with zero interruptions so that you can get into study mode. After that, you will be able to study for a good while despite any small interruptions.

That’s all you need, just fifteen minutes of willpower and then momentum will carry you through the rest.

Don’t spend time “reading the chapter” Studying without a goal is absolutely a no-go. If you have homework, don’t spend time “reading the chapter.” I wasted so much time reading a paragraph over and over, with the homework sitting by the side until finally there was no more time and I just had to start answering the homework questions. At that point, I would often go through the texts and quickly find the answers I needed.

This desperation at the end led me to the most efficient path, which was to scan the text before class, scan the notes after, and then scan the text before starting the homework. This way you get the understanding of where to go in the textbook or notes to find the answers to the homework, and then you will have the time to let your creativity take you on tangents and to learn more about the subject.

Sometimes, we just don’t have enough time to learn everything, and often, we don’t actually need to. We need to learn the concepts that the teacher wants us to learn and then we need to take in only that which will help us in our future interests. It’s not about learning everything, but about learning enough to know where to go back later, and learning such that you can use the information in s useful way in the future. Concepts will stick with you long after the details have faded from memory. What often happens is that as you learn to find information easily it leads to a life with little to no stress. And life without stress is so much more enjoyable during that last week at the end of class.

The best method I managed to find was when I was doing my MBA and MS at the same time. I had a lot of work and a lot to study and little time. So I would look at the reading and homework I had for the week and I would divide them by the days I had. Usually, this meant that I would have to do 2-3 homework problems a day and about 20-30 pages of reading. This was manageable and quantifiable. It was clear when I was on track and not on track. When you instead break up the work by chapters, a long chapter can take you more than a day, and if you are not making progress you can get discouraged. If you try to do homework in one day, you may also get discouraged. So divide the work into equal chunks and it will be easier to complete.

Sometimes, you have to cram
There are tests you can cram for and there are tests you can’t. For conceptual classes, it is better to do problems and get your needed sleep to be fresh and awake when you see a problem you haven’t seen before on the test. That way instead of freaking out, you can try to figure it out starting with the basics and working backward.

For classes like history on the other hand, if you fell behind for some reason and you now have to fit three months of information then by all means: cram, cram…

My favorite way to study for those tests was to compile a list of words and concepts and find those in the book. You will end up getting a decent understanding of what happened.

Obviously, the best policy is to avoid the need for cramming by studying throughout the year. The week before finals is about consolidation of information, review of earlier material, and last little details. If you’re still learning new information the day before your exam, you’ve been studying wrong.

Don’t be a chump
Ask for help; even if it feels too late. It might mean an extra five percent in the end and an extra concept that you will learn. I know, it feels awkward and scary to look the professor in the eye and feel that look of judgment because you feel clueless and irresponsible. But hey, you probably won’t see them again after this class and he/she may have no idea that you are clueless just from one question. If you’re still embarrassed, you can phrase it in such a way that makes you feel better such as “I feel silly asking this but I keep hearing this term and I’m embarrassed to ask what it means because I still don’t get it.”

What may actually happen is that the question may not be stupid after all and it may prompt an intelligent discussion. Imagine my surprise when I found out that electrons are still an unknown substance, they have never officially been seen directly. So if a basic question about an electron isn’t trivial, your question probably isn’t trivial either.

Also, remember, you’re in college, which means you’re not an idiot unless of course, you act like one by refusing to ask for help.

A personal story about how I’ve done exactly that: I took this computational physics class. I got a D in the class before I withdrew from it twice. Every time I took it, I would come to class with a smug look at the beginning of the semester expecting to ace it, only to fall into the same routine at the end by assuming I could do it without help. It was a hard class and by the third time, I realized that I needed help.

On the third time, finally, I broke down and admitted that this was not possible for me to do on my own. I went to office hours. I got a tutor and studied with other smart kids. In the end, I did better. I was able to catch Professor’s mistakes during lecture and at the end of the quarter, I got a B. This is to show that it does not matter how the professor sees you. In the end, the only thing of import is the desire to learn and the grade you get in the class. Those are the ultimate judges.

Studying for Exams Obviously one of the toughest things about school is of course exams. They are stressful, they are long and they are difficult.

This is how I studied as an undergrad: I usually stress about it a lot and so I put it off. As I get closer to the date, I procrastinate, clean, go on social media until there is no more time. Then I cram and then I fail.

Here is how I study as a graduate student: In essence, I study the way I would prepare for a big race or a big competition. At the end of my studies, I make a study schedule. I break up the material into even chunks with a day for a practice test and some rest. I set a day for each portion of the class and I find that it is easiest to review material at night before I sleep and then complete practice problems in the morning when the brain is fresh (and also probably the time you will take the exam).

When you complete problems, either have a solution set or ask others what they got. Then go over the wrong ones and try to solve them again.

Two or three days before the test, solve a practice exam. Again go over the problems you got wrong. Try to relax the night before, maybe just go over the material lightly one more time.

Day of the exam, trust your studies. So the key to studying well is not smarts, but managing your stress and anxiety. The way to manage it is not to think of all the stuff you have to study or how you don’t understand the material but to make a plan.

Of course, this is easier in Graduate school or at schools where you have fewer courses and they are spread out. In my undergrad, we often had a week for all of the finals and usually three or four of them. This means you often have to begin a week before the final material is done. But the key is still to plan out your studies hour by the hour instead of day by day and then work the plan.

Resources Some other resources include some reading, but it’s ok, you’re in college to read and learn, so you won’t mind:

The Anxiety Toolkit: a great book on dealing with all sorts of anxiety by Alice Boyes.

Getting Things Done by David Allan on how to set a plan and work it.

Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg: how to identify a bad habit, break it and create a new one.

Chapter 4: The Filler Clubs, aka Student Organizations

• Finding the right one
• Professional
• Social
• Starting one
• Benefits

In addition to stamina, intelligence, and physical prowess, one needs other skills in life, skills that a lot of students develop while involved in one of the hundreds of student organizations that exist on college campuses. They allow you to develop your interests, social abilities, widen social networks and develop leadership abilities. The last one occurs because, over years of involvement, you are sure to become more deeply involved and to take on more and more responsibilities, and thus develop a much more meaningful experience for yourself within the organization. Many people come back to their organizations years later and keep in touch with those with who they were involved for many years.

Which One Should I Pick?
The best time to find an organization is usually that first week when they are out advertising themselves. Find ones that interest you and meet the people who run them. If you like the people and you share common interests and passions, it will be a great experience and pay off in the long run. It doesn’t matter if it is a sport, an environmental advocacy group, a church group, or a hiking club. The important part is that this will add to your major, your personal grown and it will be fun.

****If it Doesn’t Exist, Start it.** But back to the business of student orgs, I’ll explain them from my perspective and how I got into them. I was studying optics and in San Diego, there would be a conference every year where scientists and engineers doing optics from around the world would come together and present their work.

Once I realized that my school did not have a society for people interested in this field, I realized it could really use one since there was so much local research and talent in that sphere. Once I began the organization, I learned what it was to recruit people, what it was to fund-raise and what was is to work with other organizations.

It wasn’t easy. I first got a feeling for who wanted the club, so I introduced my idea in an optics class and passed around a sign-up sheet, and seeing 15 names on it, I decided to go on with it and have a meeting. Two people showed up at the meeting, but they motivated me to continue. I felt that I could accomplish a lot with this club and add value to the lives of students. This pushed me to work on getting funding, getting advisers, speakers and working with other clubs to create joint events.

When you are doing something good that benefits others, like students, the department, and people in that major, then people get on board and want to help. This was an amazing experience and it actually led me to find work once I finished college. This was one of those things that made me realize that everything you do in life will either open or close doors. So much of the networking you do in college leads determines your later opportunities in life.

When starting or joining organizations, the number one reason for doing it is because you enjoy the people you are with. The reason one does anything is because of the people, and you learn to value that when you are in a student organization. It was an invaluable lesson that was an integral part of my true education.

Dangers: There are many organizations and many people find themselves involved in more than one. In fact, you can find yourself interested in so many organizations that you over involve yourself and end up watching your academics and quality of life take a dive. So make sure to keep a balance. Just like videogames, tv, partying, and books, a little at the right time is a good thing, but too many extracurricular activities will knock you off balance and there will be consequences to pay.

Chapter 5: Sports

They walked down the Library Walk in bright jerseys, carrying numbered sports bags with jugs of water to keep themselves hydrated and in peak athletic condition. At the same time, I seemed to get skinnier and nerdier and further away from their bronzed and toned bodies every day. They seemed popular and good at school and I felt a world away. What’s funny is that I was them just the year before.

In high school, everyone was involved in some sport, and my wrestling coach planned on taping my matches for Cal Poly and UC Davis. His dreams and my parents’ nightmare came to an end when I was tackled by our 189 pounder and cracked my collar bone in two places. That season was over and next year I was splitting time between Academic Decathlon, where our physical activity consisted of racing a stuffed sheep and doing hacky-sack during study breaks and wrestling for the team as a fill-in a couple times per week.

In High School, I was with the in-crowd, but in college, the thought of doing sports did not cross my mind. I was stuck with the mentality that college is for studying and only near Olympic level athletes do sports in college. I learned my lesson by senior year. I picked up judo and then wrestling again, mostly to get in shape for studying. But I got quite good at both as a result.

You see, physical activity promotes fitness and blood flow. Blood flow allows more oxygen to reach the brain which helps us think better. At the same time, fitness allows one to have the stamina to work longer. Engaging in sports creates discipline and fosters time management skills. With a full season and workouts, most athletes find themselves completing assignments in a more efficient fashion than those who have all the time in the world and don’t have the discipline to just sit there and work on the problem until they get it right, as they would on the mat or at the track field.

To say that UCSD is not a big sports school is a major understatement. In fact, to say that UCSD is not a big sports school is an understatement. “UCSD football is undefeated” is a T-shirt proudly worn by many, but the joke is that the school has no football team. Our male sports are largely ignored while women’s sports are fairly competitive.

This atmosphere was an easy transition for me as it was essentially exactly how my high school was. This actually was great because almost anyone could get on a team, and if you couldn’t, there were a plethora of clubs. Some were good, like the squids or ultimate frisbee A team. Some were not so good but great party and social clubs, like Rugby, BOARD, Surf, and the squid B team. Some clubs were on par with our actual sports teams like the Volleyball club and some clubs which actually created Olympians, like our ping pong, sorry, table tennis team.

By my fourth year, I realized missed wrestling and I stepped on the mat in my senior year and was hooked all over again. The wrestling team is always a bunch of crazy rejects. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the close contact, maybe it’s the gay jokes making light of the close contact, or maybe we are just a few neurons short of realizing that we are fighting each other for no reason. Whatever the reason, wrestlers have been known to be an odd bunch. But once you find you are good at something, you realize that you are stuck with it, and for better or worse, you keep doing it, keep teaching it and you end up living it.

The UCSD wrestling club was actually almost shut down. No, in fact, it was shut down. I started a Facebook page to campaign to bring it back and a guy name Paul contacted me out of the blue and inquired about taking over the page and re-starting the club. I thought I’d let him, but soon I was running the club and he was gone. It was nice to give 8-10 guys on campus a place to work out every once in a while, teach them my skills, and most of all, I needed other people to work out with.

And there were the bizarre, like the inner tube water polo. Probably my biggest regret was not doing that one. It was co-ed, it was in the pool, you just need a keg in one of the tubes and you’re set.

I made a lot of friends as a result of running the wrestling club, and others on the team did as well. You could always rely on the surf team to throw a good party. The friendships we made were often forged on the long trips to competitions.

A year after graduating, as a coach, I went with three other wrestlers to Lakeland, Florida. We stayed at a motel that was constructed around a bar. The bar was owned by a large black man with a sense of humor and he employed a tiny girl with a loud southern accent. There was nothing but guys visiting this bar. Often laborers like those working on a railroad. There would be all sorts of mayhem- locking each other out of or inside bathrooms, throwing people into the pool, ice baths on customers and bar owners alike.

I was taking a video of a massive ice fight. Ice pitchers were poured on the girl, then she would get the pitcher and give it to someone and that person would pour it on someone else, and then someone else would get a pitcher from her and pour it on the owner. In the end, everyone was soaked but me. The owner looked at me and asked: “Why ain’t you wet?”
“I’m observing,” I said.
“We don’t like observers here” And he poured a pitcher of ice and water all over me.

I walked into the room at two am, drenched, cold and happy. We barely made it to the tournament on time the next day. The guys had a great time on the trip, it felt like we laughed non-stop. Perhaps we should have competed better, but the memories of that trip were better than any medals we might had.

That’s what sports are: a chance at camaraderie and physical fitness that will allow you to succeed in class and give you a chance to meet friends, meet girls/guys and have other kids in class envy your company and your grades.

Chapter 6: Picking A Major. Because Eventually, You Have To.

Being famous isn’t pretty, That doesn’t elevate us up, No need to start an archive, To shake over your writings. Aim of creating is to give one-self, Not ruckus, not success, The shame of being worthless While praised by everyone as best. — Boris Pasternak, My Sister - Life

• How to pick one.
• Double major or minor.
• What to do if you feel you need to switch.

My phone rang at nine am on a Tuesday morning, rousing me from my sleep. It was my friend and business partner’s distressed mother asking me if I could speak to her younger son. He was starting his second year of college and had no idea what he wanted to do. He called me a week later and explained that he is considering physics but wasn’t sure if he would make money at it. To me that sounded like a path to mediocrity. I asked him: what is it that you want to do? He really didn’t know, he just knew he wanted to work with other people. I gave him some suggestions on how a technical degree could come in handy and how he could do something with other people with that degree. But essentially I said, “find something that you love and pursue that, you will make far more money doing something you love than doing something you tolerate.”

How to pick one.
Few know who they are and what they want to be as they enter college. They are lucky, but they also don’t necessarily stick to it. Many of them only think they know what they want to do. Remember that many artists become writers, that many singers become actors, lawyers become sky diving instructors and engineers become motorcycle teachers. Without a lifetime goal, we become bored and move on to another calling. If you grew up with many interests, it may be difficult to decide on what you want as you enter college. But as I told Aaron, follow your passion and then find a way to make money at it.

When I entered college I had no idea what I wanted to be. I figured that an engineering major would give me options, that if I wanted to switch to something else, it would give me the necessary pre-requisites. However, what I didn’t realize is that once you start on a path, it can be very difficult to quit. The more time and effort you put into something, and especially as people believe or doubt your abilities to follow through, it may no longer be about your passion for that field, but a matter of pride. This has to be identified early on because regretting and resenting a decision ten years into a career is no way to live.

When one major isn’t enough.
Once you have your passion, look around for professions in that field and learn the requirements for those. They should direct you towards the best major. Sometimes, for some people, the major may not be a good fit because you may feel that your skills are more than adequate without further education. This is very rare. For those individuals, a complementary major might be good. For others, a double major can be a good idea, provided that it doesn’t leave you too much in debt.

That’s when it is good to look at just taking a minor instead. It’s faster and you can get two or three for the same time and fee as a major.
For instance, business is a great major to add to engineering, so is physics. For doctors, maybe a second language. For photographers, art or writing. More broad engineering is going to open your horizons, push you academically and make you better at whatever you do.

How to know if you should stick to it or not
Sticking with your major can be hard, and that may be a sign that it isn’t for you in the first place. If you start to doubt that this is what you want to do in the end, if your core classes do not give you satisfaction and pride in work, then yes, I advise that you leave your major and find something you enjoy. If what motivates you are the good grades and praise from instructors and not the art project or lab or skills you are acquiring, then move on.

However, if you are not doing well grade-wise, but you love to do what you do, and you spend many hours just to receive a bad grade for what you feel is good and pleasant work, especially in art classes, do not quit, keep going. You have found a passion that you should not give up on because even if you think you’re no good, you should continue. After all, at one point, we were all bad shoe-tiers, that didn’t mean we should have quit.

Chapter 7: Paying for College

“College, the most expensive four years of your life.”

Christine is a smart go-getter. Her parents came from Vietnam during the war. Her mother survived the war as a flower girl and when she arrived in the states she had no education and put Christine and two other daughters through high school in Baltimore. Christine was the oldest and the pride of the family having graduated at the top of the class and earned a spot at the prestigious University of Southern California.

Christine moved to the other coast and trained to become a famous architect. She took a year to study abroad in Italy to study how the masters built their masterpieces. She was a favorite of many of her professors and was offered jobs right out of college. She traveled the world and worked in South Korea for one of the top Architecture firms.

Christine traveled alone throughout the Middle East on a fellowship to study middle eastern native architecture and design. She came back to jobs waiting for her in a depressed market and within a year brought her fiancé from Tunisia to live with her. At the age of 27, she was earning good money at a good firm doing what she loves. She had many opportunities thanks to her studies and was living together with her fiancé in a studio barely big enough for a bed, a desk, and no kitchen. She has no car and sends most of the money that she makes to a bank.

Christine has a wonderful life on one hand but her future is far from comfortable at the moment. At the age where she should be able to put money away for a wedding, for a house she is barely making ends meet because she has over $200,000 in loans which she did not realize she would have or how she would payback. She told me that she does not regret her decision to go to an expensive school given the opportunities she now has but the debt obviously weighs her down considerably.

In 2011, colleges are financed through a form of predatory lending that is similar to the lending in the housing market, except it is worse. Unlike your college loan, with a house in foreclosure, you can walk away from your debt. The college loan creditors will pursue you across space and time: garnishing wages and collecting to the end. You can escape kids and spouses, but you cannot get away from college debt.

Unlike with a house or credit cards, the bank does not ask how much you make, how much the education will cost, and do not look at your major and how much you will make before saddling you with debt. The bank does not look at how much you have, how well you studied, if the college is credible, or even if you will ever make money to repay.

Tuition is the same cost regardless of the cost of that education. It is the same no matter how much professors in your department earn or how much your labs cost or what your prospects for making money and paying back that loan with your chosen major.

Schools also don’t seem to wonder that it may be predatory to ask an 18-year old that has never paid bills before to take on the responsibility of hundreds of thousands of dollars and make decisions without considering for a second if those kids know what they are doing. It is also a shame that many parents allow their kids to sign the contracts that saddle them with obligations for life without advising them better. In the end, for those without generous parents, the only way to choose less debt is to choose a less expensive school or to work and not have loans.

So now that you know that signing up for a loan is a big deal and that no one cares if you will be on a hook with a giant mortgage payment for the rest of your life, I will tell you how to make that decision of taking a loan or not through a couple stories.

Unlike Christine, I decided to go to a reputable but cheaper University. My parents were able to pay the tuition (which they still to this day remind me of), I worked for most of my living expenses even though my parents were still able to help me considerably. I graduated late but I had no debt. I was able to travel the world, buy a car, buy a house within a few years of my graduation. Having no debt and a job that paid well meant a fairly relaxed lifestyle.

Another friend Arthur who went to the same school as Christine also traveled the world but being an orphan and disabled, was unable to find a job and so had to try and escape his impossible debt or as I call it, 21st-century indentured servitude. Many people who put themselves into a poor financial situation, are unable to recover mentally. They begin to rack up credit card debt, buy houses they cannot afford.

The freedom and cheap money corrupt people and the financial institutions then charge exorbitant fees knowing full well what will happen, relying on the fact that these poor and naïve kids will make uninformed decisions at a time when they are not ready and thus profit from the misfortune of others. If banks were charlatans fooling people out of nickles and pennies in the streets, they would be in jail, but stealing millions puts them in expensive board rooms.

If this book is still relevant, and our government failed you, then I suggest, look at your finances, how much can you afford, how much will you earn in the end, what will be your debt, do you want to owe someone money for the rest of your life?

Think about these decisions hard and make the hard choice of going to a cheaper school, or going to a community college, or saving up some money before entering college. Whatever you do, remember that no one will save you or warn you except this book and that if you follow your desire without thought of how that desire will impact your life, you may come to regret your decision for the rest of your life.

So what are the other options besides debt and work?

Well, my best friend paid barely anything, he lived at home, went to community college, went to a less expensive public University, and finally attended Law School on a scholarship.

In a sense, you should always try to go where your skills and abilities permit you to go. The choice to go to an expensive school is yours and you can spend a few days per scholarship application, work, and study. The odds for those who are not mega-rich are tough. Many do not graduate due to the stress of earning money and going to school and life.

However with the goal of a better life in your sight and the belief that many people before you managed to do this and so will you, will help you overcome, graduate in a good financial position with the freedom to pick and choose the next step in your life.

I say all this with a big but! That’s because if you go to a community college, you get what you pay for. A good university has students that will push you and world-renown professors who know what they are talking about. When it came to an MBA, I had a choice of local college for $30k with fifteen students in my class and low tier program, or a top program that was $65k abroad ($200k in the US), but my class would be 500 students and the best professors in the world. I chose the higher amount because I wanted to be pushed, I wanted to have the knowledge of the best people. I also knew that I could pay off the loan, which I did.

So what about scholarships? I spent a lot of hours in high school and graduate schools applying for scholarships. I even had a dream for a little bit that wrestling will get me a full ride. For most people, this is somewhere between a pipedream and a waste of time. If you break down the time I spent on essays and application, I could have earned much more by simply finding a part-time job and saving that money.

There are scholarships like a need-based or diversity scholarship or a merit-based scholarship through your University, apply for those. But essays and other scholarships that are usually meant to reduce taxes for corporations or marketing gimmick are usually a waste of time. Paying scholarship services or consultants is a waste of time and money. So work if you have to, save your money so you have less money to borrow for life, and apply for the scholarship that gives you the best bang for your buck and for time spent.

So a list of Do’s and Don’ts

First what not to do:

Scholarships: forget about them! You will not earn $150,000 in scholarships. Few people get them and the amount it takes in writing essays and talent in choosing right places is more than a full-time job and the returns are less than working a full-time job (I wrote about this after spending a month trying, I got zero scholarships).

Don’t get an unsubsidized loan. They will kill you on the interest rate, it can never be forgiven and they are relentless in pursuing it, will even deduct money from your paycheck. So if you have to borrow more than the subsidized government loan, DON’T DO IT!

Things you should 100% Do:

Haggle with the college. If you have other options, call the financial aid office, tell them, maybe they can find a scholarship at the college. Check out alternatives abroad. Many colleges abroad are free tuition: Denmark and Germany are free even for Americans. Some graduate degrees are free abroad as well. In Israel, a Master of Science with a Thesis is paid for and you get a monthly allowance of about $1000 which is just enough to survive on.

So as last advice: know your finances, know your goals and fund your college appropriately.

Chapter 8: Time Off, Not A Completely Stupid Idea

A true sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

1. Why do it?
2. What it accomplishes.
3. Fake time-off through study abroad.

It was the end of the first half of my sophomore year of college when I got my progress report: C, C-, C-. I was taking all upper-division Physics classes and things were not going well. The classes were interesting and fun, but I was doing horribly because I had no idea what I was doing there. I was unmotivated and considering whether or not to continue. What was I doing? Why was I doing this?

I was studying haphazardly, barely opening the books and barely trying with the homework. College became so difficult all of a sudden and I couldn’t answer the question of why I should put in the effort. At that moment, something clicked: I should do what my friend’s girlfriend at the time was doing.

My friend’s girlfriend was going through a difficult time and simply took some time off from school. During her time off, and just like many famous people, Steve Jobs for one, took a couple classes at a community college and traveled, in her case, it was to India. I stole her idea and didn’t enroll for the next quarter. I didn’t even go back to my job at the lab. I just took time off. I wanted to have nothing connected with my old life.

Did I travel? No. I wish I had. Instead, I took Chinese and weight training at a community college and I found a job at a MotoPhoto, which I was quickly fired from for being late four out of five days my first week (my lax schedule at the engineering lab made me forget what it’s like to have a real schedule) and after many jobs searching, I found a job at an Italian deli and later a second job as a parking lot attendant.

The deli was bad. Because I was the only one who spoke fluent English, I answered phones and chopped lettuce for the sandwich line. Just like in the movie “Coming To America,” I was promoted to making sandwiches and breakfasts. I liked the people but I hated answering to a terrible boss for minimum wage. By the time I got through my third week working 80 hours a week doing mind-numbing work, I knew I needed to go back to school.

That is what time off is about. It’s about figuring out what you want out of life and getting a little perspective so that if you know what it is that you want to learn so that you can give it your all. In all honesty, after coming back, there were some classes where I did better in and some in which I did worse. I still had to repeat some multiple times, but I was willing to do it now because I had a goal, which I did not have before taking time off.

I’m telling you this because I feel that you need to remember that option during times of spinning wheels. Don’t pick a major unless you’re sure that it is what you want to do because as long as you have doubts, you will not apply yourself and you may come to regret it later. Of course, some smart people will doubt themselves no matter what, for those people, it is important to recognize if those doubts have to do with liking what you’re doing and future prospects.

If you are not sure you will be successful, you need to remind yourself that the field you are in does not define your success, only your willingness to work does. However, if you’re not ready for school, if you’re not ready to work hard every day to learn what you need to be successful in your field, then you should not be there and you might need time off.

Maybe my reason for going to college was not the best. I didn’t want to be the best engineer, I just didn’t want to make minimum wage for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to become like some of my co-workers who worked hard without a prospect of a future. It was too hard working so many hours a week and not being able to save money. This was while I was single and with roommates. I thought about the prospect of family and the outlook became even dimmer.

By going back to school, I was able to get a much better job and have much more choices today. Because of my time off, I came back to school re-focused, refreshed, and I was no longer taking my education and job as a student for granted.

Gap Year By 2006/2007, some colleges began to offer time off before the first year of college as some do in Europe and Australia where they call it a “gap year.” Some kids who have the means will use it to travel the world, while others work to save up for tuition or volunteer. If you’re intelligent enough, you can probably do the same thing and get someone to pay for it. When the Blue brothers, (not from the movie) who came to own General Atomics, were students of Yale University in the sixties, they paid for their flight across central and south America by writing articles for travel magazines. Additionally, scholarships and fellowships exist to pay for travel and adventures.

Another choice is to volunteer in places like Guatemala. I met lots of people while traveling through Central America, however, it does often cost money to do that. I met two girls from Seattle while in Nicaragua, they were biking with two guys from San Francisco on the Island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. They were there for two weeks of travel and then they were to spend two more weeks working in the fields of Nicaragua.

I met a girl who quit her fashion career in Sao Paulo to work the fields on a kibbutz in the desert of Israel. And a good friend of mine, Michael, left his job for several months to help build a school in Africa. School is work and sometimes you need to re-orient yourself, quit, and see if your compass is in the right direction. Most of the time people come back to the same thing. Partially, because what they are looking for can’t be found somewhere else, others find a new path that leads to success.

A word of caution, a gap year can be great, but too many people I met while traveling did not use their traveling to expand their mind but to escape the banality of everyday life. If there is no purpose behind your life, you are not likely to rediscover it somewhere else. Party at home, relax abroad but always push yourself out of your comfort zone to grow as a person. That’s what makes life awesome.

What you might be surprised to learn from your time abroad is that what you had back home was good, and you don’t realize how good it was until you experience something actually bad. Don’t worry, I’m not spoiling a surprise, it’s a great feeling to find out something you already knew before.

Study Abroad

One other opportunity, which I call fake time off, is Study-Abroad. You continue to take classes, but you get to experience another country and another culture. You get to travel and you don’t lose time any time. Most people who do it do not have an epiphany, do not change course, and generally have the money to afford it (or at least exploit the love and well-wishing of their parents) to finance their trip. My best friend went to Costa Rica (where he lost his virginity) another classmate of mine went to Australia, and another to Italy.

What I always heard is that it is the time of their life. While coaching wrestling I met many foreign exchange students and I even hosted some of them and some hosted me when I went to their countries. What I noticed among them all is that it is the type of strong individuals that can be far from family, be independent, and open to new experiences. If you are not that type of person, then I recommend even more that you do it.

The people who come back from a study abroad, lack timidity and the fear of traveling to faraway places. They are not afraid of language barriers, foreign customs, or even just facing the world. They are worldly and more mature people. So grow some new neurons and experience life! What else will you do with your life? Play video games?

Part 2: Life

The 90% of stuff that happens during college.

Chapter 9: Family

Even in high school, my family essentially left me alone. They paid the tuition without too much hassle even when I failed or took classes again. They helped out with cash when I was a little short and even didn’t ask for the money back when I pocketed a quarter’s worth of tuition when I took two quarters off school. They rarely visited me and just asked me to visit.

This may be the way it goes for most people although rare occurrences of disagreement can overshadow even the least difficult parent-child relationships.

It’s a hard balance, from one perspective, you are now free and mom and dad have a hard time facing that and at the same time, you’re not, because maybe they are paying for your school and your living expenses. They have to let you go and make mistakes but at the same time, they don’t want to see you make mistakes that could cost you your life.

UCSD campus was built on cliffs. We would often go down these cliffs for some awesome surf. One kid, Gilbert, decided to climb the cliffs. They were soft sandstone and often crumbled and fell. He was from NorCal, not used to the soft spongy clay and as he climbed, a piece fell off and Gilbert fell to his death. Here’s a case of a kid out on his own, away from the parents, a sweet and smart kid, and one stupid move and he’s dead… His parents will never see him, he will never get a diploma or travel the world.

This fear is why some parents would go crazy trying to protect their kids. One friend in college would find her mom at her dorm once a week, bringing her food but really checking up on her. It drove her crazy, but in some ways, this checking up kept her on track and out of trouble.

It’s a fine line and that line is best kept through communication. You calling your parents and talking to them will make them a lot more relaxed about you and that will, in turn, give you peace and let you have the freedom to do your best. When you stop talking to them, they will probably wonder what’s going on, start calling and maybe visit you, and that will probably keep you out of trouble and on a good path to graduate and do well in life.

There are so many distractions in college, parents can become one of them or be a great tool to keep you on track, as well as a great source of funds if you are so lucky.

I would often go see my parents on the weekends when I moved out, the talks and questions were tough when I wasn’t doing well, they frankly pissed me off. But that in the end helped me do better because when I wasn’t accountable to myself, I was at least accountable to their annoying questions.

Be thankful for the love and if you don’t have it.. then find it in yourself to help your friends and create a family for yourself in college. There are lots of kids like you, without support, without help, so help each other out, watch out for each other and be a family.. Because you will soon find out, that in the end, we do nothing for ourselves and everything for people around us.

Chapter 10: Living Situation

Who you live with and where you live will determine your success.

1. The Fun
2. Conflict Resolution
3. Cleanliness
4. Respect

“At one point I spent all of my money on beer, and just ate junk food occasionally. After a few weeks, I noticed my gums bleeding and some cuts I had were not healing. I gave myself scurvy!” Philip Andrew Sidney Bliss

There were several choices facing me when I was submitting my college housing form in May of High School senior year: live in dorms on campus, live off campus with other students, or stay at home. My parents “misled” me by saying they would get me my own place, so I chose home. Although it was a lot cheaper than moving out, I don’t know if that was the best choice. At home I didn’t worry about money as much but because I did not live close enough to the school, but I was at a severe disadvantage because I had early morning classes and had to drive through traffic. This was exacerbated by the fact that I was not especially disciplined.

My first year was spent getting to the bus station early in the morning and then taking about an hour to get to my 8am class, only to fall asleep promptly when I sat down in class completely exhausted. This was a very poor return on investment, as saving money on living expenses and then getting C’s in classes is a net loss.

My best semesters as far as grades went were when I was living with my girlfriend ten minutes from the school by bike. It was great, except that when the relationship hit rough patches, my schoolwork suffered as well. Fights until four am can really eat into study time. However, with careful planning, these hiccups can easily be avoided.

Conflicts and Conflict Resolution

I had a lot of roommates over the years and eventually, there was almost always some kind of conflict. Not serious, but enough to where they negatively impacted the flow of the relationship. To keep problems from sneaking up on you, you should first make sure that you can get along. Spend at least a few hours a week bonding with each other. Doing that will ensure that you hash out problems before they get out of hand. Like with any relationship; it’s all about communication.

However, if there is a problem, follow these three steps:
1. Smile.

1. Tell your roommate that you like them and are not trying to do harm.
2. Ask how the issues can be resolved.

This happened to me when I was living with a couple of Korean guys near campus. One of them flipped out because I was living in the living room at the time and blocked off the whole room off for myself without asking for permission when my girlfriend was visiting me. I know it was disrespectful on my part, but totally fixable. He just needed to talk to me but didn’t. We resolved things amicably later because I followed the steps I outlined above.

Two of the biggest issues that creep in between roommates are laziness (aka selfishness) and significant others. Don’t let you or your roommates’ partners change the dynamic, it will throw everyone off. Make sure to keep your time split between your partner’s and your own place, communicate with your roomies, and don’t forget to be respectful of their needs. Living problems can spill into your love life as well, and then you will have to deal with triple stress as your schoolwork starts to suffer from all of your social drama.

Relationships with roommates, friends, and girlfriends are all founded on the same principles, and all of them go smoother with empathy. So try to walk in their shoes and do unto them as you would have them do unto you. Even if you have tests and stress, do your best to be compassionate so that they understand that you understand why they do what they do. With compassion and communication they will be more likely to help you, ie. not play loud music while you are studying or by putting a towel under the door while they are having sex.

Big No No’s
Never sleep with your roommate’s boy/girlfriend. Unless of course, they ask you to join.

If you’re going to have a party, I recommend that you invite-only friends and hide the important stuff behind lock and key. This will save you the anguish of someone stealing your old iMac with all of your art projects on it, as happened to a friend of mine. However, if that happens to you, get over it; if you’re not Picasso, your art projects are crap anyway and if you are, then you probably were more careful about storing your important work than leaving it on an old computer in a garage during a rager.

Beer and Food

If you eat it, replace it! And not with lesser quality crap and not with less quantity. Ie, replace organic with organic food and a twelve-pack with a twelve-pack, not a couple of leftover cans. In fact, if you plan to be lazy and eat your roommate’s food, replace it with more than you ate so as to not make them resent even buying food because they know that they will have to buy it again just to have you eat it again. When your food is eaten, it always seems like more was taken than there really was. It’s our nature to lament the loss, so be considerate and compensate them for your laziness with quantity plus interest.

Here are some basic Roommate Rules, feel free to copy this page and place it on your refrigerator:

House Rules: * Be considerate * Be Clean * Don’t be anal/OCD (if you are, be a pall, get a single or see a therapist) * Put a towel under the door if you have “someone” over. * Replace food with more than you took. * Do bills together. * Do not sleep with the partner of a roommate. (Unless asked to join) * Do not use their stuff if you tend to break stuff. * If you break it, replace it. * Watch out for each other. * See each other once a day. * Hang out once a week.

If you are living with a boy/girlfriend same rules as above but also: * Don’t cheat * Don’t live together, (it’s not worth it and it usually doesn’t work out.) * Don’t be a little bitch (do everything they ask and then resent it.) * Chill out if you’re angry (it’s probably not worth getting too angry over anyway.) * Do not keep things bottled-up inside either, (that’s probably why you’re yelling at each other now) * If you’re paying for everything, something’s wrong, don’t be an idiot.

These rules might seem self-explanatory, but trust me, even the best of us have difficulties once we stop using our brains, and anyone who has ever dated or had a big fight with a roommate knows exactly what that’s like.

One of the biggest issues that come up is a misunderstanding of expectations and cultural differences. If you don’t understand why someone does something, ask. If you have a problem with something, say it. Most of the time, the people you live with are nice and understanding and will work with you or explain to you. If they don’t and act like jerks then you probably shouldn’t live with them.

Finally, if you do decide to live at home, good luck getting a date, although if your mom cooks, you may be able to entice your date with a home-cooked meal.

In the end, if you’re fun, respectful, clean, and respectfully ask for the same, living with others should not be a problem and in fact, will leave you with lifelong friends and great memories.

Chapter 11: Frats and Sororities.

You are the average of the five people you spend your time around- James Altucher

1. Why join
2. When to join
3. Which to join
4. Benefits
5. Cons

I was sitting with my brothers in the courtyard of the SDSU fraternity house. Jeff, one of the founding employees of Sun Microsystems, was sitting with his back to a wall with about twenty guys forming a semi-circle around him. We were drinking Bud Lights as he doled out life advice. I sat enamored with the moment, thinking: when else and how else could I ever imagine having this opportunity, to listen to someone like Jeff giving advice in such a small and intimate setting?

Sure, this is no Yale, where the elite Bonesman sit in the Tomb and listen to a Bush or a fortune 500 CEO, but even if I had been accepted into Yale, I probably wouldn’t have been invited to a gathering like that. I’m the son of an immigrant engineer. For me, this was a great start and I was devouring every word that left Jeff’s mouth.

A couple months later, I was initiated, along with forty other guys. Although it was a tough decision, I was glad I made it. I was a senior in college, I could afford the yearly dues and the other brothers were similar to me: driven, honest, accomplished. This was not a frat kind of frat. It was something we had created, being the founding father class. We wrote the constitution in late-night sessions, we picked the first and second class of incoming brothers, we created the organization and I wouldn’t give up my time in the frat for the world.

But even the best-mannered fraternities have their moments. I remembered one of our guys got wasted at our first big party at a local brewhouse. I was asked to take him home and he was belligerent. He complained about a girl that he left at the party. He was worried that someone would see him drunk at the dorm because he was working as an RA (resident advisor). When we finally got to his dorm, he realized that he left his keys in his car. We got back into my car and drove to the brewhouse to get the keys but now he decided that he would drive. This became a serious confrontation. I wouldn’t let him drive and he wouldn’t go with me. At this point, he forgot about the previous girl and was now talking to some random girl that had been forgotten by her friends and stranded in the parking.

At that point it was getting ridiculous, so I called the president of the fraternity, Jason. Jason’s advice showed his talent as a true leader excelling at thinking outside of the box, he said, “Punch him in the jaw, I’ll take responsibility for it.” I couldn’t believe it. Violence? This seemed like a terrible idea. But it was three am, I was fed up, I gave him another chance and then the punch came. It wasn’t a hard punch, it was actually pretty flimsy. I didn’t want to hurt him. But he was shocked. He got in the car and called his cousin as we drove through the empty streets, complaining about it as I took him home. The next day, I got a big apology and a thank you for what I did for him, as well as a great story to tell.

There are many reasons to join a frat, and stories like these are some of them. There are parties, but parties are something you can find anywhere and there is no reason to pay for them. There is camaraderie, having over a hundred people with whom to share a deep and lasting connection. You will face situations you never thought you would. You will meet friends who will start businesses and become successful people. You will meet and deal with dirt-bags, money problems and be molded into a leader. Even after graduating, I continued to make friends from the fraternity as I came back to alumni events. It didn’t have the same closeness of going through classes and events together, but we became friends nevertheless.

Sororities

To be frank, I originally was not sure why they exist. The girls fought with each other all the time. There was a lot of drama and sleeping around. Maybe it depended on the sorority.

However, women I know who I respect and who joined sororities do speak highly of them in the end. I’ve seen the great events that they often put on including socials and humanitarian drives. I think they offer the same opportunities that they offer men and it all depends on which one you join and what you seek from the experience.

They also created a great way for men and women to network together. I’m still in touch with some of the sorority girls I met through my fraternity who I see doing well in life and who I would have never met otherwise.

Also, many many very successful women were in sororities, which means that today, sororities are just like fraternities, a way for women to have access to successful mentors and a way to develop their leadership abilities.

Also, it was a lot of fun hanging out together. For instance, there was a tradition that new recruits would be put to bed by sorority sisters. It usually required a lot of alcohol. There were the socials that would be anything from ice-skating to house parties. Things that we probably would not have done in a group setting otherwise.

When to join

Some join at the beginning of their arrival at school. To me, this meant a lot of money upfront and being confined to the “greek” system. I joined later and had a large network of people by the time I joined.

However, I did not bond as well with a lot of people in the fraternity because I did not spend as much time or share those early experiences that create the connections that so many “greeks” get by joining early on.

Which one to join

Fraternities and sororities begin recruiting during the first or second week of the semester. It’s a good chance to meet everyone and to decide which one you like and to see if they like you as well.

There is a fraternity for everyone. Nerdy, fun, jock, Asian, Jewish, Muslim etc. Whatever you join, make sure it is you; make sure it is comprised of people that you like, people that you get along with, and that you think you could rely on. If you choose well in all likelihood you will be invited to join because you are just like them and you fit in naturally. You will make connections and friends for life, so if there is a fraternity on campus that you like, then go for it.

Benefits

By joining a fraternity, you learn organization, leadership, and teamwork. In some cases the budgets can be substantial, you may have to take responsibility for a lot of irresponsible brothers and make some tough decisions. Some people liken running a fraternity to running a business or creating a start-up. It certainly isn’t easy, but no rewarding experience ever is. The things that your brothers will do for you are very rewarding.
For instance, I once arrived in San Jose and had no place to stay and nowhere to go. One phone call to my brother Sol and he was at the airport taking me to his place. When you join a fraternity you’re never truly alone, and that is an amazing feeling.

Reasons not to join them

There are downsides to fraternities. For one, they take up a lot of time. You are required to learn about the secrets and history of the organization and you have to plan events and spend a lot of time socializing. There is a huge amount of gossip and internecine conflict within the “greek” system because it is a small community, so word gets around. The nice thing is that it is mostly inconsequential.

The other thing to think about is that there are still fraternities and sororities that haze. I joined one that did away with hazing decades ago, but many still do. They say they allow a class to bond, but I see it as an excuse for sadists to exercise their sadism. I was pretty old by then and didn’t care to have underclassmen humiliate me. But hey, some dig it, so it’s up to you if that’s your cup of tea.

There are also sometimes bad apples that create rotten orchards. While in the good orchards they are cast out. If they are not cast out, the bad apples exert influence and eventually take over take over creating a bad orchard out of a good one. The bonds of brotherhood and the social pressure to protect your own can create a conflict of interest and put you in a bad situation when your brothers are out of line.

We had an experience where a fraternity brother was kicked out because he could not handle himself at a party and started groping girls. Our president Jason was young but strong and idealistic. He made sure that this guy was out and could not represent us and set a poor example for the others. As the alum, Jeff said to us that day over beers, “Don’t contaminate the gene pool.”

Chapter 12: The Girlfriend/Boyfriend

“Nothing is as rewarding and beneficial as love, nothing is as destructive either.”

1. Benefits!
2. The negatives
3. Moving-in together
4. Long Distance relationships
5. Dating around

The first time I met my first girlfriend, she walked through the door and it literally took my breath away. I remembered this girl because she had passed by me a week before and I felt the same way. That night, we spent the entire night talking and then, the next five years dating. The strain it was under when it became a long-distance relationship lead to a breakup that we just couldn’t have managed to make earlier. Today she is married and we are still friends.

So what can I recommend from my experience? I can say that it depends on where you live. In San Diego and other big cities, it is becoming more and more difficult for a lot of people to have a relationship in high school or college that lasts. There is simply too much life to experience and too many people to meet. That makes it nearly impossible for some people to choose to forgo those experiences for the sake of the relationship. At smaller schools and in small college towns it is a lot easier. For instance, at Purdue University, my friend in her mid-twenties found it extremely difficult to find potential suitors as most grad students were already married. While in San Diego, there was no shortage of willing partners. So let’s go over why should you date, why shouldn’t you date, how to survive dating and when you should (and you should) take the plunge.

Why date?

If you are serious about studying and doing well in college, few people realize it because it may seem counter-intuitive, but a stable relationship can help you focus and buckle down to work. A stable relationship, even with its ups and downs, keeps you from going out too often, keeps you from the emotional rollercoaster of dating drama, removes the distraction of sexual frustration, and gives you a place to go and a friend who’s always there for you.

While a miserable relationship can be extremely destructive, a stable one is grounding and extremely beneficial. When you have a relationship in college, you experiment with the rules and some may try to get by without any boundaries. A relationship without rules, however, can be a disaster. Even such a simple rule as knowing who you can and can’t see is crucial because if that girl across the hall has her eyes on you, a good girlfriend will find a way to keep the threats out of a relationship, which will keep both of you happy in the long run.

There are other more mundane rules, like not letting the stress of exams get to each other because that is the prime time for fights to occur. Holding out on those until the end of exams is a great policy.

Cons

The negatives for some are of course not being able to sleep around, enjoy your youthful experimentation, and missing out on partying with friends. So get it out of your system before the relationships and don’t forget, there’s always grad school.

Virginity

A lot of people who go to college were late bloomers and probably never had sex or even had time for sex in High School. So your first time will probably be in college. I’d say it can be a horrible or a good experience. So pick wisely, be in a good situation where you are in control, and don’t freak out.

There will be liquids and smells that you’ve never seen or smelled. So do some research beforehand. Talk it all out with your partner. Talking is hard in college but you’re a mature young man/woman so I have faith that you will make it a good time. Also, I recommend reading the Kama Sutra, the original, not the semi-porn with pictures you find at the bookstore. It is a two-thousand-year-old ultimate guide to relationships and sex and will make a pro out of anyone.

Living Together

Sometimes, it makes financial sense to move in together. I’m not a big advocate of this as most relationships break up after the strain of living together. Unless two people are ready for a mature and committed (meaning thinking of getting married) relationship, moving in together is a surefire way to end what either could be have been a promising young love that needed some time to ripen, or to get you stuck in a rut and stubbornly clinging to something that should have been over a long time before.

People who live together often let each other slide on things that they otherwise wouldn’t tolerate, and that creates problems in the end. Imagine, you live together but you figure it’s not forever, so you are ok with them not picking stuff up or leaving things out. But then you get married, and now you start voicing your opinion and the other person is thinking: “What the hell, this used to be fine before marriage.” So now, the marriage gets blamed, more stress occurs and eventually, it leads to divorce.

So when living together, be honest with things that bother you. Split chores evenly. Be responsible financially. It sounds basic but if you can do that, you will be alright.

Long Distance

Due to the many transitions, from high school to college, transfers to different schools, or moving on to another school for advanced degrees, long-distance relationships are a common challenge for college students. And while it is common, most find that it is nearly always a bad thing and usually ends in a breakup. Usually, you stay together because one person isn’t strong enough to break up with the other one. You still care for each other but the two of you end up wanting to date other people and feel ashamed about it while still acknowledging that they love and care for the person far away. It creates a cycle of longing, sadness, and misery that slowly eats you up inside. Both partners will begin to have wandering eyes and then get suspicious and jealous. The loneliness and pain of separation will cause stress and possibly even depression that can have a serious negative impact on one’s performance in school.

Puppy love does not survive long distances. In reality, long-distance only works in the short term in relationships that are strong and have been strong, where both partners are committed, mature, and trust each other. It should be reserved for older people, like my boss Kevin. He had a long-distance, cross-country relationship for six years while he went through grad school and his girlfriend went to business school. They had already been committed for years and had a solid foundation. So their relationship survived and they now live and work together, because they were mature and dated each other long enough to survive the stress and strain of separation.

So if you’re going to get into this type of relationship, remember a few of these few things. * One thing that can make it easier today is the ability to Skype and see each other online. So set designated times and make it a date. * Also, seeing each other in person once every month or two is a must to keep the relationship strong. * Of course, there has to be an end date, so that the two can look forward to a definite end and the certainty of being reunited.

The awesome thing about a long-distance relationship is the high you feel when you finally see your partner. All that repressed energy and affection bubbles to the surface with giddy excitement and then you spend an entire weekend just focused on the two of you, it is truly wonderful. You get to share a lot and really spend time with each other. When two people in a long-distance relationship see each other, they don’t take the time together for granted, and really squeeze the most out every minute. A long-term relationship can offer that stability without the fights and can be a great way to grow together, but it has to be done right and if you follow the few rules outlined above, you can do it.

Dating Around

When dating in college, have fun! But remember one thing, karma is a bitch. Be honest about your intentions when you start. It may be tempting to do things like cheating but don’t allow others to cheat with you.

Rape and sexual assault are a huge problem on campuses for guys and girls. It has to be addressed because the majority of women and some college men are experiencing rape or assault every day. Many times the partner (guy usually but sometimes a girl) is just drunk or just doesn’t take time to listen. You never know how someone acts in every situation, which means that dating a so-called nice guy can and sometimes sadly often result in date rape. Because the fact is, it is usually someone you know and would have never suspected because the rules aren’t clear, intentions aren’t understood or communicated. Or people are immature and do stupid stupid things without thinking that they later regret for the rest of their lives.

If you’re a guy and even if you think you’d never and that you’re not the type, know that you can do something stupid to hurt someone. Just like no one ever thinks they’d hurt anyone because they drive and drink. So if you have a friend who you see getting too drunk and too physical, step in, don’t worry about anger at the moment, they will thank you later.

As an example, there was a guy at our fraternity who spent a night with a girl. They were both drunk. Maybe he thought that she flirted with him, maybe she did. Regardless, his friends also should have stopped him. It was a huge deal. He was arrested and it was preventable.

But most importantly, remember people can be jerks, so don’t be one. Respect the other person, they’re not a thing, they are a person, who can also go to the police and should. So don’t be stupid. And if something happened to you, talk to someone. Don’t hold it in, it is not your fault.

So I hope this helps you to know that there are options. Be safe, watch out for each other and learn as you go, and don’t take most things too seriously because fact is, you probably won’t be married until your thirties anyway.

Chapter 13: Working While in College, No one said you can’t.

1. Why work?
2. Internships
3. Menial Jobs
4. Lab work
5. How to get one
6. What to work on

There are very few kids lucky enough to go through college without having to pay tuition and/or having to work for a living. I knew a lot of kids who worked on campus, off-campus, in labs, in bars, you name it. Each is perfectly acceptable and you should choose whatever is best for you personally. Whatever you choose to do, whether you need money or not, I advise that you do what you like and make sure that it goes along with your life plan. If you work retail and you’re studying biology, you’re wasting your time. On the other hand, if you’re studying business, retail may be a valuable place of experience.

The job you choose should have relevance to your career path because part-time jobs are not just about getting a paycheck, the right job teaches you valuable lessons about work, provides experience for your resume after graduating, and introduces you to people in your field, and gives you contacts that you can rely on to find work after graduation.

I fell into my profession by accident. I was at a party and a family friend happened to be a Professor of Electrical Engineering at my University, after chatting for a bit he and invited me to come to his lab. I showed up at Shaya’ss small office on the fourth floor of a spaceship-looking building. It was a tidy room with a bookcase full of books. He didn’t say much, just that I should go to the lab in the basement and talk to his Ph.D. student Wataru. Wataru spoke with me for about five minutes. He asked which classes I’ve taken (pretty much none at the time, I was a freshman) but I did have some graphics experienced having had my own magazine. Wataru told me to come back the next day to help with some posters.

I put together presentations and posters for the lab that lined the halls. As I took more classes, I was given more projects, my jobs expanded to working with fiber optic cables, learning about optical components, and eventually to work on things no one had ever worked on before at the time.

I had a tough time showing up to that first meeting. I felt guilty getting this chance through the family. Lucky for me, I talked it over with friends first. My best friend told me to take the opportunity and go with it. This one little decision made me change my major and led me to start clubs, meet people across the world and work on some amazing projects. You will have a lot of decisions in your life. Pick three people who know you and whose opinion you trust and ask them for advice when you doubt yourself, they will make all the difference in your life.

The lesson here is to always get advice and to jump on every good opportunity that presents itself. Each one opens new doors, so don’t worry about missing out on a bigger opportunity to come, you have to take the small ones now to have larger ones in the future.

At one point I quit college. I’ll go into that in another chapter, but while I was out of college, I worked several odd jobs. Unlike the nice University job where I was paid well, had good hours, and was blessed with an easy-going and friendly boss, those jobs were tough; they were menial, the bosses were impatient and demanding and so I quickly learned about what I did and didn’t want out of a job. I learned that I did not want to work for minimum wage, that I wanted to get a degree and to have a better life than life without an education offered. I learned that the real world outside of college is tough, callous and making very little money means hard work, struggling, and little freedom to do the things that brought me joy.

Things I learned working at jobs:

Be dependable

One of the jobs during my time off was at a photo lab. I got the job off the street, no interview, no application. I told the owner that I used to work as a photographer at a magazine that I founded and that was enough for her. I was late the first day, and the third day and on the fifth day I was late again and she fired me. What I learned was that people count on you and when you make a promise, you have to keep it. The work at a small shop relies on customer service and it relied on me be there and me being late meant that she couldn’t rely on me. All of my good work with photoshop and machines counted for little if she couldn’t count on me to show up when she needed me.

Know which fights to pick

After I got fired, I had a tough time finding another job. It was the 2001 recession after 9/11 and I was overqualified. I finally found one for minimum wage at a local deli. I had to be there at 7:30 answering the phone, washing dishes, and making lettuce. It was humiliating and humbling to go from lasers to dishes.

But I saw myself being more and more valuable to the business. One day the owner came up to me to ask me to make deliveries since the delivery driver was leaving for vacation. I said yes and later thought that he should reimburse me more than tips. Instead of saying that at the time, I told him as he was about to send me on a delivery. He fired me.

Lucky for me, the owner’s wife had more sense to talk to him and me, or else I really would have been fired. Although he would have been right, I should have been fired for picking a fight at such a moment.

Menial Jobs- Tip the poor guys

At that time I was able to get a second job as a parking lot attendant. I was working in a parking lot in the gay area of San Diego and until the business owners of the shops nearby realized that I was straight, they were giving me a lot of attention. The look of disappointment upon learning I was straight was classic.

I sat in my little booth for hours on end taking people’s tickets and asking them for money back. It was boring work and I spent a lot of time just reading books and studying for fall when I would be going back to school. For me, the best part of the day after working both jobs was getting 15-20 dollars in tips. It made a difference and I recommend to everyone that if you go out there, give the poor people a little extra. It may not mean a lot monetarily for you but it meant a lot to me and lifted my spirit to go home with a little bit of cash in my pocket.

Your work position does not define you, your goals and work ethic do

Today it doesn’t matter that I was a delivery boy for a while, or that I had worked at a grocery store when I was young. It doesn’t even matter that I put up Christmas lights when I was thirty in between jobs because what mattered were my goals. When I worked at a grocery store, I was really just earning money so that I was could go to college.

When I was working on rooftops stringing lights, I was earning money while I was working on a book. When I am working as an engineer, I am working on a career and I am working on my goals, I am working on a product I believe in and that feels great, but no matter how I felt about any particular job, the work ethic I had was the same. You should do your best at every endeavor you try and it will pay off because that is what it takes to achieve one’s goals.

Work at work hard, but work at school harder

A lot of people when working at school will skip classes because they care more about money than classes. But each class you skip counts for ten workdays you skip because the money you earn during college is pennies compared to how much you will earn after college. The job you will have after college will give you healthcare, nice hours, a kind boss, and vacation time in addition to the good pay. You should consider your classes your job, and apply the same work ethic because in the end, your degree is what’s going to be getting you a decent paycheck.

My roommate Masha was once fired from a waitressing job because to her, waitressing was a dead end, but the school had no limits. She found a tutoring job with better hours and bosses who cared more about her well-being than their paychecks. It worked out for both, but that attitude allowed her to get straight As, which gave her far more than extra the 20 dollars she would have made if she had skipped a class to be a good waitress.

Internships

Some internships are free (avoid those), some are not (usually in engineering). I decided to get an internship for a company that worked on rockets. It took me about a year of consistent emailing, visiting, and waiting to get the interview. At the interview, I was asked a few questions including some basic electronics and programming that I managed to answer and get the job.

This internship leads me to have mentors with who I am still in touch today. It gave me the experience to get better jobs. I also got practical work skills in my area of study and met a lot of good friends.

At this job, there were a lot of young people. They were a few years older than me but they would invite me out with them to bars and house parties.

The company had a holiday party on a cruise ship. We went to Ensanada and I got to bring my girlfriend with me. My boss got me a cigar and a drink and that’s the kind of thing that will not happen when you are work-working because the relationship between boss and worker is more of hierarchy rather than mentorship, which is more of a friendship and companionship.

Lab Jobs I managed to score work on campus through a friend of my family. At first, it was just making presentations and flash animations. But then it grew to write code for data gathering applications and doing actual experiments. This was work I was doing as a second-year and by the third or fourth year in college when I was hitting graduate and undergraduate courses, I had so much experience with the practical application that theoretical courses were much easier for me than for others, or would have been if I had no preparation.

Working with graduate students also gave me access to labs and lounges and a lot of social experiences. I got to know the professor well who I would often come back and see even years later and get his letter of recommendation for jobs and college applications.

The graduate students would teach me valuable life lessons as well as a lot about the profession and what it looks like to be a Ph.D. student. We also would hang out from time to time, even after graduation I would run into them at conferences and we would go out for beers and I would get their help with career development.

These are the kinds of things that a lot of people skip in college but they can pay off massive dividends throughout life.

So work hard, pick your jobs carefully and never forget why you are working: to afford an education so that later on you work less, earn more, and have a better life; don’t cheat yourself by neglecting study for a little side cash or more entertaining things now at the expense of your education.

Chapter 14: Getting First Post College Job

If you do what you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life” -Ruth Ginsburg, first female CEO.

1. When to start looking for one.
2. Where to look for one. (Friends, Family, LinkedIn)
3. What kind of company to work for. (Big, Small, Medium, Start-Up)
4. How to look for one(Cover Letter, Resume, etc)
5. Interview: How to act before, during, and after.
6. Negotiating pay.
7. First Job.
8. How to act.
9. How to quit.

At some point, you’re going to graduate and all those years of high school, college and all the advice from this will book will culminate in your first job. Remember a job? That thing your parents said you were going to need one day when you’re all grown up and have to start paying all those bills? Well, that feeling of being an adult is here (or will be here). I know you don’t feel it (it’s been ten years for me and I still don’t feel it) but now you gotta go and get that job and make a living.

A lot of recent graduates have no idea what job they want, what to apply for, or where to look for it. Many get service jobs and have horrible resumes which they send out into the void without hope. However, if you do it right, you should have to send only a handful of resumes to well-picked companies where you have done some probing and found the names of the hiring managers. Out of those submissions, you should have gotten several interviews and had your first offer within a few weeks of starting your search.

My first job after college was not easy to get. Most people think that you go to college, have fun, graduate, then a bunch of people want you and they pay you lots of money and then you’re rich! And that’s exactly how it does not go. Sorry to tell you, but even if you are an Ivy League graduate, you will need to have work experience on the resume to compete, and I’m not talking about Jamba Juice. I’m talking about some real-life work experience.

If you want an easy time finding a job with good pay, you will have to put in some work at a summer job or internship while you’re studying. And if you’re working while you’re in school, then you may as well make it in the field you plan to work in.

My first job in school was my first job after finishing high school. I heard about internships, submitted my resume, and then got two interviews. One was for a pharmaceutical company creating artificial blood and lungs and the other at Mcdonald’s. I gave McDonald’s a try, but when they said that they want me to organize files, I said goodbye and began doing odd jobs for the pharmaceutical company the rest of the summer. A job like that can give you valuable skills that you can use at the next job. I was testing batches of artificial lungs in ovens, fixing industrial printers, and doing web design.

At the end of that job, I decided I didn’t hate engineering and stuck to my major, which is what you want at the end of an internship. Not to stick to your first choice necessarily, but just to gain awareness of whether or not it is what you want. At the very least, you now have a credible, professional resume and people who could vouch for you.

Getting the job You’re going to have to find it first and there are two scenarios: one is that economic times are great so you go to where you want to work (search well) apply, apply, apply over and over until they have a position for you and hire you. The other is economic times are bad and you will have to network your little hiney off. I found my job during “The Great Recession” while I was volunteer coaching at a high school. My middle school wrestling coach was looking to hire an engineer and so there I was, hired by someone I knew. So try to remain calm and keep your eye out, employers hate seeing a pushy, stressed and desperate applicant. Just imagine that it like dating.

So you network or apply and you have a bunch of jobs under your belt, you are ready to send a resume. Having experience means nothing if you can’t get it across to someone who is looking at you on a piece of paper; you have to be able to present your work and experience in a way that other people reading your resume will be able to grasp what you are trying to communicate. As an engineer, I had no idea how to do that. But I didn’t know that I didn’t know that.

I remember I went to see a talk by Jim Branson at UCSD. Jim Branson was the owner and founder of SpaceDev (it was part of Sierra Nevada Corp). This was the company that put Spaceship 1 in orbit. I knew I wanted to get a job there and I sent them resume after resume. After a week or so of no response, I would tweak the resume again and send it again. When I still got no response back, I went to my parents for help, they shredded it and I remade the resume. I sent it in again and there was no response. I went to the career center on campus and they shredded it again and I fixed it and again I sent it to SpaceDev. After eight or nine months, my resume represented me and my experience in such a way that another person could pick it up and say yes, I want to see this person for an interview. I got the interview and got the job.

My point is that you may think you have something great, but until you ask others for help and review it, you don’t know. So keep fixing and keep sending.

The thing about sending in your resume, again and again, is that it shows that you want to work there. People don’t build companies to just make money, they build them because they believe in something and they want people working with them to believe in what they believe. Because people like that will work tirelessly to create what they want to create.

This is why you have to apply to a company where you want to work and to a company that you believe in. Because you cannot fake enthusiasm, you cannot fake knowledge. Learn about them, know them, ask lots and lots of questions and never be afraid. Fear will lose you the interview, fearlessness will just keep you from getting the wrong job. As Steve Jobs said “Keep looking, never settle” if you find your passion you will have the motivation to keep going and never stop.

Resume Basics

When it comes to resumes there’s less of a what to do and more of a what not to do, and you would be surprised about how much of what one ought not to is done routinely by new grads and experienced people alike.

As far as the do’s go, you want a clean, basic, honest, and succinct resume. As far as the don’ts go, I’ll just list some glaring ones that I saw when I had friends send me theirs for review.

• No more than a page. If you’re so accomplished that you have more than a page, then they know of you already and you don’t need a resume.
• No @college emails. Unless it’s MIT, no one cares.
• Irrelevant experiences that you think “show” what a great applied experience you may have, an employer sees it as padding at best and throws it straight into the trash at worst.
• Objective that uses the word “learning”, your new bosses don’t want to teach you, they want someone who knows who they are and knows what they will do.
• Overly wordy cover letters, experience, or skills. Drill it down to the bare essentials. This will take a lot of work, but you’re trying to get someone to give you money; it’s worth it.
• Being vague, know what you want.
• Sending it out to someone who may be concerned. It’s the Internet age, if you can’t find someone at the company to send it to then you’re not doing enough homework.
• Read it ten times and only then have someone else read it. You want mistakes caught like using the wrong name and those kinds of mistakes are caught only if you’ve done your part of the work and removed all of the big mistakes.

There were some sticky points for me when I was looking for jobs: I didn’t want to work for a defense contractor. Defense is great, we all need it, but I didn’t want to build something that I knew contributed to killing people. So when I took a well-paying job at a defense contractor where the CEO promised he wouldn’t give me that kind of work, I was naive enough to believe him. I sold out. He gave me a project creating rifle scopes and I couldn’t work on it in good conscience. I did not believe in the project I was assigned to and I ended up losing that job. If you cannot believe in what you’re doing, you will not do your best and you will not satisfy yourself or your boss. This is why you have to be true to yourself.

When you are true to yourself, you also have confidence when you walk into the interview. You know why you are there, you know what you can do and that fearlessness and assuredness will carry you through the questions you know and don’t know. It almost doesn’t matter what you answer as much as how you answer. This is not to say, if you’re an idiot and don’t know your shit you will get away with it, a good engineer will spot BS and throw you out before you have time to even recognize what went wrong.

After the interview, send an email to the people who interviewed you. If you did well they will give you their cards, if you didn’t then they won’t and you probably applied for the wrong job. Do not send a pretty letter to HR, do not spray perfume on it, do not email HR. They don’t care, they will not pass it on, they will send it straight to the trash.

Where to work

I have worked for all kinds of firms- big companies, small companies, medium companies, and even start-ups.

Start-ups
Let me get to start-up first because that’s what everyone wants to know about. Start-ups take a lot of money and a lot of work and are like winning a lottery, you hear about the winner but most of the players are losers. They are usually run by people who don’t know the business, creating a product that may or may not work for customers who may or may not exist. It’s fun, it’s great, but I would recommend it only for the very young (nothing to lose) or the very old (nothing to lose).

The most important thing to consider when looking at a start-up is the people. Do you believe that the people can execute their plans? Are they talkers or doers? If the people creating the product are those who can set out to get something done and can get it done, then you are likely to succeed. But if your team is a bunch of people who couldn’t get anything done somewhere else and this is another attempt at doing something after countless failures, then you may very well be wasting your time, end up making no money, end up jaded by the experience. So my advice after the several start-ups I’ve seen is to be careful before jumping in, and if you have any reservations about the people, don’t do it. You might regret it later if it goes huge, but in all likelihood, it will not.

Large Corporations
Big companies are great because there are lots of people to do the jobs you don’t want to do. You learn little about the product and most of your learning is about the bureaucracy of the company. If you learn it well enough, you will see a bright and promising career and you can see yourself rising through the ranks. Should you engage in prideful fighting over details hoping to show others how smart you are, then you are very likely to be laid off. You don’t have to do a great job at a big company, just look busy and don’t make other people’s job any worse than it is. They are probably just as bored and uninspired as you are. The giant machine with a tiny clog can wipe the spirit out of even the most spirited little clog.

Some companies however are great at keeping the spirit alive. I saw once how Intel encouraged its workers through bonuses, team meetings, and posters to remind them of goals. This was great, but most people just followed their job description, kept quiet about their lack of motivation and dissatisfaction with their bosses, and did their best.

Medium Companies
Medium-sized companies offer that middle ground of support and expectation of hard constant work. I would say it is my favorite but it does depend on the job and the company. It also offers enough room to move around and the ability to compensate the workers.

Small Companies
Small companies on the other hand can be volatile, are full of politics, always short on resources, and have a lot of challenges. The place where I had to build a rifle scope was that way and it was great. Except for the fact I had no choice as far as what projects to do and when your heart isn’t into your work, you will have a tough time biting the bullet and putting in an eight to ten-hour workday.

But it is usually a tight-knit team where everyone helps out and you will more than once go out with the CEO for beers.

Tips While at Work:

Under-promise, Over-deliver

Some people think that they have to constantly work and they burn out. Some people have no idea how to work, they are thrown out. And then some take their vacations, work eight hours a day, don’t brown nose, and just get their shit done.

That’s my MO. I remember when I was at Luxtera and I was hourly. I traveled every two months. I would work my hiney off and then take off for a week or two to some far-off place. The important part was always to be dependable. Get your work done, keep your bosses and co-workers happy, don’t leave for so long that they have to replace you, and then all the rest is up to you. One thing is estimating how much time something will take you to do. Usually, whatever you think it takes, multiply that by two. Especially if you are new because you will have some snags, you may have to pick up someone’s slack, and no matter what you want to finish early or on time so that your boss is not angry. If you finish early, I recommend keeping it to yourself, then when you come back from that vacation, you can hand him your work and he is happy rather than slamming 15 more hours on you and making that vacation just another daydream.

Salary

To figure out how much you should be paid, just be honest with yourself and know your worth. Check how much other people earn. For instance, even though the internet was pervasive and I could check out how much others were paid with my education, I didn’t know exactly how much to ask for unless I asked my co-workers while I was interning. I found out a reasonable salary range beforehand and went to the interview with that knowledge so that when the time for the negotiations came, I had no issues discussing pay and generally was offered the amount that made me happy.

When you’re earning your worth, you do not work with the fear that you’re being paid too much or that someone is using you and that you could earn more somewhere else. That peace of mind is important, so you should not compromise if you don’t have to. Be firm but polite, so long as you can back up what you’re asking for.

Coworkers

Don’t burn bridges, you will meet those assholes again and be good to the good people, they will push you ahead and you can often pull them to wherever you are working. Aside from that, enjoy these people, they probably have the same passion as you and you are working toward the same goals. So invite them to BBQs, go out to happy hour because workers that have fun together accomplish great things together. After all, if you’re reading this book, you’re not just going to have a job, you’re going to have a passion.

Quitting

If you have to quit, you probably knew it a while before. Be a sport, ask for that raise or change in assignment first, and don’t be so scared of rejection. If you have to be scared of your boss, you may need a new boss anyway and if you ask for those things, they may give it to you saving you the trouble of searching for a new job. If they do not give what you feel you need and you really want to jump ship, make sure to get something lined up before getting out. At least throw the line and see what comes up. Then when you get something else, give the boss a couple of week’s notice and always go for an exit lunch and ask what you could have done better. Your boss will most likely give you a great set of pointers that will prove to be invaluable.

Jumping ship makes sense for two reasons, the company is falling apart and you are no longer learning. Don’t waste your life stagnating, as soon as you’re done learning you should be looking for the next venture. However, if the company is crumbling you better get out before it’s too late or you will be getting unemployed and that is a terrible thing to have to deal with if you have a mortgage and kids, so better to go early than be caught off guard. After the mass layoffs from a company going under, you’re competing with all of your former fellow employees for the few local jobs.

If you can sense things are getting worse, be the first to leave and find a job when you don’t have a dozen other people with the same qualifications competing with you. How do you know, you ask? You see smart people leaving. Smart people don’t leave good places.

Fired

Chances are, you will be laid off, you will be fired, you will lose your job. Recessions happen, downturns occur, companies go bankrupt, you majorly screw up. This is how it will feel: like a truck just ran you over.

You will think: “Will I ever get another job?” “Who will hire me” “Yes! I get to go on that trip now!” It all depends on your resume and your schedule.

When I got laid off (1st or 2nd, or maybe 3rd time), I felt like crap, I got over it and then went for a little vacation south of the border. Why? Because the whole country got laid off and I knew I couldn’t compete with my boss for the same job. So I went for a little travel RnR and then applied 6 months later and got a quick job with better pay!

But when I got canned because I was performing better, I felt like crap and I was scared. What did I do? Can I get another job? Is this career for me?

Well, that’s when I re-evaluated my life. Sometimes it’s an honest mistake and you will get another job. Sometimes you are in the wrong field and it’s a blessing to go do what you were meant to do.

The important thing is: keep money in the bank (six months at least) so that when something happens, you have options. Don’t get down on yourself. And always evaluate and stick to a plan.

Resources

Designing Your Life By Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

This book describes how to find your career and then how to get a job in that career. Awesome advice on creating a life the way you would create a billion-dollar start-up.

Chapter 15 - Mental Health

This is something few people talk about, but mental problems often come to light in college. I knew several people who had issues, some even took their lives, so I want to talk about it because colleges don’t talk about this issue even though it occurs to a large portion of their students.

Why do mental issues occur in college? Partly just genetics. A lot of mental disorders for whatever reason occur right around the college age of 18-25. So naturally, some people who are in college will experience those issues at the most inopportune time, when they are under a lot of stress, far from family, surrounded by strangers.

Another reason for it is, just what I said, some people have a hard time with the stress of school, family expectations, being far from family, and surrounded by strangers. Not all people thrive in this situation. So what to do about it?

First, don’t freak out if you or your friends start to experience something that you have never experienced before. Learn to diagnose that something is not normal and ask for help.

For instance, if you feel depressed, you may not realize it. Things like wanting to sleep a lot. Not having the motivation to do homework. Not of wanting to go out and have fun. Thinking that you can’t do it, are all signs of this. This is not you, it is your brain’s response to stress. The best thing you can do is go talk to a therapist. There’s always one on campus.

Of course, sometimes the therapists aren’t great. If you don’t connect with them, don’t stop getting help, look for another one (even though this is hard, I know). The problem with depression is that everything is hard, even making a call. This is why talking to someone who is a friend, might help, because they will either go with you or just remind you to go in and make the appointment.

Should you be telling professors? Well, maybe. You should certainly talk to a college counselor (the one time it is ok because they will help you keep your grades nice) because like I said before, grades and what you learn are super super important. Missing a week in a 10-week class is 10% of the class! Making it up is hard in college, even when you are on your game.

I didn’t know this then, but I realize now, that when I took time off from college, it was for this specific reason: I was depressed and lacked motivation. When I had time off, I was able to return and do things better.

Now I wasn’t able to do well in college because I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until years later. A lot of people don’t get diagnosed with this, especially if they are not hyperactive but are inattentive. If you have a hard time focusing, not one in a while, but all the time. If you get easily distracted all the time, not sometimes. You might have it, and it’s really good to get diagnosed so you can get the help you need to do your work.

A lot of people think: I can do it on my own, I don’t need help, I’ll just work harder. That’s like saying I don’t need glasses, I’ll just squint harder. THAT DOESN’T WORK. If you work hard and you can’t focus even on subjects you like, get help. If you don’t, you’ll get bad grades, get discouraged and get depressed.

Some people will say: “I can focus just fine, I can sit playing games for hours”. That’s what is called “Hyperfocus”. People with ADHD lack dopamine connections, so things like video games or high adrenaline stuff will activate the dopamine and kick in hyperfocus that most people won’t have. So it’s a sign of ADHD.

I’m not a shrink, so I can’t diagnose you, but I can tell you that if you are coughing or your arm hurts and you can’t do curls, you will get help from the doctor. College is a gym for your brain, so if you can’t do brain curls, get help. Because the longer you wait, the worse it gets.

So you should learn about this for yourself and your friends because when these issues are not taken care of, the results can be tragic. This was the case for several of my friends and acquaintances. I wish they had gone for help to me or their parents or their friends. They took their life over events and feelings that were temporary and issues that could have been addressed and made easier.

On the other hand, one guy on our wrestling team did reach out. He was going through a bipolar psychotic episode that was unbeknownst to him. He was yelling at his roommates in a way no one understood, and he said something strange to a wrestling teammate online. We found him and got him help. I was there with him at the hospital before they admitted him and his parents arrived. He is now a financial planner. Another friend also reached out, had to go home for a while, but she came back and finished school and is now also working and enjoying life.

So mental stuff happens, to a lot of people, and very often for the first time in college. So be aware of it, learn to realize something is off, and don’t be afraid to do something about it. Because you’re not the first, you’re not weird if it does, and people will be happy to help you get through it.

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

1. Why apply.
2. Studying for tests
3. Personal Statement
4. Experience
5. Contacting professors
6. When to apply
7. What if grades are low
8. 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.

More on this is said in Ch 16.

Reasons to not go on to a Ph.D.:

• You don’t want to go into academia and teach.
• You don’t want to do a post-Doc, the period of 2-10 years after Ph.D. where you do the same work as people do in the industry but for a third of the money, with hopes of finding a position at a University to teach.
• The last reason that I know of, you can’t stand to spend another second in the Ph.D. program.

Pitfalls

I have met Ph.D. students whose funding was cut off after four years and could not get their Ph.D. I’ve met students who were going through the program for ten plus years and I have met students who got on the bad side of a tenured professor who would fail them and get them nearly expelled. One must navigate and tread the waters of University politics carefully.

You must never burn a bridge, no matter how shaky, and keep focus at all times.

You will work as a slave for virtually no money but in the end, you will be smarter, better, and most likely richer. So focus on your passion, don’t let others dissuade you, and dig in. Others have done it and so can you.

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.

Appendix

Appendix A: Online vs In-Person

COVID hit us like a brick wall and we were all forced into On-Line. That which was a subpar product packaged for people who couldn’t pass GRE or get good grades but claimed to be “too busy with work”, now became mandatory.

And what did we learn?

It sucks. It sucks just as much as we thought if not more.

Learning difficult subjects is not easy. Learning difficult subjects requires all of our senses to form memories. It requires an environment that sets us up for the learning we are about to embark on. We all tune in, we turn off our laptops (hopefully), we put away our phones (if we are serious) and we listen. After and before class we might ask a question of our peers and in class, we ask questions of the professors. We smell the chalk or the marker fumes, we move our heads from the board to our notes, we think about the matter and we read things before and after. We feel the paper that we turn in and we feel the graded paper returned.

And what do we get in an online class? NOTHING.

We “walk into the class” in our pajamas. We are on Facebook the whole time. The professor rarely asks a question, and when they do, we are almost always on the toilet. We barely do the reading and we certainly don’t interact with other students.

What does this mean? It is a waste of time and money.

If you can study this way? Great! You just saved yourself gas money and money on courses. If you don’t need a network ever? You’re probably an idiot and will never rise in an organization and this method is for you.

BUT. If you are serious about learning and applying what you learn, if you are serious about your future, if you are willing to invest in yourself, then for the love of god, avoid online and do it in person.

I might be an old man saying this, or behind the times. But if I am, prove me wrong!

Appendix B: My Categories for Picking UCSD

When I made my list of pros and cons I was 18 and didn’t know what was important, so here are some of the important things that were on my list and some which I would have added if I could go back and talk to my 18-year-old self.

Type: University, College, Community, Trade School.

Some people are afraid to spend time and money on a four-year school and if you are not ready (meaning you do not know what you want to study or who you want to be), a Community College may be a great place to go while you figure yourself out. The problem is, the vast majority of community college students never get their AA degree and don’t finish in two years. So if you are not doing this out of financial considerations, it may not be the best choice. Taking time off may be in your interests to figure out what you’d like to do with your life before jumping in.

Four-year Colleges generally offer a great small school feel, but at a University you will often have opportunities to work with faculty on interesting research projects. Finally, some people don’t care to have a traditional liberal arts education, they just want to know the skills they need to start working. For them, a trade school is the best option.

For me, UCSD was pretty much my high school with ashtrays and a pub. An Academic University with no football and near the beach.

Size: Small or Big

A small school will give you a sense of community and it generally will have a smaller student to lecturer ratio. Consider your personal likes and dislikes. If you hate being a faceless number and are easily overwhelmed by large campuses teaming with people, a 20,000 person campus may not be for you.

I preferred a smaller school, but the opportunities offered by a large University near home and the savings of lower tuition compared to pricey small schools meant that UCSD won out.

Money: Cost and Value

Going to a community college and transferring can help a lot to lower the cost of education. The main drawback is that you will not get to connect as much with classmates and not all Universities allow you to transfer. If you do not plan to go into a field that makes a lot of money, do not have scholarships, or wealthy parents, then logically it is not recommended to go to an expensive private school, especially if the major is not especially commercially viable.

Debt is a terrible way to start your life, and while money is not the goal of life, being poor certainly isn’t either. Plus, it is important to remember that some jobs will not make you enough money to allow you to survive while paying off your college debt, let alone afford to also afford that girlfriend, car, house, and kids.

My family was middle class. So it was either go into debt or pay 5k a year for a public institution.

What to study: Majors

This is a tough pick and many will change their major several times after entering college. Getting to know yourself, working in a field of interest, and creating life goals early on is the best way to find the major you like before you actually begin coursework. It is also important to realize that classes are not an exact preparation for real life, and the work you do will not be like the classes you take.

So if you like what you’re learning, that is a great plus, but remember that on the job you will be using your knowledge and not necessarily learning more about the subject. So learn in school as much as you can before you have to try to learn on the job.

UCSD had a great engineering school, one of the best. I applied to WPI in Massachussettes but there was no scholarship so again, the cost won out.

What are you paying for? Prestige!

I remember staying at my friend’s dorm room at Yale. We were going to bars with the kids of the most powerful people in the US. I remember seeing the president’s daughter across the bar and at the same time I remember him bringing a stack of books during Thanksgiving break. I remember him talking about family members financing other family members’ businesses. And this was when I realized that money makes money and that access to money is what can allow one to succeed in the US.

If you don’t have your own money, then at least through friends you should have a way to get money. Thus, if you are intent on being at the top, don’t kid yourself and realize that you will have to work hard and be there where the best is to get to the top. If you want to be the best in a field, go to the school where the best in that field are working. The prestige will carry you through life because your knowledge and ability will be clear from simply announcing where you got those skills.

I guess there was academic prestige. I didn’t meet kids of Fortune 500 CEOs at UCSD, but there were plenty that has recently made it onto that list so there’s no reason why I couldn’t. Of course, that’s why I joined a fraternity because a nationwide network of successful people is not a bad thing to have.

Another ambiguous value: Connections:
Personal connections are great! Everyone uses them. They make the world manageable. No matter how small of a company you own or work for, you will always be more likely to choose someone on a good recommendation instead of a resume. This of course scales up to corporate jobs, government work, and business transactions. Friends do businesses with friends, and the higher the stakes of the game that you’d like to play are, the bigger the players you need to find. If you go to an Ivy League school, you will more likely be in a circle of those who will be at high levels of government and business, if you go to a top-tier technical school then you will be among those who will be the best in science.

The people you surround yourself with during college is the network you will rely on for the rest of your life, so choose wisely. The better the network, the better the jobs, and the easier it will be to navigate your career when times are good and when times are bad.

The people I studied with were the ones that I contacted and tipped me off to my first two employers. Connections matter and they can be made anywhere. Of course, my connections at UCSD were some of the best in the field.

Social Life (At “UC Socially Dead”):

Some schools are known for a rowdy social scene, some for their diligent academics, and some for insane sports fans and small-town support. In the next four years, your social skills will be put to the test and grow tremendously. So pick wisely what you can handle and still succeed academically and what is most important to you and in what kind of environment you thrive.

At UCSD you had to work to find parties, to make friends, and have a balanced life. Most people were not extremely social. So that was a big minus on my list, but lucky for me, I don’t have a problem meeting people.

Time-off or as we say, “figuring yourself out”

It is becoming more and more common for people to take time off between high school and college. I think that that’s a nice luxury for the rich, but it is also a prudent approach for those who have not yet matured or figured out what it is they want to do. If you work and save up (while still living at the parents’), you can always take a few months to travel, see the world and grow up.

College is expensive, it is difficult, and spending time and money switching between majors might be avoided by going out into the real world and finding out what is it that one likes, what is it that one is good at, and only after that entering college with focus and determination. If there is one thing that people need to succeed, it is good goals and focused. The good news for many students is that some colleges now allow for time-off for a year and that can be a big plus to some on the list of why to apply or to accept a college.

_Time off was working two jobs and taking Chinese and Weight Lifting at a community college. It may not sound fun but it got my head straight to work better when I came back. _

GPA, yes it is still important.

If you plan to get a well-paying corporate job or apply to a top-tier graduate school, the GPA from the school where you went will matter more than the actual GPA. But for most people and most colleges GPA is still an important metric. So study for the knowledge, not the grades but still consider wisely how well you study and what your after-school plans are before choosing a college. You never want to leave yourself with closed doors because college is only four years of your life, many years of success or failure may ride on where and how you spent those four years.

Mine was terrible, but at least it was terrible from a great school and a tough major.

Research: that work that pays little and requires sacrifice but brings in dividends:

Going to a college where there are a lot of opportunities to work alongside graduate students and professors can be rewarding and a huge boost to your professional life, career and it can help you get into a good graduate program. So don’t overlook working opportunities because, while every college has Greenpeace and study abroad or working as an usher, not every college has a lab where you can get your hands on real research and real experience in nanotech, neuroscience, or archaeology.

Probably the most important thing I did while in college. The technology I worked on and the skills I learned and the people I worked with were the best things that happened to me.

Sports, they are more important than you think.

If you believe that you can just do sports, you’ll have a tough time after graduation and if you believe that you can lock yourself inside the library and still do well you’re also mistaken. Physical activity is super important for stamina, health, and mental clarity. Thousands of college kids every year are diagnosed with depression, bipolar and other disorders that can often be dealt with the daily rush of adrenaline on the soccer field or in the pool.

So if you have a favorite sport, why not continue with it after high school? You’re not competitive? It’s ok, there are lots of club sports, intramural sports, and a million other options at most colleges. So take a look at those and put them down on your checklist. It will make you a better student and a happier person and probably better looking.

_This was not high on my checklist when going to school but being part of the Judo and wrestling club in my last year helped me keep my sanity and stamina during all-night study sessions.

So here we are: I have outlined my main checklist for how I would pick a school today. Examine carefully each of these categories because your future depends on them and your likelihood of doing well depends on your comfort level and your goals and then make your own!

Now you’re ready to apply and then pick yours from all the ones that will accept you. Good luck!

Appendix C: As You Go Off To College, Do Not Do This.

For anyone who is about to start college, try some drugs, smoke cigarettes, drink a beer but please abstain from one thing, no matter how much peer pressure you get. Don’t read anything written by Ayn Rand. I just read in “Raw Story” about the dangers of Ayn Rand, and I can tell you that reading her books as an 18-year-old made me a horrible person. Her beliefs take away the only thing around you that matters, and that is other people. All material things can disappear, but nothing is more important than your connection to the people around you, and nothing helps your happiness more than their happiness.

Ayn Rand took anti-communism to the extreme, takes the thoughts of a petulant teenager, and helps them stay in that stage of development through adulthood. Most people grow out of it, but not after they do some serious damage to their psyche and those around them.

Her ideas led to Regan dismantling the mental healthcare system in the US, Greenspan’s deregulation of the finance industry, leading to the Great Recession, and Bush and Rumsfeld’s war in the Middle East. That’s on the large level, on the small level I’d say the entire thought that we are not responsible for the poor and that somehow our spouses are to make us happy and that if they don’t we can cheat or divorce has ruined millions of families.

Ayn Rand may have been the worst thing to have come to the United States.

Rand offered a narcotic for confused young people: complete certainty and a relief from their anxiety. Rand believed that an “objective reality” existed, and she knew exactly what that objective reality was. It included skyscrapers, industries, railroads, and ideas—at least her ideas. Rand’s objective reality did not include anxiety or sadness. Nor did it include much humor, at least the kind where one pokes fun at oneself. Rand assured her Collective that objective reality did not include Beethoven’s, Rembrandt’s, and Shakespeare’s realities—they were too gloomy and too tragic, basically buzz killers. Rand preferred Mickey Spillane and, towards the end of her life, “Charlie’s Angels.”

So if there is one thing I can recommend to you before you head to college: “experiment”, “have fun”, “meet people”, and experience life with others, not by yourself, and 100% not with Ayn Rand.

If you don’t believe me, believe John Oliver.

Appendix D: Our Book Page

One of my favorite teachers in high school, Mr. S, had all of his students make a page in his Our Book. Instead of a small picture inside the yearbook that said nothing about you, we had one page where we could write anything we wanted. I wrote this page and it is interesting to see how little I changed- how ADD I was back then, the king of quotes, and run-on sentences (I and still am). I was cocky yet nerdy and had a lot of ambition and smugness, and the same insecurities that I carry today. You may change a lot after 18, but not as much as you think. (This is page is unedited, just as it appeared in the “Our Book”)

** This is a San Dieguito Story from a Rushin Point of View

I want to say that San Dieguito men are very fortunate. We have some of the most beautiful and intelligent girls of all schools in the world. Men of other countries would kill to be in our seats, and what do we do, we waste that chance. San Dieguito girls are not that picky, I mean look at what they have to pick from, at San Dieguito a guy is considered to be hot if he’s better looking than a gorilla. Guys take a chance, ask them out, what do you have to lose?

** TV is a Waste of Time, Read a Book and Get Rid of Your Ignorance_

I did a lot during my senior year, sometimes I failed, but in the end, I managed to do fairly well. However, the main thing that I learned is that “whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” It’s ok to try hard, it’s ok to fail, you are a failure if you do nothing. As long as you learn from failed attempts, and learn to succeed. As my short experience shows; being successful is not a one-time thing, it’s a habit.

“In the Life of Garp we are all terminal cases.” (_The World According to Garp, John Irving) That may be so, and for some reason, this belief causes everyone to either to live in the fear of death or constantly try to meet because after all “we all die sooner or later.” I believe that the secret to life is to know where you’re going and know how to make it worthwhile. Unfortunately, there are too many of us that would rather sit in front of the TV rather than bother to think about the direction, and these misguided people end up rolling around in circles, never really getting anywhere and disappearing as if they never existed.

In my opinion, life should be safe, eventful, and always fun, the hardest part is to do so without wasting it.

In the words of Dale Carnegie, people want recognition; they want the feeling of being important and known for their deeds. When someone messes up on my name or gives credit to someone else for my work, I become enraged. I am evolved in almost every aspect of school: from the nerdy NHS and Physics club to the famous jock sport that I helped create at this school, Wrestling. All because I want to be recognized, I want to have that feeling of achievement. However, making someone else feel important will raise you that much in their eyes and make them feel good about helping you because once a person has gained the feeling of self-importance in someone else’s eyes, they don’t want to drop that feeling.

“Always Smile,” Carnegie said. In some cases, a smile is worth a million dollars because people don’t like to deal with angry people. In high school, everything is about grades. At the same time, everything is about the parties. Next time you receive a bad review or bad grade, come up to the supervisor with a smile, it might make them want to listen to you rather than tell you to leave, honestly, this works. Not only did it work in changing a teacher’s opinion about my grade, but also it changed an admission counselor’s decision at a college, trust me it works.

Academic Decathlon Vice President 3rd team all-county

SDA Wrestling founder and 2x Captain 6th at CIFs

NHS, CSF, yadda, yadda, yadda.

This is all to make me feel better about myself, I think id did the trick,

I feel good. 5-21-2000