A lot of people have written already about the awesomeness of SXSW – thought I’d share a list of links of the events at which I attended. If anyone is interested in hearing more about this amazing event, drop me an email.
Jeff went to college knowing he was following his passion of studying Electrical Engineering like his dad. However, in this four year quest, Jeff took courses in completely unrelated fields and completed a minor in mathematics. Jeff also talks about choosing the right job after college.
In this interview Dima Tokar talks about his experience at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dima is currently pursuing a double major in microbiology and finance, all that while working full time as a resident assistant and running his own business. Listen to his advice about school, career, entrepreneurship, and more.
This is the second time I attempt to write a post about this topic. Initially, I was focusing too much on how different cultures see failure. But realizing my lack of knowledge on the topic, I decided to abstain—I would not like to fall into false stereotypes or offend anybody. However, I am really interested in how different cultures perceive failure—particularly how this perception differs between western and eastern cultures. So if anybody would like to share some personal stories related to the topic, I would be very happy.
Now to the point.
Note: For some reason, starting essays or blog posts with sentences such as “this is indeed an interesting topic” is considered amateurish. However, I like doing it because it puts me in a conversational mindset, and I rather communicate to others (regardless of being through voice, video, or text) in a casual manner. In this post, I am just going to start with this long unnecessary paragraph in order to achieve the same result. I accept suggestions on other ways to be explicitly informal.
At a Business Today International Conference, I had the pleasure to hear many distinguished keynote speakers. I honestly can’t remember any of the speeches, but there was one that I always think about and quote to other people. The speaker was the CEO of a middle-man-fuel-trading type company—I don’t recall his name. He stood up in the podium and said something like the following:
you guys are young, you have a lot of time and your minds have not yet been polluted by society. You guys should spent much of this time figuring out what your world views are: Do you believe in God? Why? Would you get an abortion? Why? Do you feel you owe to your country? Your family? Why? Don’t just follow a belief just because the people around you follow it. Allow yourself the opportunity to explore ideas and find which world views best match you—a unique individual […]
Corporate America prides itself in being a cut throat meritocracy. In this system, subordinates are to be rewarded based on the quantity and quality of their work. Any capitalist at heart would agree that this compensation model is indeed the most effective way to maximize output, push efficiency, and persuade innovation.
However, in practice Corporations are rarely able to achieve this modus operandi. The problem: it is very hard to track the amount and worth of work produced by an employee. The end result is that most companies end up following a more conservative reward system influenced by factors such as the amount of time an employee has been with the company, rapport with manager, or other forms of visibility such as the completion of an online MBA.
Most engineering schools require students to design and construct some sort of prototype before graduating. At my school, this prototyping requirement is called “Senior Design Project“. Although most students have the ability to create a great project, when the Demo comes they end up selling themselves too short.
What do I want to be when I grow up? For most of us, this is an existential question that will follow us wherever we go. We are dropped in this world by a mysterious stork, which does not leave with us any hints of why are we here, what are we supposed to do, and how are we going to do it. So we begin our quest for the discovery of this existential conundrum.
We first want to be a doctor, then a veterinarian, and maybe later an engineer. But at some point along the way we lose the childish concept of a profession and we suddenly plummet into the so called “real world”. We have seen so much TV, read so much sensationalist media, and heard so many stories posed by a “friend of a friend”, that we are unable to pursue our true passions anymore. Not only have we divorced that idealistic representation of our future self, we have made a conscious effort to convince ourselves otherwise.
