Work and Workings of a Nerd

I always look forward to coming home on vacation. I know I have the chance to snap out of my regular rhythm, enjoy home cooking, sleep in, see my family, and snatch up various items from around the house. What I sometimes most look forward to, however, is the least predictable opportunity: catching up with grade school friends. Unlike my family, I’m not constantly updated with the latest news, and get-togethers let me hear where people have been in the often too-long time since I last saw them.

This particular vacation has been interesting because it’s 4 years since high school graduation, and many of my friends are just out of college. Oddly, I happened to end up meeting up with quite a few I haven’t seen at all since high school, which makes it as though college never really happened. It seems like people are all over the place: some have moved out of Texas, most stayed. Some are doing something related to their college major, most aren’t. But across the board, it sounded like they just didn’t really know what they wanted the rest of their life to be yet.

Which is fair. Unlike in other education systems, it seems that American students often make very late choices about what they want to do. I’ve heard that in Europe, some students are tunneled into a profession as soon as they reach high school. Here, most high school students don’t specialize at all. 4-year colleges often don’t require students to choose a major upon admission, and even if they do, they have the flexibility to change well into their 3rd and 4th years. And as I’ve discovered, even college graduates don’t know what jobs they want. It’s a sentiment I can understand given my huge changes over the past year or two, but I was surprised by their approach to dealing with it.

Many of them mentioned that they were just working jobs and not working on their careers. The sense I got is that they were biding their time: uncertain of what they wanted to do, they were trying something out to gain a little experience, like a small job at a big corporation, and they were continuing to explore and see what might come their way. While holding down the fort 9-to-5, they could spend their evenings learning about other opportunities and enjoying life. Instead of returning home and becoming dependents again, they wanted something temporarily stable until they found their true passion and could jump on that opportunity at that time, with a resume and work history that demonstrated their commitment.

Put that way, this plan seems very reasonable, and I happily agreed that this was the best thing for them to do at that time. Only after thinking about it a little longer did I realize that this very sound plan for any college graduate completely contradicted my own plan.

The mindset that I came into was that this time after college was the best time to go for the biggest, craziest idea possible. At this time, my only commitment is to eat and have a warm roof. I don’t have a family or any dependents and am not locked into a corporate ladder. Even if I fail, I can learn a lot, and even the worst failure is still work experience. By the time I’ve waited to find my passion, I’ll have lost that window of freedom. I only need that really steady position a few years down the road, and I can reevaluate the rest of my life at that point.

This mindset is undoubtably a product of my time in the Bay Area, where you can’t miss the optimism that anyone can change the world and the urgency that someone else will if you don’t. And even then, it can be hard to follow that plan. Many of my friends, even from Stanford, are heading out to well-paying jobs at big companies, some of which will definitely pitch their startup roots but realistically can no longer maintain that excitement and enable individuals to really go for the big thing. Even I almost took the safe path of job opportunities with Silicon Valley firms. It actually took some external forces to push me along the path I am now that has really allowed me to embrace this headlong mindset.

That difficulty and serendipity, however, reminds me how hard it is to believe these perspective from the outside. Out of my great confusion from CS378, one thing I learned is how important it is that one be immersed in a particular community and circumstance to really understand certain ideas. Just as how a halfback pass play isn’t very tricky to someone who doesn’t understand football conventions and strategy, it’s hard to really believe the mindset I’m in without being where I’ve been.

So for my peers reading this, I’m kind of directing this post at you. I understand that this mindset doesn’t really work for everyone, but don’t let that be an excuse for you. I think it applies to more people than they themselves realize. But don’t take my word for it: I think just reading my words on it is exactly the sort of passive engagement that I don’t think will change your life and is characteristic of learning about what you might do instead of going for it. I have an open couch for anyone outside of the Bay Area who wants to visit, and I’ll extend an open invitation for anyone around the Bay Area who wants to have lunch at Zanbato. At least take enough of a step to see what you might be able to do: once you start, it’s awfully hard to stop.

I started this blog 6 1/2 years ago on a whim to keep everyone aware of what’s been happening in my life. It’s taken some odd turns here and there, including fiction, papers for class, food, tutorials, and more, but my life has been the core of it, with different facets of it coming into view at different times. I slowly transitioned from broad summaries to specific observations in my life, and although it makes blogging more engaging for me, it also leaves a disjointed trail for you to follow. And now that I’m at the point where my friends and family have dispersed, it seems more relevant now to pick that back up.

My mom still mails out a Christmas newsletter to family friends, but since it appears that snail mail is dead and no one reads their email, this blog seems like the right venue for that. The fact that it’s publicly viewable doesn’t bother me too much: my rule of thumb is that I’m willing to write about anything I would tell someone sitting next to me on an airplane. Most of the important facts are also available via any number of social networking sites as well. So, here’s the rundown.

I ended up graduating with my degree in Symbolic Systems this past June, right on schedule. My concentration was in “learning,” which was just a convenient way for me to fit the classes that I wanted to take. In reality, my studies were more directed towards computational models of cognition. Think of it as the flip side of artificial intelligence: instead of trying to make computers intelligent for its own purposes, I looked at how we could use the same technology to better understand how people think. I applied to PhD programs in psychology hoping to continue that type of work. That isn’t what I’m doing now, and I often skim over that fact by saying that I decided not to do that. The more complete truth is that I didn’t get accepted to anywhere that I applied to, so there wasn’t much of a choice. Instead, I decided to finish up a master’s in Computer Science at Stanford as part of a 5-year program that I was already accepted to.

Instead, I’ll be working at Zanbato, a startup in Mountain View that I co-founded, as a software engineer and have been working at part-time during school. Currently, I’ll be finishing up my degree at the end of March and going full-time after that. The basic pitch is that we’re building a marketplace for infrastructure investments. Infrastructure, such as bridges, powerplants, and schools, has a pretty fragmented market, and given how much interest there is from both sellers and investors, it’s a shame that it isn’t easier to work in this space. If you’re interested, check out the 5 minute video at sokoni.com on what we’re doing for Africa. Although it’s not quite what I envisioned myself doing a year ago, I legitimately think that this is the most important thing I could be doing right now and can change the world with it.

As such, I’m planning on staying out in the Bay Area for awhile. Meanwhile, my parents ended up never moving to Boston and will now be staying in Houston for the foreseeable future. The house is a little more empty, and all of my possessions are in (many, heavy) boxes, but it’s still good to see everyone around here.

StackMap, the other startup I’m a part of, is going well. We hired a CEO and have been picking up clients and making improvements. You can see it live at appstate and Stanford, where it’s hopefully making students’ lives much easier. It’s been around for 3 1/2 years now, but I think we’re just starting to make things happen with it. Given how many student startups fail, I’m proud to see us endure through all of that and still offer a valuable product on the far end.

Cooking continues as you’ve likely seen between my blogs. The biggest change happened this summer when I tried the mostly-vegetarian thing, which Julie, as my co-chef, also endured. She actually puts my attitude best in that I don’t cook meat for myself. I’ll happily eat meat when I go out to eat but have switched to meatless sandwiches and various alternatives for dinner. Future goals for cooking might show up in my new year hopes.

I played quite a bit of sand volleyball during my senior year, taking it 2 out of the 3 quarters. I haven’t played much since, but I have been playing racquetball regularly. Although we aren’t going to the national championship, I spend another season obsessed with Stanford football. Throw in a bit of Starcraft and ton of awesome potlucks, and that’s pretty much what my life is like.

(Author’s Note: check out one of the recaps at ESPN or Go Mighty Card if you’re interested in the details of the game this post came from. It shouldn’t be too important, so read on if you prefer)

A few minutes after Stanford beat USC 48-38 and we had a chance to recover from triple overtime, my roommate Joe commented that it had been the “most nerve-wracking game” he had even watched. I pointed out that it was only so because we won: had we lost, it would’ve been the most devastating game ever. Cue the camera panning over fans with their hands on their hand.

This year, Stanford football, only 5 years from going 1-11, came into the season as a top-1o ranked team with aspirations for and a shot at a national championship. So far, it’s gone very well. Coming into the game last night, Stanford had won their last 10 games by more than 25 points, were on a 15 game winning streak, and, through 7 games this year, were never behind at any point in a game. It may have been close a few times, but we never needed to come from behind.

Even so, I was scared in a few games when we were only winning by less than a touchdown at the half. Unlike teams of the past, we were expected to win, and that changed my attitude towards the games. Before, I could be happy just that we were playing well and winning. Now, in a season where we could go to the Rose Bowl or beyond, each game isn’t a step forward: it’s another chance to lose.

So watching us go to the half only leading by 4 point was worrying, but being down 10 points in the 3rd quarter was frightening. And when Andrew Luck, our star quarter back, threw an interception that USC ran back for a touchdown late in the 4th quarter to put us behind by a touchdown, I had a scary realization: our season could be “over” so quickly. Everything we hoped for could disappear, and I was looking at the score on the TV by which that might happen.

But the team showed the poise that matches their tunnel vision and “one game at a time” mentality that makes them far better and stronger than their fans, many like me who are aware of every scenario for how things play out. The offense put together 4 consecutive touchdown drives (3 in OT), and the defense forced a fumble that linebacker A.J. Tarpley jumped on top of. And that was the shocking end to a game that left all fans in disbelief, some better and some worse.

I sometimes wish we were back in the old days, when the only fans were true die-hards to a team that didn’t have any big expectations. But as easy as that life was, it didn’t drive the same intensity in me. It was easy because I wasn’t invested, even if I was watching. Stanford’s upset of then #2 USC in 2007 was great, but had we lost, I’m sure I wouldn’t have any particular memories of the game. NOw, I can experience all of the highs and lows of a game developing before me, tracking other teams and feeling every moment of the season.

I would never wish a game to come as close as this last one did, but it was probably good for us. The team showed their ability to endure a long and physical game against a tough opponent. But for the fans, we felt a fear that we hadn’t really in the past 10 games. Instead of thinking to the next few games after the team had a huge lead in the first quarter, we were intently watching every moment of the game. We saw every tackle, every reception, every juke through the game. For that game, we weren’t the fans of a possible future: we were the fans of the game of football itself that we claim to be.