What I learned from Launch X

This weekend, I came home from Launch X, a month-long summer business program. Launch was an exciting experience and I’ve been reflecting upon my experience these past few days. While I learned a more strategic way to approach starting a business and some scary realities about entrepreneurship in general, what strikes me as most valuable is the mindset this program instilled in me about areas outside of entrepreneurship. 

Everything is learnable if you put in the time. I write about this because I struggled quite a bit in physics this past year and it’s not something I try to hide. I remember being extremely frustrated during the school year because I couldn’t understand the homework questions and the concepts. My frustration led me to call my parents frantically, trying to get help. It also led me to bang my fists on my desk, crumple up sheets of scratch paper, and bury my head deep in frustration. I've been reflecting on my experience learning physics and in retrospect, I probably would have understood the topics better had I spent more time. Over the year, physics became one of those subjects I walked into believing it was hard. I almost gave myself leeway for not understanding and I was easily frustrated when I couldn’t understand something right away. Being immersed in a startup at Launch taught me that while so many things in life are out of control, learning is one of the most controllable things we can do. During the program, my team and I met often. We worked long nights, we debugged our website, and we worked to better our product constantly. Yet even with all that time spent, nothing is guaranteed. Whether we will get investors, whether our team dynamic will stay fresh, and whether we will actually breach into the market are aspects out of our control. What is in my control though, is how much time I want to spend learning new skills to better our company. Launch has helped me come to this new realization that if I put in the time, I can learn anything. So many things are out of control, but how much we know about anything is within our control. I aspire to have this tenacious mindset and patience with myself during the most stressful nights of the upcoming school year.

It’s not the experience that matters. It’s the mindset. Many students who came to Launch already started companies and non-profits. Some had several nonprofits, a company, and a school club all under their belt. I’m not gonna lie: it felt a little bit disorienting when I learned how much the people around me had done. By the end of the program, however, when I looked at the more further developed startups, I noticed that the experience of each individual team member didn’t dictate the strength of the startup. The mindset did. The more developed teams had strong-willed individuals who felt passionate about their idea. The team comprised of people who believed their idea could make a difference in this world, driving them to excel in their efforts, time commitment, and dedication. I suppose this bounces off my first point about having the right mindset when learning new things. At the end of the day, nothing is 100% innate and a large portion of success comes from making the most of what we’re given. 

Even though this program lasted a little longer than my schedule would have liked, I don't regret it one bit. While I learned about entrepreneurship, physically being immersed in that startup environment and under those pressures alleviated some of my other mindsets about life. Thank you to those at the program who made it so amazing and thank you to my parents who made this experience possible. 

A yardstick of quality

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected" -Steve Jobs

A little reminder to seek for better as I enter the final work week with my team for our company.

We scare ourselves more than anything or anyone

At night, when I have nothing to do, little to think about, and no immediate pressures, my brain wanders. Lately, I’ve found myself stressing out around 9:30 PM at night. Perhaps summer vacation and the lack of a three-tests-per-day schedule are the culprits to my stress. I don’t know why. It seems that whenever I have no imminent stressors ahead of me, my mind backtracks and begins freaking over stressors in the past. It’s almost as if my brain has become accustomed to constant stress. Perhaps the lack of stress and things to do induces stress. I begin worrying about past failures, panicking about my performance in school, or analyzing my social life.

I had a mental breakdown in my room last night. It was around 10:00 PM. I had spent the day in Boston, studied some physics, and worked on the company with my team. In the evening, I played some badminton with some people in the dorm. In the time being, it felt like a productive day. Too fatigued to work, I lay in bed at around 10 PM with little to do or think about. Perhaps that was the danger: having nothing to do or think about. I found myself meandering into my past and I began to stress myself out. 

Last night taught me something important: we scare ourselves more than anything or anyone. Yes, I’m scared of bugs and spiders, but not more than my ability to do whatever I want to myself and others. A part of me wants to trust myself. Nevertheless, it’s difficult knowing how much power I possess over myself and my capabilities. Having power is an amazing aspect of being a human being. We have the power to succeed, to persist against hardships, and to produce real change in this world. On the other hand, our power can also inflict pain upon ourselves. Striving to find that equilibrium is ultimately the key to success. I’m a believer in the idea that a little pain produces more gain than a smooth hike to the top of the mountain. 

To conclude this post, I will talk about a little saying I’ve seen on Instagram. There are these I’ve seen posts which say, “behind every successful person is an endless latte”. True, to a certain degree. However, what’s always true behind every successful person are the times they overcome the nights where nothing makes sense and where everything feels upside down. 

Detach Yourself

Detach yourself. It’s something I’ve read about, my parents have told me about, and that I’ve tried to learn through my club at school. Maybe it’s time that helps, perhaps it’s my exhaustion with managing everything, but lately, I’ve discovered that one counterintuitive way to go about problem-solving is to detach myself from the problem itself. 

I easily become emotionally attached to things I’m a part of. There’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to extend every drop of energy out to projects, groups, and ideas I work on. Part of this resilient strive for perfection comes from my belief that I shouldn’t engage in anything I’m not willing to put 100% into. 

I’m quite surprised by my lack of stress and my ability to handle difficult situations calmly at this entrepreneurship program. Executing plans has consistently been something that's stressed me out at school. Nevertheless, my team and I have hit some troughs and lows, but somehow, I haven’t been feeling that burning desire to plow through these situations. I’ve found myself taking my time with every failure, struggle, and setback, creating learning opportunities from each obstacle. Could this be due to lower stakes in the summer? Lack of other stressors? Perhaps. But maybe time has allowed me to mature a little more.

I no longer feel the heat rise to my cheeks when things don’t “click” immediately; instead, I step back and evaluate the whys and the whats. I try not to attach my worth as a human being by my accomplishments, but rather, by my kindness and sincerity towards others. The inklings of a newfound ability to take a step back, view the situation from the outside in, is allowing me to tackle problems better. My breath stays down. I focus on the problem. Then I take the first step. Is this what adults refer to as emotional intelligence? 

Lately

Lately, I've been at an entrepreneurial camp, the reason behind my lack of activity on my blog. I’m half-way through my first of four weeks at this program. There have been some ups and downs, but overall, I’m quite content with my experience. 

Our day begins at 7 AM. We take public transportation, arriving to class at 9 AM. We finish class at 4 PM, and from then on, the day is ours. While I’m slightly disappointed in having to wake up so early for class, I find myself eager to learn. I feel different in these classes, which tackle various business aspects like customer buying behavior, consumer persona, market research, etc. I find myself participating in the interactive lectures and when I raise my hand to respond to a question, adrenaline and ideas pour through my system. I’m excited. It requires a different way of thinking from classes in school; these classes solidify knowledge of human behavior, sociality, and creativity in solving business problems. I enjoy listening to the creativity of each person's response and I particularly enjoy observing how everyone takes a slightly different take on a particular question/issue. 

It’s a beautiful thing, being able to understand people’s thinking processes. I also love my team. The program’s pre-work asked that we take personality and learning style tests, as the administration used this data to strategically formulate teams. I suppose this data worked quite well, as I’ve bonded not only with my team through the work we do in class; I’ve also been able to know them as individuals. We've worked through many ideas together, combing through the ups, downs, and confusions. During our meals, we crack jokes, talk about our experiences outside of the program, and our favorite things to do. It's amazing how much our friendship has grown since the pre-program when we only saw each other through google hangouts to begin the pre-work. 

In the evenings, the residential advisors host nightly hall meetings. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some pretty cool people in my hall and even drifted around to hang out with people in other halls. I've met some really strategic minded kids, some from other countries, some who code, others who do physics, and those who speak five languages. It’s only been a couple of days at this camp, yet the days feel long and the week short. Having hung out with various friend groups, participated in various recreational sporting events, and eaten my meals with new people every day, I believe I’ve found my spot socially. I feel as if I've formed connections with many people in this camp, surpassing my expectations for the speed at which friendships could form. I cannot wait to see what these next few weeks bring for my personal growth, for my team, and for everyone's companies.  

graduation

The class of 2019 graduated three days ago. Fortunately, they just missed the rain, though the clouds enhanced the drama of their graduation pictures. I’ve made many good friends in the class of 2019. Some of them I knew through my dorm. Some of them I knew through sports. Others I knew through classes and extracurriculars. Everyone in that class, in fact, everyone at this school was brought together onto one campus from all corners of the world. We knew each other through our common ground: PA. The question is, what happens now? 

The day I moved out of my dorm, I couldn’t help but notice how I may never see members of the graduating class of 2019 again. It was difficult to say goodbye and I honestly wasn’t quite sure what I should have said. It’s sad to think about, but reality and the nature of probability dictate that I will never see most of these peers again until reunion twenty years later. I became acquainted with these 330 students through a mutual platform: PA.  It’s scary to think about what happens when that platform that bound us all together is no longer there. 

I suppose life just moves on, and in the strangest sense, no one really sticks beside us in life. It’s odd, and perhaps a little pessimistic, to think that every relationship we have in our lifetimes is rooted in a third party. My best friend asked me recently, what happens when we graduate? My friend will definitely move back to China and I will likely move around in the States. 

We meet a vast array of people in our lifetimes, but it’s change drives us apart. I’ve written about this before, but I think it’s worth restating how life is just like a train. We all hop on and off at different stops and at each of those different stops, we meet different people. When the people we met at that stop get back on that train to continue their journey, each person will get off at a different stop. We may never get back on the train at the same time or end up at the same stop again. 

Nevertheless, congratulations to the class of 2019 and thank you for being the role models in my time in high school. I hope I see some of them on that train again. 

Time is like a train

Ask me how time passed when I was five and I’d say I have infinite time in the world to do everything I wanted. Tell me to do something today and I’ll add it to a mental bin of an eclectic mixture of things I’ve done, things I’ve started, and things that I have yet to do. Maybe I’ll get around to it when I sort through that bin and maybe I won’t.  As I get older, I’m noticing how the days feel longer and the weeks shorter. 

As lower year comes to a close, I believe one the most significant ways in which I’ve grown is letting things go and coming to terms with my rigid “have to do everything perfectly” mentality. Particularly since it feels as if the weeks fly, I’ve realized that some things in my mental bin will stay unaddressed for a while. For example, some nights, I no longer preview the math material for the next day because I have a physics test the following day as well. When I sit in bed at night and think about everything I’ve done and everything that I haven’t, it’s not that I’ve forgotten to preview for math, it’s that I’m taking care of something else and making a slight compromise on another. Time simply keeps going. It’s like a train that you’re either on or you’re not. Since the weeks feel shorter, I’m afraid that too many unfinished projects will remain in that eclectic bin at the end of the year. 

Does time continue to go by faster? When I ponder this question, sometimes that feels impossible, considering the speed at which weeks already go by. I’ve somehow almost done with my second year of high school even though it feels as if I just moved into my dorm. The classes I took in the fall felt not too long ago, and the funny thing is that I still remember a lot of the material I covered in those classes pretty clearly. Adults always talked about how quickly the last three years of high school fly. I couldn’t agree more. 

To be liked and to be respected

For the longest time, I thought lots of people disliked me. My pessimism is in large part driven by my oblivion to the other side of being liked. I’m aware that most people in my grade perceive me to be a try hard and a bit of a workaholic. I’ve written before about how I sit alone at dinner working, or how I find myself in silent often. I admit I work a lot and I struggle to give myself free time, but I couldn’t imagine that being the reason behind my perceived feeling of people’s dislike towards me. After all, I am at a boarding school where just about everyone puts in the effort. 

I blame the way I talk, sometimes the things I say, and the questions that I ask people. There are areas of improvement for me there. I’d like to use the appropriate tone of voice for different occasions. I find myself talking in a straightforward manner 80% of the time, but sometimes people just need another friendly voice cheering them on.  There is room for improvement here. I need to ask the right questions and put myself in other people’s shoes. Empathy is important. 

______

I spelled that all out in the dorm on Tuesday night to some seniors in the common room. I wanted advice and ways to improve my self-image. This conversation spurted from one senior’s question: why didn’t you run for class rep. The reply was easy and ingrained my head. I told her I didn’t think people in my grade liked me. For a while now, I’ve been thinking about how I could improve myself and better the way I interacted with other people at school. I’ve had conversations with my parents about improving the way I talk, what I say, and when I say it. Something I realized on Tuesday night is that sometimes there is no easy way to become more “likable”, as likability is often an innate response to a person’s behavior. In these cases, it’s about how the situation is looked at.  

I got many different responses and advice from the seniors in the study space. The most beautiful response I heard was from a senior whom I don’t usually talk to. She someone in the dorm who I see, but don’t usually interact with.  She told me there are ways that I can be more sensitive about the questions I ask, the tone of voice I use, and the things I say, just as my parents have advised me. Some of it is just about the way I phrase things. However, she mentioned that there’s an aspect that’s out of control for everyone and it’s inherent in how other’s perceive our actions. Some people in this world are well-liked. Others aren’t necessarily as well-liked, but they’re respected for the things they do and the way they behave. This senior told me a personal story about her experience feeling the same way I felt her freshman and lower year. She mentioned having done things that gave her a reputation amongst the grade. For a while, she was on the same boat as me, feeling down about herself because she thought people disliked her. I asked her how she learned to better herself. She made outward changes in the way she talked as I’ve been working at, but she also changed her inwards belief about herself. She told me that while she wasn’t “well-liked” amongst her peers, she’s realized she was respected. I parted the conversation with something she said that I will never forget: it is as valuable to be liked by others as it is to gain respect from people those whom you admire. Thank you for that, AR. 

Leo Ullman: survivor of the Holocaust

Yesterday evening, I went to a once in a lifetime event on campus. The Andover Jewish Society brought an alumn to campus who had survived the Holocaust. Leo Ullman (class of 1957) is one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors left in the world. 

Ullman’s story was absolutely gripping. He tells it from a first-hand case like no other history book. Ullman was just four years old when the Nazi’s attacked Holland. His grandfather owned a diamond cutting business, and his parents were both well-off and well-connected. Ullman believes that his family survived because they had resources and the connections to get themselves into hiding. When the war began, Ullman’s parents sent him into hiding with a police officer. This police officer, a connection of his mother’s, risked his life to take care of Ullman. Meanwhile, Ullman’s parents went into hiding for 2.5 years in an attic. After the war, Ullman’s family reconnected. At the time, Leo was about seven years old, but he had spent the entirety of his life that he could remember with the police officer. Ullman mentions in his talk that he didn’t experience the horrors as most others did, partially because he lived with an officer but also because he was young. 

One day, two gaunt people showed up at the officer’s house, claiming to be Leo’s parents. Hiding in the attic for 2.5 years, they couldn’t even walk properly. At this point in the story, Ullman claims that no writing can ever retell what his parents experienced during the war. He recalls that for 2.5 years, his parents lived listening to every single step outside the house and every knock on the door, knowing that knock or those footsteps could be the end of their lives. Ullman’s reunion with his parents marked the end of the war, and they moved to the United States. Leo Ullman went to PA for high school, later attending Harvard and Columbia. 

Ullman came from a privileged background. His family nevertheless experienced the trauma of WW2 and the Holocaust. At the beginning of the talk, Ullman mentions having had the opportunity to escape. Ullman and his family lived in Holland and at the time, everyone thought it would be safe to stay because Germany had not attacked Holland during WW1. These beliefs proved incorrect when Germany bombed a port, causing the government to flee and set up camp in England as a “government in exile”. 

The most striking part of Ullman’s entire talk to me was this: during the war, there was a 3-4 day gap between the overthrowing of the Holland government and Germany’s takeover. It was during this time that people who had money who take a ship to England; these 3-4 days were an escape period. Ullman and his family had gone to the ports to try to board a ship. They also had the funds to do it, but they didn’t have the patience. The ports were bustling with what seemed like the entire country trying to board a ship. Through the chaos, his parents made the decision to wait and come back another day when it was less crowded. The next time they came back, the Germans had sealed the port and there was no way to escape. 

A seemingly small decision made by his parents in the heat of chaos caused his family to remain in Holland during the Holocaust. I cannot imagine who different Ullman’s life would have been if he had escaped during that period. I appreciate Ullman for coming to our campus to speak. It was an honor being able to listen to him and truly enlightening. Ullman was young during the war and protected by a policeman so he didn’t experience the war as most people did. Nevertheless, for the remaining years of his life, he lived with his parents who really did experience the terror of it in the United States. It was their experience he sought to retell. 

A small step taken right now

"Success is not a big step in the future, success is a small step taken right now." -an old adage 

Sometimes I get super stressed in the moment. I have a huge bucket list of to-do's for the day and at the moment, it seems impossible to do everything. I ask myself to cut things out, but everything feels equally important. The most amazing feeling is when I'm lying in bed at night, realizing that I actually completed everything on that to-do list just by tackling them one-by-one.