It seems after a certain point, everyone wants to stop getting older and birthdays start getting embarrassing. That point is often 30, because the 20s can contain such great, largely unrepeatable, memories. If you think about it though, aging shame is completely illogical. Everything living ages, so the alternative is to not be alive at all. The reckoning of aging is simply a universal necessity. Growing old brings positives and negatives - it’s just that the negatives are more obvious and visual, while the positives are more abstract.
I had a pretty amazing run in my 20s where I actually achieved life dreams. I turned 20 living in Beijing where I was just starting to develop my love of exploring the world and learning languages. In the following decade I travelled more than my wildest expectations, going to 30 countries, visiting wonderful places I had not heard of such as Kashgar, Ipiales, Bagan, Luang Prabang etc. I lived in Hong Kong, which had been a lifelong goal, and did so while working in an international office on the forefront of sustainable design. I never lacked for passions, especially ultimate, through which I’ve met hundreds of friends and participated in 3 world championships. Professionally, I’ve walked through construction sites, manufacturing lines and corn fields. I dated wonderful people, crashed a motorcycle, learned several human languages and several more machine languages, went to two Olympics, had an extremely lucky night in Macau, twice destroyed ligaments in my ankle, emceed an event in Cantonese, drank a boatload of bourbon in a Kentucky bar after getting laid off, saw Hamilton on Broadway, crashed a Vietnamese aviation annual dinner, won a bunch of trivia nights, had an extremely unlucky night in Macau, wrote a book of crossword puzzles, played ultimate tournaments on four continents, and made my guests answer my trivia questions at my last birthday and somehow had them enjoy it.
From this vantage point, what stands out about the last ten years is not a string of highlights but how I dealt with uncertainty (poetically the focus of my course of study, statistics). Several times in my 20s I found myself mired in very uncertain situations. The choices I made to resolve them were made from both being aware of what I didn’t know and staying true to what I did know. The domain of my ignorance has always dwarfed the domain of my knowledge, and to the extent that my choices worked out, I owe a lot to good luck. After all when I turned 20 I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had only taken three college math classes, couldn’t hold a conversation in Mandarin, was afraid of computer programming and couldn’t define sustainability. If you had asked me what I wanted to be doing ten years later, I doubt I’d be able to supply a serious answer. I was just starting to learn how to live, and definitely did not have my shit together.
The second semester of Junior Year is when the ambitious & cocky students line up summer internships that turn into post-graduation jobs, largely in management consulting and finance. (Georgetown at the time didn’t stress technical skills or applying to tech companies) Because I didn’t have my shit together, I didn’t know what those jobs were or how to apply to them. But my Aunt’s department at HSBC in New York happened to find a compliance risk that required hundreds of hours of white collar labor, and I lucked into a summer internship there. We were a group of 7 interns all trying to outwork each other, commuting through midtown in jacket and ties, desperately trying to not look bored at work. The internship was well structured until they ran out of work and it wasn’t. I didn’t learn that much about finance, but I learned enough to know that it wasn’t drawing me. At that point, I couldn’t articulate why.
That fall, back in college, I paid more attention to when the firms came for on campus recruiting, and read enough to distinguish between Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. When Goldman came, I remember the entire room in Leavey flooded with ambition, anybody with over a 3.0 who thought highly of themselves. I had over a 3.0 so I thought being in that room was a rite of passage. But other than that, I couldn’t tell you why I was in that room, and neither could anyone else. We just vaguely knew that this was a step in the right direction that might open further doors down the line - we never asked which doors we really wanted to open.
Fortunately I got nowhere with those banks, and went to graduate school instead. Again I need to reiterate that I had no idea what I was doing, and was mainly getting my Master’s because my peers approved. It was way, way better than telling people at graduation that I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do yet. To be fair to myself, I knew that undergraduate math classes had expanded my thinking and shown me the importance of mathematics in advancing society. I wouldn’t know for several years, but I really lucked out. Given how theoretical undergrad math was, had I not gone to graduate school, I probably would not have done any serious modeling professionally. I didn’t know that this R language I learned first semester could be so important, or that I’d be asked an interview questions straight out of my stochastic simulation class.
I say fortunately I didn’t get into finance because it never set me into a mindset of complacency. Had I landed a job with a well-known bank, I would have felt justifiably rewarded by “doing the right things in life”, i.e. getting good grades, dressing well, saying the right things in interviews and working hard. I don’t know how I would have come to terms with my insecurity of only ever thriving within a structured systems. Or having my worth defined by the name of my company and school, rather than by my ability and knowledge. It wasn’t fun or easy, but the path I took gave me much more confidence.
With the investment banking boat long sailed, I found myself outside the college recruiting channels. I was in a black hole of cold online applications and reaching out to contacts of contacts, a dark world which I had no idea how to navigate. I struggled mightily in that period, but I had decided that I knew what I wanted: to work in Asia in sustainability. I still had a lot to learn about how the world worked, but much of what I had learned had come from short stints in Asia. I knew that I’d grow fast living in Asia and that sustainability would only get more important there. Ultimately that period prepared me for later bouts of unemployment. I learned to deal with the uncertainty over what I didn’t know, but to be confident in what lessons I had learned from what I did know.
I was right that living in Hong Kong would introduce me to more than I knew possible. It taught me that this world is incredibly vast and full of so many wonders that it never makes sense to stop exploring - one’s learning curve will not asymptote in a human lifetime. I was lucky to spend half of my twenties in the continent housing more than half the world, within affordable weekend trips to a dozen countries. I lived in one of the world’s most international cities where the best and worst of cross-cultural transactions were brought out. I ducked into many corners of Hong Kong, meeting many people whom I confused by my looks, my accent, my demeanor, and equally many who confused me. I met many people who didn’t have my ability to access the world - through them I learned that so often, our belief of what’s possible is constrained by our imagination and our means. Whenever I could, I did my best to remove the constraint of imagination, by sharing my story and expanding the image of what an American might be. I’ve tried to do the same thing to Americans of means, by writing my experiences in these blog posts and subtly encouraging people to travel. I have no idea if it has worked.
Later, I switched careers because I knew I enjoyed coding in R, and that there would be a lot of meaningful work in that domain. This time I started by mapping out all the possible skills I might need to learn, to quantify my ignorance. Though I was ultimately ignorant of how hard landing a job would be, when I did land it I enjoyed it. I found a profession that I love, made possible because of a lucky choice to attend graduate school, informed by a bad experience at a lucky internship. I know that I'll never know enough to feel certain about my future, but I can know enough to love my present. Overall I enter 30 feeling really lucky.
I had a pretty amazing run in my 20s where I actually achieved life dreams. I turned 20 living in Beijing where I was just starting to develop my love of exploring the world and learning languages. In the following decade I travelled more than my wildest expectations, going to 30 countries, visiting wonderful places I had not heard of such as Kashgar, Ipiales, Bagan, Luang Prabang etc. I lived in Hong Kong, which had been a lifelong goal, and did so while working in an international office on the forefront of sustainable design. I never lacked for passions, especially ultimate, through which I’ve met hundreds of friends and participated in 3 world championships. Professionally, I’ve walked through construction sites, manufacturing lines and corn fields. I dated wonderful people, crashed a motorcycle, learned several human languages and several more machine languages, went to two Olympics, had an extremely lucky night in Macau, twice destroyed ligaments in my ankle, emceed an event in Cantonese, drank a boatload of bourbon in a Kentucky bar after getting laid off, saw Hamilton on Broadway, crashed a Vietnamese aviation annual dinner, won a bunch of trivia nights, had an extremely unlucky night in Macau, wrote a book of crossword puzzles, played ultimate tournaments on four continents, and made my guests answer my trivia questions at my last birthday and somehow had them enjoy it.
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| '08 selfie |
From this vantage point, what stands out about the last ten years is not a string of highlights but how I dealt with uncertainty (poetically the focus of my course of study, statistics). Several times in my 20s I found myself mired in very uncertain situations. The choices I made to resolve them were made from both being aware of what I didn’t know and staying true to what I did know. The domain of my ignorance has always dwarfed the domain of my knowledge, and to the extent that my choices worked out, I owe a lot to good luck. After all when I turned 20 I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had only taken three college math classes, couldn’t hold a conversation in Mandarin, was afraid of computer programming and couldn’t define sustainability. If you had asked me what I wanted to be doing ten years later, I doubt I’d be able to supply a serious answer. I was just starting to learn how to live, and definitely did not have my shit together.
The second semester of Junior Year is when the ambitious & cocky students line up summer internships that turn into post-graduation jobs, largely in management consulting and finance. (Georgetown at the time didn’t stress technical skills or applying to tech companies) Because I didn’t have my shit together, I didn’t know what those jobs were or how to apply to them. But my Aunt’s department at HSBC in New York happened to find a compliance risk that required hundreds of hours of white collar labor, and I lucked into a summer internship there. We were a group of 7 interns all trying to outwork each other, commuting through midtown in jacket and ties, desperately trying to not look bored at work. The internship was well structured until they ran out of work and it wasn’t. I didn’t learn that much about finance, but I learned enough to know that it wasn’t drawing me. At that point, I couldn’t articulate why.
That fall, back in college, I paid more attention to when the firms came for on campus recruiting, and read enough to distinguish between Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. When Goldman came, I remember the entire room in Leavey flooded with ambition, anybody with over a 3.0 who thought highly of themselves. I had over a 3.0 so I thought being in that room was a rite of passage. But other than that, I couldn’t tell you why I was in that room, and neither could anyone else. We just vaguely knew that this was a step in the right direction that might open further doors down the line - we never asked which doors we really wanted to open.
Fortunately I got nowhere with those banks, and went to graduate school instead. Again I need to reiterate that I had no idea what I was doing, and was mainly getting my Master’s because my peers approved. It was way, way better than telling people at graduation that I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do yet. To be fair to myself, I knew that undergraduate math classes had expanded my thinking and shown me the importance of mathematics in advancing society. I wouldn’t know for several years, but I really lucked out. Given how theoretical undergrad math was, had I not gone to graduate school, I probably would not have done any serious modeling professionally. I didn’t know that this R language I learned first semester could be so important, or that I’d be asked an interview questions straight out of my stochastic simulation class.
I say fortunately I didn’t get into finance because it never set me into a mindset of complacency. Had I landed a job with a well-known bank, I would have felt justifiably rewarded by “doing the right things in life”, i.e. getting good grades, dressing well, saying the right things in interviews and working hard. I don’t know how I would have come to terms with my insecurity of only ever thriving within a structured systems. Or having my worth defined by the name of my company and school, rather than by my ability and knowledge. It wasn’t fun or easy, but the path I took gave me much more confidence.
With the investment banking boat long sailed, I found myself outside the college recruiting channels. I was in a black hole of cold online applications and reaching out to contacts of contacts, a dark world which I had no idea how to navigate. I struggled mightily in that period, but I had decided that I knew what I wanted: to work in Asia in sustainability. I still had a lot to learn about how the world worked, but much of what I had learned had come from short stints in Asia. I knew that I’d grow fast living in Asia and that sustainability would only get more important there. Ultimately that period prepared me for later bouts of unemployment. I learned to deal with the uncertainty over what I didn’t know, but to be confident in what lessons I had learned from what I did know.
 |
| '18 working with plants |
Later, I switched careers because I knew I enjoyed coding in R, and that there would be a lot of meaningful work in that domain. This time I started by mapping out all the possible skills I might need to learn, to quantify my ignorance. Though I was ultimately ignorant of how hard landing a job would be, when I did land it I enjoyed it. I found a profession that I love, made possible because of a lucky choice to attend graduate school, informed by a bad experience at a lucky internship. I know that I'll never know enough to feel certain about my future, but I can know enough to love my present. Overall I enter 30 feeling really lucky.
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