Minerva Chronicles: Writing the Unwritten
There’s something seductive about learning hard skills. It feels really great to add that new coding skill, business experience, or personal project to one’s resume. It’s funny when I look back at my resume and reflect on each thing written. Sure it’s changed quite a lot, no longer boasting ACT scores, leadership in high-school clubs, or competition victories. The things that stuck on were what I did outside of school: maker projects, learning iOS development, working with 3D printers. All my years of high school education are now reduced to just a single line with my school’s name — does a similar fate await my Minerva education? Needless to say, realizing this was quite worrying. I’ve spent a whole year at Minerva but have little on my resume to show for it. Where was the proof of my hard work and learnings? Perhaps what I learned can’t be written so concisely on a resume, but here’s attempt to write my Minerva Foundation year’s most important lessons.
This is the fourth installment of the Minerva Chronicles, written about my experience as a student of Minerva Schools at KGI. Read the others here, here, and here
For one, I’m learning to cope with constant change. I look back at the self I knew two weeks ago and don’t recognize him. My motivations and dreams change on an even faster whim than before, so I’m looking for more sustainable ways to be productive. Sometimes there’s so much emotional cues and distracting stimuli in just a single walk, I just want to close my eyes. But I have to keep them open, because I’m living in the middle of an ever-changing city and just like it, I must adapt.
I’m collecting more and more lenses through which to view the world. In the dorms, I can get worldwide perspectives on any issue. In the city, I walk the streets like every other citizen, but unlike so many I don’t yet pretend to know my place or purpose. This perhaps makes it easier to connect with those who wander as I do. Few people hate students, so I’m playing that card quite often to slip into very different social groups. I am experiencing as much of the real world as possible whether it be slamming poetry with misfits on subway platforms or presenting public innovation plans to uptight city officials.
I’m learning to have courage in the face of irrational fears. Active learning classes have certainly taught me that it’s okay to be wrong, made me comfortable with admitting failure even in the spotlight of attention. Learning from the mistake is so much more important than pretending it never happened. Indeed the truth has power, maybe even more so when you admit it to yourself. Recognizing these failures as opportunities for personal growth has helped immensely. Besides in academics, I’ve overcome quite a bit of my social fears as well. Living in San Francisco, there are plenty of networking events to go to. They’re intimidating at first, but I’ve learned to push myself to talk to new people and not have regrets simply because I was too nervous of embarrassing myself. Turns out, it’s not that hard and people actually really like seeing young students at their events. I’ve learned a lot this way, and made some important job-bearing connections. When I start talk myself out of doing something I want to I question — what really is the worst that can happen?
I’m learning to appreciate the present but also reflect on the past. With everything moving so quickly, I don’t get to spend much time looking back, and this often leads to a feeling of not having done anything. Sometimes then it helps to look back at how I’ve grown and what I’ve learned. Minerva helps facilitate this with plenty of community reflection-centered events. I don’t want to spoil the surprises but what I can say is that they always seem to come when we most need them and they always manage to lift up our spirits. Still, in the past year I’ve made and lost so many great friends moving from home to Make School to Minerva, so I often find looking at past happy times and getting a bit sad. I know these times will never come again, but then again this motivates me to make even better memories in the present.
I’m learning to create my own goals, not attach myself to those of others. All my life I’d been told what a great engineer I would be, simply because I was good at math and liked to build machines. It wasn’t until the beginning of last year that I realized there are so many other options. Here, I’ve learned that plausibility is not the same as probability and just because I fit other people’s representation of an engineer doesn’t increase the chance I’ll actually be one. Realizing this and wanting to learn a “sellable” skill, I decided to learn iOS development. To be honest though, I don’t really enjoy the coding for the sake of it nor am I amazing at it, rather I see it as a tool to turn imagination into reality (and get summer internships). Right now, I just know that I’m both excited and a bit scared about technology’s role in the future of humanity, so what better majors to pursue than Computational and Social Sciences? As for past that, I just know I want room to be creative and ethical in my work and hope to work with an amazing team of individuals that build each other up.
I’m learning to value close relationships more. Minerva’s small but amazingly diverse community is by no means perfect, but it is most definitely improving. I can see proof of this as I get to know more and more people — just when I think I understand a person, they again surprise me. This happens quite often at Minerva Talks, events where students are invited to tell their life stories, share their great struggles and successes. In just an hour, my perception of a person can completely flip as I’m reminded how important a diverse yet close community is. A great new friend can come along at any moment, but maintaining relationships takes a lot of time and effort, something I’m realizing I’ll have less and less of later on in life — so I better make it count now.
I’m learning that there’s a lot of power in expectations and beliefs. Truly, if you think you can’t do something, you can’t. There’s a lot of things I used to say “I could never” to, like writing music. But Minerva’s SF Opera co-curricular helped me to do just this. In the span of 6 hours my team created an all-original piece of lyrics, music, and dance, something I never saw myself doing. Sure it wasn’t the next Beethoven, but it was our creation and it was proof that “I could never” should really be “I haven’t yet.” Being introduced to more and more new experiences has proved to me the amazing human ability to learn anything through hard work and optimism.
I’ve learned to only be skeptical of skeptics. Truly, Minerva couldn't even exist if those who founded it weren’t idealists denying a bit of what the majority calls “reality.” To be honest, I don’t think it’s fair for anyone to claim being a realist, because no one human can ever objectively decide what is real nor can they predict the future. This is not to say Minerva teach students to be blind believers. On the contrary, we are taught logical and statistical tools to evaluate claims and check our own biases. When using these two skills I often come to three conclusions: 1. Even if the probability is small, if you repeat it enough times it is bound to happen 2. Humans are so biased by their predispositions and emotions that even the professionals often make mistakes 3. When in doubt be not risk-averse, but opportunity seeking. Honestly, In every decision we are all either being either idealistic or skeptical, positive or negative. Thus, I find it much more empowering to choose idealism than to fool myself on the notion of realism. Indeed there chance and choice in every situation and idealism has proven to drive much more progress than skepticism hiding under the veil of “realism.”
I’m learning to appreciate diversity. At Minerva, we do a lot of group work and team projects which manage to consistently prove four smart kids are indeed dumber than one. As a new and progressive school, Minerva attracts fairly independent students, each with their own strong opinions and ideas. Working together through our differences towards a unified goal is rough, and the majority of students not being native English speakers doesn’t help. But we’re all getting better with every effort. I think this reason why countries have such a hard time getting along — diversity makes agreeing quite difficult. Of course we can all write and communicate, but its the little cultural idiosyncrasies that can block understanding. On the flip side, these can also drive the group to a completely new understanding of the problem. These strokes of brilliance never could have emerged from a group that all initially agreed. Therefore, I’m starting to value major successes of our community much more than my own individual ones because they are indeed so much harder to achieve and carry immensely more value.
Finally, I’m learning to find happiness of self through the happiness of others. Introspection is useful, but oftentimes I find that relentlessly pursuing only my own interests doesn’t really make me that happy. Spending time with other people and making them happy is so much more rewarding in every way. If nothing else, I’m most thankful for the lessons I’ve learned from my friends and for the opportunity to experience six more cities over then next three years with them right there beside me.
