going back to school
lessons learned from my last year of traveling and wandering
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background
I took a leave from school in Fall of 2021 during my junior year at Carnegie Mellon. It easily was one of the best decisions and I met so many closest friends all around the world over 6 months. Thank you to everyone who inspired me and impacted me over this time, and I will be returning to school during the Fall of 2022. This is a reflection on my time on leave as it’s reaching an end.
honest thoughts about school
I have a complex relationship with school.
While on my 6 months on leave, I felt free. I was able to explore outside the constraints of school, and go anywhere I felt. I built my network of students from universities across the world. I found a community of people all around the world that I love and care about. My life quality increased significantly.
Giving up this freedom to wander scares me. Going back to school means giving away this freedom, of strapping myself down in Pittsburgh instead of freely nomad-ing around the world.
Over my time on leave, I thought long and hard about whether or not I’d want to go back. Sometimes, I hated school. I hated its constraints, its inefficient system, pointless assignments, outdated lectures, and optimizing for a system that didn’t help me learn what I want. I swore over and over to never go back and tried to convince anyone else to do the same. But other times, I missed the strong focus on academics, expertise, and the ability and freedom to roam around different topics without thinking about monetization.
I tried many methods to break free from school: did contract work, freelanced, started a startup, applied to accelerator programs. But I realized my favorite moments were always tied to feeding my child-like inner curiosity to explore and have fun learning new things, rather than working for others and splitting my time of learning and earning money. It was more difficult to do these explorations when administrative tasks and miscellaneous work took over all of my time while working. Though school is not perfect, it would give me the chance to explore my interests further and obtain skill without worrying about the constraints of making money and of making things useful. It would also be easier to be with people my age — an opportunity I realized would never come by again.
I realized the stresses of grades and school were minuscule compared to the stresses of life outside school (life, career, kids, relationships). I realized that if I put less of an internal stress on myself for achieving a certain grade standard, school would be a better place for me. I’m excited to have found a new love for learning and a better, more focused approach to school for this upcoming semester.
what i did on my two (ish) gap semesters
september 2021
went to my first in-person hackathon
officially went on leave from school
secured my internship with facebook (meta) for the upcoming summer
october - december 2021
lived in my first coliving house with 11 strangers I met on the internet
went to nft nyc
end of december 2021 - jan 2022
lived in hawaii in sauced house
went to study abroad in oxford
went to miami hack week and started dropoutdao
february 2022
left study abroad program and told my professors to fail me and flew to new york
hosted 3 fully sponsored houses in eth denver and events literally everyday and got super sick and burnt out at the end
went to sf and hosted more events and got so tired of meeting people
march 2022
started dropoutdao dorms in sf and ran the house
went to mit reality hacks
started feeling a lot more burnout in web3 and frustration with the space
april 2022
went to cmu for spring carnival
moved to arhouse
registered for classes and signed a lease to go back to pittsburgh in the fall!!
may 2022
ar house showcase on the 14th if you’re in LA
i’m turning 21 on the 16th! (finally don’t have to fear being carded phew)
will begin working with community on 1517 to work on the future of learning outside school — look out for upcoming events hosted by me! :)
will be going to niantic lightship conference may 24-25
will be going to seattle and working on the ray bans glasses team starting may 31st
what i’ve been up to ✨
so much…
played nerf guns at midnight with my friends at cmu (thanks matthew)
visited usc twice (thanks rylan, andy, skylar, ivy, awu, janelle, and carolyn for showing me around!!)
made clay people of everyone in the arhouse 💖
went to the broad and academy museum
went hiking on runyon canyon
discovered the magic of ordering prepared meal delivery (ty lucas and aidan for introducing me to freshly and everytable)
got my hair done again (monica at itocco is the best)
started doing yoga more
learned best practices for photogrammatry, tried 3d volumetric capture scanning, and dabbled with ar foundation
met up with some twitter folks based in la! (victor, amir, will)
went to a very cool digital arcade and played life-size hungry hippos
feeling like a different person after having watched everything everywhere all at once yesterday, please go watch if you haven’t
finished reading when breath becomes air and started questioning what i’m even doing with my life
Add me on bereal @butternaan, & thanks for tuning into my now once a month-ish update — let’s catchup :)
I’ll be back in SF May 15th - May 29th, then off to Seattle for the rest of the summer, let me know if you’re around 💖
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