This Saturday morning I awoke. It was still dark outside. My mind began meandering within its reflective ether…
What time was it, I wondered? I checked the time on my phone: 3:40 AM.
Hmmm. It was quite early. I couldn’t fall back to sleep. My mind kept racing.
I then fired off a series of texts to a friend. The following is an adapted synthesis of this morning’s SMS meditations:
It would have been reallllly neat to build an informal Studs* group across UMass. Like a SEAL Team 6 of student TBs**. Connect with the best of the best. People with the DNA of excellence and ambition, not posers who were impressive on paper, but did not exhibit ambitions to change the world. I’m talking folks who were getting Rhodes Scholarships, crazy research posts, etc. This would have been hard to do at UMass since it was so big and its colleges were rather siloed (especially SOM). But totally worth it. I may have a hindsight bias that makes me blind to this sort of network we had already built. What if we were more intentional about this for more than just our senior year? What kind of organic serendipity would have manifested if we did it for our entire college careers?
The 4:00 AM thought came up because I realized at 3:45 AM that I am pushing myself harder now that I’m immersed within a group of high performers (my team at work, folks we invited to New Orleans, the amazingly diverse people who come to our apartment for Junto-style gatherings, etc). Since I’ve been working / hanging out with them, it’s changed my perception of self. I see them as peers now and therefore benchmark my performance accordingly.
It was very difficult to believe in this sense of self-imposed excellence at points in my life where mediocrity prevailed around me. I have a dangerous tendency to become complacent when the people around me have their own sights set low.
When I think back to UMass, I operated with this same desire for excellence when I was most intensely surrounded by it. The two best example were senior year with Studs and my freshman year floor–those two years, I forced myself to raise my game because of the people around me. I worked my ass off, and it paid rewards that have compounded over time.
However, I think at UMass, when I saw excellence in others outside of those two peer groups I mention above, I got jealous and insecure and envious of their prestige markers (scholarships, awards, internships, etc). And so I didn’t engage with them. What an untapped opportunity!
I feel like now, at least, I’m a little more mature, in that I desire to seek out and learn from the excellence of others. I am much less intimidated by fear– fear that my self-worth would get crushed if I tried my absolute 100% best, and failed to be “as good as” someone else. What counts for me nowadays is that I’m putting in the effort to improve and having faith that the resulting progress will speak for itself.
It is so important to connect with people whose ambitions are at a similar stratosphere as yours. This might be uncomfortable at times, because it threatens the individual’s ego, but the tradeoff of learning and inspiration and serendipity is totally worth it in the end.
For example, recently, I reached out to someone to appreciate their excellence, and did so without expectation of anything in return. To my surprise, I was offered to work with that person’s company. Kindred spirits meeting each other gives rise to intense serendipity (see: Studs, and everything that ensued with our case team and the Student Advisory Board we formed). The key is to not defeat ourselves by letting fear paralyze is from taking action at all. Let us try anyways, and others can reject– that is their choice. They don’t know what TB-ness they are missing out on.
I now appreciate how important being a part of networks of TBs is, having seen these networks in action literally everywhere. Through experiences I’ve had since graduating, people who are changing the world surround themselves with the best people, preferably those who are better than them. Those that are changing the world.
Today, I’m trying to live up to a self-imposed standard of excellence as I was back in college, but now am courting peer pressure (perceived and real) to push me, even proactively seeking it out, instead of running away or hiding from it, like I did at times in college. Call it maturity, call it strength, call it whatever: I want this to be my new normal.
* “Studs” is my friend group that coalesced during my senior year at UMass over the course of a seven-month entrepreneurial odyssey. We’ve remained steadfast friends three years since graduation. And counting.
** “TB” is a term used by Studs to succinctly describe someone so impressive that it inspires awe. It’s etymology is a whole other post altogether.
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