My undergrad at Berkeley was an incredible, confusing time. Let me explain.
For the first time in my life, there were more possible paths open to me than I had years to devote to them. At the end of each path was some milestone I wanted to reach:
I was youthful, and excited, and ambitious. I wanted it all.
But the natural unfolding of life was too slow, too meandering. The only way to get it all was to figure out the straightest line between the start line and the finish line. I wanted to optimize my college experience. So I spent a lot of time optimizing: I chose my classes, my clubs, my teaching, my research— extremely thoughtfully. I designed each of them to reach my goals; allocated every day proportionally.
I did this for 2.5 years of my college life.
I didn’t end up on the Deans List. I didn’t end up being club president. I never became Head TA. and I never published any research with my name on it. I failed every goal I’d set for myself.
I spent some non-trivial part of senior year regretting all of this — if only I’d optimized better, if only I’d scheduled harder! If only I’d found straighter lines between these starts and the finishes that I’d never get to have…
I had left no room for realizing that I was passionate about helping people start companies. I had no idea how intensely I’d want to start a “random ideas lab”. I didn’t account for how much I’d enjoy teaching outside of class, creating student-led courses. I didn’t expect to get obsessed with dungeons and dragons during a global pandemic.
I hadn’t accounted for friends for whom I’d happily play deuteragonist. I hadn’t accounted for romances or maybes or will theys or won’t theys or holding hands walking down Telegraph Ave.
In all my planning, I’d forgotten to tabulate for well, life.
If you’re a programmer, you’ll know that trying to come up with the cleanest, most elegant solution in one go is the greatest sin an engineer can commit. Not only is it nearly impossible, it also prevents you from first doing the simple, messy, but effective solution.
I imagine optimizing life paths to also be a little bit like this. The longer you plan for the elegant path, the more you decrease your chances of just getting a thing done.
You stop yourself from just drawing more dots to represent your life.