I had zero energy to work on making Young Makers, or to even write a decent essay to accompany my daily journal.
School deadlines are eating away my energy and time. I really can’t help but feel that my school, and maybe most other schools are greatly misaligned with helping students learn things relevant to their personal goals.
For example, if someone wants to explore indie hacking, they should be able to take modules that allows them to actively execute on their side projects. The progress for these side projects can then be used to assess their understanding of the theory taught in class as it’s applied to a real project. Even better, it’s not some project that’s going to be tossed away after the module finishes.
On this topic, I tweeted about how colleges should make it compulsory for sophomores to start a business. There was a bit of flak. One follower, a friend of mine called me a “#SMUCircleJerk”. SMU refers to the management school I’m studying in currently. Circle probably refers to the circle of people I typically hang around with — other peers trained for management roles, supposedly. And jerk, as it implies, I’m a jerk for suggesting such a thing.
Another follower respectfully disagreed with my idea on the basis that not everyone is cut out for entrepreneurship. Not everyone is able to deal with the stress and uncertainty that comes with it as well.
Their points are not invalid. Yet, it’s disheartening to have people dismiss ideas straight away without leaving room for discussions. Progress isn’t made being “net subtractive” — if what you’re going to say isn’t going to value add anything, it might be best not to say anything at all. What would be better is asking questions that might guide the discussion towards a more nuanced approach to my original suggestion of “students should run businesses”
On the other hand, I’ve had another follower DM me that students can learn a lot about resourcefulness when they learn how to run a business s. I think this sits more closely on the angle I’m aiming for:
Students will learn more than most other modules by learning how to run a business.
I’m not saying they have to be entrepreneurs for life. and being an entrepreneur doesn’t mean you have to be stressed, or worried about uncertainty all the time. Nothing in life is stress free or certain.
At where I’m working at as a part time software engineer, having tried to run a business taught me a lot about paying more attention to the software I build. Especially in terms of whether a feature is going to value add the business. If it isn’t, by sounding out to the management team, I’m actually helping them to save money, and occasionally, make more money.
Now, if the boss had to fire some employees, there’s less reason for him to fire me because I’m not just an ordinary employee who codes what he tells me to. I understand how businesses operate to some extent, and use that know-how to amplify the impact of the work I do, especially towards the company’s bottom line: profits (cutting cost = more profits)
To my readers, I’m sorry I couldn’t write anything more interesting for you to read. It’ll get better after this tough period of time.
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