The Unprofessional Boy #3
Comedy, classes, and dorm room optimization
Hello, dear readers,
We’re starting to settle into a rhythm here at TUB, both in writing this and in college classes. I’m excited for the metacommentary about both to follow, but there’s one item of business first: my Welcome Week Diary (due to editor deadlines, etc.) barely didn’t make it into last week’s inbox edition, although I talked about it.
If you’re a reader both of that post and of TUB, you might be noticing a trend: I spend a lot of time indoors, and a lot of that time in the library. I thought I’d try to correct that impression a little bit. Instead, here’s me inside a restroom.
It stands out to me as one of last week’s events because I’m pictured still buzzing from doing three minutes of standup as an audition for a standup comedy organization at my college. There were maybe twenty-five students there, none of which who knew me, and all of which clapped for everybody. I think I did pretty well, but I was very nervous about it; the prospect of performing consumed my entire Saturday.
[Update, later that night; I got a callback. Positives!]
[Update, again— I didn’t get a place. But I’ll be back; you’d better believe it.]
Also in negative news: I somehow bricked one of my two (old, jankety) laptops. Thankfully, it was the junkier one that I’ve had to unscrew and clean out already; unfortunately I had a number of tabs and open projects on it. No files unsaved, I think, but research in-progress that I’m now going to have to restart or forget about. OneTab is great, and I use it a lot, but I wish it backed up automatically across accounts. My problem, I know, very specific; it’s still happened before :(
My other (slightly cleaner, backed-up, not-dented, don’t-know-why-I-wasn’t-using-it) laptop works just fine for class, however, by which I mean that I don’t need a computer to take notes: I prefer a pen and paper. I’ve been trying to be a little less electronically dependent for basic things, plugged in as I am, and it’s a useful reminder.
Outside of class, the notebooks are equally effective; in particular, I use them to manage the increasing amount of scheduling, for the most part. Easy, at hand, accessible without having to log in several times. It also helps me remember, but the foremost advantage is the feeling of security, that I have the information with me in physical form. Similar, probably, to the calming sensation that paperback books provide over electronic versions.
Here are the highlights of the long list I’m tracking: media (blog pitches, radio,) sports interest/practice/tryouts (Ultimate Frisbee, Crew,) clubs (fun, business, engineering,) and comedy auditions I’ll go to if my self-esteem needs lowering. Much like what I’m trying to study and live with, my planning will take some whittling down, but I need to find the stuff that fits first.
Last week I committed to the practice of a themed Links section, wherein I collated some of the things that I’ve read (but, more importantly, thought about) to provide a jumping-off point for the next week’s discussion. Therefore, we’ll start out with me considering the wine-and-cheese pairing that is Paul Graham’s The Island Test and the Thoughts from Inside the Box post Actually From Inside the Box.
Here are the four things I’d bring to the island Graham posits: my laptop (with or without Internet, though I’d really prefer the connection) headphones/earbuds, books (he counts them as one item,) and a pen + notebook (he doesn’t, but I don’t care about the quality of each, so hopefully that concession still counts. I feel somewhat dirty leaving my phone out; if my laptop couldn’t get Internet, but my phone had data, I’d have to think harder.
Reprinted, with no caveats: laptop, headphones, books, notebook— which were the first things to get ported into my dorm room. Let’s take a closer look at that picture I posted two weeks ago, taken move-in day (night:)
[PICTURE]
I’m all packed up, but it’s the stuff I left out, that’s most accessible. Not that unusual? Maybe, but my roommates’ priorities looked a little different, which I found interesting. For instance, one has (most prominently) a League of Legends gaming setup (headphones, microphone, monitor, keyboard) and a teamaker, both of which he uses regularly. It’s an interesting lens to look at each of our priorities, represented as they are by the relatively small quantity of physical objects we’ve each brought.
The dorm room itself is also interesting to consider in its function; namely, what purpose should it serve? I kind of agree with the TfItB comparison to a truck. Ideally, I think, I’m in there as little as possible: it’s insular, slightly cramped, and doesn’t really inspire a production/productivity mindset like (for instance,) a library does. And with that principle set, it makes sense to treat the space as such: it’s a storage locker with a bed, toilet, and shower. Useful, there’s no doubt about it, but I don’t want to make a habit of writing or working in a storage locker. Hopefully, I’m in the cafeteria, library, or park, and I’m coming back to read for a few minutes before bed. It’s a little weird, maybe, but I think both that it’s the routine that’s going to work for me and that it’s good to be establishing that now.
The location I live in, then (with my own fairly clear perception of its use and therefore meaning,) has a clear intersection with the things I put in it (which carry their own connotations and suggestions,) and I should work to reinforce that: to create a utilitarian environment that recharges me in the morning and night, but doesn’t encourage me to stay there. I want the space to be useful in a limited sense, which means deliberately pruning ill-considered overextensions. I don’t need a new second(!) laptop.
Am I getting rid of the few action figures and the bobblehead? No (that’s one concession to visual interest: I’m not minimalist, and I value their presence) but I did grab a laundry basket, and I did fold all my clothes out of the way. The snacks I have are all grab and get-out-of-there: protein bars, nuts, applesauce, raisins, some energy drinks I got for free. So far, therefore, I think I’ve started out pretty well; all that remains is to stick to these principles: to not get so comfortable in the space I’ve been assigned by chance that I stop intentionally seeking out others. Really, it’s the goal not to live in my dorm room, but to sleep in it.
One of the places I’ve been, thanks to this guideline that I’ve set for myself (and my general belief that my default is to do fewer things than is ideal) is to a talk discussing the resources my college offers to startup founders, which pinged the back of my brain about one of the other articles I highlighted last week: Paul Graham’s Before the Startup. In particular, this passage stood out to me:
“To be fair, the universities have their hand forced here. A lot of incoming students are interested in startups. Universities are, at least de facto, expected to prepare them for their careers. So students who want to start startups hope universities can teach them about startups. And whether universities can do this or not, there's some pressure to claim they can, lest they lose applicants to other universities that do.”
Graham goes on to say “Do not start a startup in college.” That seems like a reasonable perspective to me, albeit a strong one, but it wasn’t what stuck out to me most. The paragraph I quoted above did, more than even that definitive conclusion. Like many things, it’s a question of incentives. Starting a startup, (framing borrowed; see David Laing’s breakdown here) is, outlier case though it might seem, a Level One action. Going to college is a Level Two action, and thinking about whether to do any of these things is a Level Three action: one which colleges aren’t incentivized to prompt students to take, productive and necessary though it may be in many cases.
Will I start a startup? Probably not, at least in the very near future. Nevertheless, I find it interesting to study them. It’s a moonshot: a relatively low-stakes, high-upside bet that I think is worth making, both because of the percentage that I end up working for one, and because I learn from it. In this way it’s a Level Two action (improving the decision-making process, hopefully) but it’s also Level Three. For example, here’s Andrew Chen’s take on the balance between tech and business, and which specific skills from the latter are legitimately valuable in the Valley (“What do geeks really need help with?”)
Among other things, here are a few of the concrete, learnable items he lists: marketing/distribution, fundraising, design, UI, copywriting. This makes sense, retrospectively, but it’s not immediately obvious, especially the clear articulation of and specificity of “If you are an expert at any of the above and can show it, then there’s a lot more value. Very few business folks…can really deliver on these though, which is why they’re not bringing much to the table.” So now, starting with Twitter and newsletters surrounding startups and VC, we have an actionable list of things to work on, instead of beginning from an aimless place. Of course, if you don’t put the effort in to learn these things, knowing they’re good doesn’t help— but I’ll have a little more progress on those Level Two actions, hopefully, next week.
Links
Age and the Entrepreneur by Marc Andreessen is an interesting closing thought to pair with Paul Graham’s argument.
Writing about living in stripped-down fashion —and through the lens of startups— prompts me to think of different business ideas we can frame ourselves in. The two that I most often use to think about myself —the two, in reality equivalent, seemingly disparate extremes— as a very large company or investment fund. Both, just like ants, follow a generalized version of the Pareto Principle. This is the most basic underpinning of the moonshots I’ve mentioned earlier.
Next week I’ll elaborate on Moonshot Theory, one of the heuristics I’ve developed for myself for deciding what to focus on; in the meantime, here’s some background reading about the company team I’ve nicked the term from and the concept I find useful.
Wired has shared a transcript of a talk given in 2015 by Astro Teller, Google X’s Captain of Moonshots, about the various projects his division has developed and the failures they’ve learned from. It’s thorough, and it’s good.
Astro recently wrote a blog post about what a moonshot means to him; it contextualizes why Google operates the way they do here and the building blocks that allow X to exist at all.
The Atlantic’s piece is a fairly standard, generalist profile, which rounds out the specifics of X’s process and the people involved.
Similarly, it’s interesting that often to achieve particular results (for instance, good ideas, or startup ideas,) the solution is to not aim at them directly. Visakan Veerasamy’s elegant summation of this concept as Slingshot Theory makes a lot of sense, and I use the term when thinking.
Work
What Level One stuff did I do this week? I wrote a few (again, very short) book chapters: (61, 62.) The narrative feels to be coming to a natural close; although there’s a lot I’m not altogether happy with, I’ll rewrite it in a few more passes (mine, and others’.) The tentative plan at the moment is to have that extremely rough draft done by November and be freed up to take a crack at National Novel Writing Month— I’m excited to work on a new story, to try to push my boundaries a little.
As I mentioned earlier, I also tried out comedy; here’s the script I wrote for myself if you want to take my jokes. I managed to mostly stick to it, though I skipped some of the last bit, had some gestures to punctuate the more important phrases, and inserted a few minor riffs in a very energetic performance haze. The core of it, or at least the one joke that I remember getting many laughs, was this Tweet. Spoiler alert: it’s funny that I look extremely generic. See “Orion in bathroom mirror [colorized, 2019]” above for reference.
(As above, I got a callback!)
I hadn’t thought I’d get that far, but I didn’t want to do the same material again. It seemed boring, and I didn’t know that I could repeat it and build much on my first performance; I thought branching out a little might give me a better chance at impressing. This did mean writing five minutes (and a little extra by accident) in a night again. [Update: this bit didn’t earn me a spot, but hey; if I’m attaching one, I might as well link the other, too.] Feel free to rework all this stuff, maybe it’d play better in the hands of someone more practiced.
And who knows— that may be me!
Music Report
Prompted by Adam Savage’s build video, the Awesome Mix vol. 1 from Guardians of the Galaxy:
The Best of Canibus, —new listen— a compilation I’ve been meaning to listen to for some time to more fully understand this guy:
The Social Network soundtrack album; the score won numerous awards, and it’s incredible dark ambient music when you’re getting stuck into some work.
I also ended up writing the movie into my first standup routine, and I did the same with 8 Mile for the second, which contributed to the number of listens for Shook Ones, pt. II and Lose Yourself. You’ve heard Lose Yourself, but take a closer listen to the first of those two; it’s awesome.
The full last.fm receipt, if you’re interested.
And in the spirit of providing some more access to the media I enjoy consuming, I thought I’d provide a definitive, objective list of the
Top Ten: Subreddits
This has been the third episode of The Unprofessional Boy, which, hopefully, is starting to congeal: to follow the arc of the universe from chaos to order, to heal from a stab wound into a cool scar, and to bake from raw dough into a tasty soufflé.
As always, feel free to email or reach out on Twitter with comments, questions, concerns, warnings, threats, cryptic advice, mutterings from just behind me as you step out of the shadows, and feedback of any kind. All the best.
Signed, sealed, delivered,
Orion Lehoczky Escobar