this is thinking a bit far but worthy of noting because of my confusion. or dilemma. whatever you call it. and this is under the assumption that smth the level of indiebio will take me, or that "us," whatever that would be.
the reasons for this sudden feeling of confusion comes from, perhaps my parents. they treat "drop" and "gap" the same weight until i manually adjusted their mental framework. and because of their strong, mayhaps more conservative and traditional opinion about personal education and career, i almost forgot the same persuation i wanted to make in a potential future where my academic collaborators don't get the difference between a raft and a steel ship.
from dan: "amherst is anti-entrepreneurial, and in a simpler sense, anti-experience. they want you to get exposed to everything at the most surface level, but you cannot go deep in any one of them with the exception of law. everything besides law is fundemental knowledge. and if we talk startups, they want you to know what startups are, like what ppl say on podcasts or social media. but you will never learn how to build a startup from them because you can only learn to build a company by actually doing. a liberal art student is supposed to be MOST equipped for entrepreneurship but it's not because they only want you to become curious in many fields and be technical in none. thus this institution's implementation of their intention betrays their intention."
this can help with the understanding that therefore the objective of this liberal art school is for exposure. exposure that is spread thin but never deep. and perhaps intrinsic bloom of that renaissance thinking. but only at the level of thinking and not doing. to get technical in academia can only be derived through (not biotech internships for this institution, so we ignore this one) grad school. but a key thing to realize is that grad school is the academic path to concentrated technicality, but grad school is not the only path to concentrated technicality or technicalities.
this is true because of two things:
- you can always hire and learn from experts
- you can always talk to ai, which is getting smarter every day, and if ai isn't perfect, you can always resort in method 1
and i have conversed deeply, now formulating much deeper understanding in my currently focused niche.
from nietzsche in birth of tragedy: "knowledge kills action: action requires the veils of illusion."
and to build further, from five lenses of thinking:
from experience
amherst has served me nothing other than being a locational and instrumental aid. it didn't elevate me intrinsically in the sense that it provided me something good for me to improve; rather it brought me poison for me to be awakened. to have urgency to self-elevate.
context-aware consensual
indiebio (or smth within industrial bio at the same level) is, on a personal and entrepreneurial level, speed up everything extremely fast. everyone in the know will agree that this opportunity will provide almost everything IF I GOT IN. thus everyone in the know will agree that if the objective is to scale a business successfully, this is the highest positive of the net.
reasoning
amherst has no statute of limitations for their leave policy, which makes this a completely free option. taking a leave is 100% reversible. we are weighing an opportunity (on a program and industry level) that cannot wait vs. another that can wait indefinitely. this is disregarding which one is net positive or negative.
instinctual
i've already allocated much of my focus, if not all, into this singular mission. im in the thick of it.
i want the freedom to pursue what i believe is greatness. an ML engineer under some random ass company ain't it. writing music or doing filmmaking for a living ain't it. anything i love within the humanities have a much vaguer goalpost, and none of my creative interests should be strained by thoughts of filling a wallet.
but ofc, the counterargument is that entrepreneurship carries more risk. but my current objective has nothing to do with heavy r&d (ie pure research). it doesn't have an arbitrary singularity moment like the current, broader tech industry. it is a very transactional, and financially well-thought operational model.
personal objectives
none of my ultimate life objectives, can be fulfilled by being in an institution that constantly attempts to emotionally trigger me, instrinctively ineffective at altering me, and instrumentally bring beneficial other than sleep and food.
im writing this to remind myself that however cliche it is nowadays to say dropping and gapping is better than academia, what im doing is anti-superficial, and what i see within the undergrad sphere, here and elsewhere in the US, is full of superficiality. but my mission is still contributing to a highly academic cause, that need much academic knowledge that i can acquire without my academic institution, and in fact, this institution cannot provide any intellectual help to accelerate this mission. and finally, i distrust this institution.
without being overly political, this institution's administration has not much of a moral rule book under minimum public scrutiny. it is supposed to be one of the few liberal safe houses in this nation, but a simple viral post about the sex performance that occured this school year was bad enough for them to remove the ppl who organized such thing to promote their broader political agenda. they self inflate their importance and greatness and cannot even stand bravely against minor right-wing media outlets.
let alone the federal government, that didn't even care about our existence, that can potentially reputationally or financially hurt this school. at that point the school will kneel on the second day.
enough said.