While I did manage to snag a reasonably priced apartment in Montmartre for my stay in Paris, I didn’t have the fortune of having furnishings included. I have a lot of trouble spending money on furniture for such a short amount of time. Also, I took the oh-so-enlightened perspective that if I didn’t have much furniture that it would push me out of my room and into the city to explore.

Fun plan, but it kind of sucked not have a chair to sit in.

Karma came to my rescue. Five friends from Georgia Tech were in town for the Tour de France, and they met me outside my apartment on the Sunday of the Tour. I was walking with one of them from the door of my building to the nearby metro stop and he told me, “the other guys are waiting on a sofa at a bus stop.”

“Wait, what?”

“You’ll see,” he replied. Sure enough, there were the other four sitting nonchalantly on a sofa dropped right next to a bus stop. With no hesitation I said,

“Let’s carry this up to my room.” You might be surprised to hear that they accepted without any hesitation. However, you sort of have to understand the mindset of traveling in foreign countries: you get a taste for slightly ridiculous situations. This was definitely one of those.

We hauled the sofa across the street and up the alley to my building’s door. A woman snickered on the way out as we sized up the best way to maneuver the couch up the three flights of twisting, narrow stairs. The process was actually pretty easy until we got to my apartment’s door. We were stumped for a moment until Aaron came to the rescue with some spatial reasoning brilliance to get the unwieldy beast through the frame of my door.

Success.

The only problem left to solve is what to do with it when I move out…

Paris has been an adjustment. The feel of living here couldn’t be any more different than the feeling of just visiting.

There is some unique opportunity here that I am looking forward to. Creativity and design are playing increasingly more important roles in my life, and this city is an incredible playground. I saw Kandinsky at 11pm last Saturday during a late night exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Earlier today, I sketched outside of Sacré Coeur until the sun went down. I look closely at clothes, architecture, and signs to pick apart the intentions of creators and to learn to discern quality. On Sunday, I tried on shirts at Loft Design By… in order to figure out just what could make a thin grey cotton shirt worth 70 euro. There are two screenings for a film festival that I want to catch later this week.

Some days, I just walk around my part of town, trying to get a feel for the shops and the people. A few nights ago I did this at midnight, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that a handful of restaurants were still open, and people were chatting under the street lights. I pointed a pair of American tourists to Moulin Rouge on my way home.

Other days, I aim for places. I dug through stuff posted online, and I found a Qigong group that was introducing beginners to the art in a park. Why not? It turned into a great evening after we decided to have a beer afterward. The group that ended up at the bar was great: the girls were French, Romanian, American and the guys were British, French, and Canadian (that was me). A memorable quote—“the second beer is all about the cheeks.”

I have noticed an odd loneliness to the metro: everyone is so used to cramming next to each other in the morning that they stop seeing one another.

This is my third major adjustment of context in a row. Two semesters ago, I was doing intense traveling as well as research at Georgia Tech Lorraine. The semester afterward, I studied engineering in French in the tiny town of Compiègne. I have learned some patterns that help in making the adjustment. I find that I have to avoid over planning and over commitment while simultaneously not being scared to just jump in and do things. Being familiar with the Buddhist concept of Beginner’s Mind makes moments of total confusion an opportunity instead of a burden. I feel pressure to get as much out of the city as possible, but I know that stamping it down is key to actually appreciating my time here. Even though the patterns are familiar, the process is never quite easy.

Bring it on.

I think it was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow that got me thinking seriously about memory. As a result, I started experimenting with keeping a journal. The result of the last year or so of experiment has led to a thin black notebook that I carry around everywhere. I channel all of my ideas, thoughts, and observations through it. The medium works in incredible harmony with my tactile and visual brain.

It’s odd to see your thoughts transform as they make the leap from the front of your head to the tip of your pen. I started the page below with an idle sketch of my phone, just playing with proportions while on a train. I hope you enjoy what it transformed into…

The entry is sort of a preview for a longer one that I’m have been struggling with for a few days. Hopefully it will see the light of day later this week.

A week ago, Microsoft flew me to Cairo to compete in the Imagine Cup world finals. The five days that I spent there weren’t enough to really absorb the culture, but I did observe things that I haven’t seen anywhere else that I’ve been in the world.

The Setting

Cairo is huge. And dirty. Almost everything is the color of sand. Buildings have unfinished tops so that levels can be added in the future. It doesn’t rain in Cairo, so there’s little danger in leaving roofs open.

I have spent the last eight months exploring European cities. The contrast in the feeling of Cairo was immediate. To me, old European architecture is solemn, conjuring imagines of monks shuffling slowly during masses. The mosque and park we visited during my stay in North Africa felt mystical. Bells chimed from odd directions and lanterns lit dusty halls. I sat and sketched as much as I could because it was such an exciting setting.

Western Influence

Most of my Egyptian experience was observing how the local culture interpreted, embellished, and adapted to the influx of Western influence. Of course, our Microsoft guides only took us to touristic destinations. It was interesting, nonetheless, because it wasn’t hard to observe local people making their way catering to, ripping of, or being entertained by Western tourists.

One night, a group of ten other Americans and I found ourselves at a bazaar. Imagine a tight alley lined with stalls full of every Egyptian artifact you can imagine: lanterns, beetles carved from stone, and Anubis statues. The merchants here know what you have imagined about Egypt, and they ordered the souvenirs to help you remember it straight from China. They also know that shouting “half price day” in your direction will turn your head. It was amazing, really, to see how someone who couldn’t speak English could both make a native speaker feel uncomfortable enough to let their guard down and guilty enough to fork over cash for essentially worthless trinkets.

“Where are you from?” We heard at one point.
“New York,” someone responded
“Oh! It’s very expensive there.”
Later, we here again, “Where are you from?”
“San Francisco,” another teammate responds.
“Oh! It’s very expensive there.”

I didn’t buy anything at the bazaar. Instead, I found a spot to sit and drink some tea. It turned out to be Lipton tea, which was underwhelming, but it turns out that that’s what all the merchants were drinking, too. It must just be the cheapest option. There wasn’t any need to walk through the bazaar, because the river of people and merchants surged quicker than I could have moved anyway. Sitting and soaking up the setting was a satisfying setup.

Scenes

The pyramids of Giza as well as the Sphinx weren’t very different than the pictures. My favorite part was hearing the story of a friend getting 50 euro swiped from him for a short camel ride.

I had a great conversation with E McNeill on the fourth (or fifth?) floor of the mall connected to our resort. I think the picture above illustrates what the experience of that mall was like.

Being constantly afraid that the food you’re eating might make you deathly ill turns out to be sort of fun. You really have no control over whether your food has been handled appropriately. So, you cross your fingers, load your plate with exotic vegetables, and make sure you know where the nearest bathrooms are.

Next

I’ve been away from Not Wandering for a few weeks because of a really intense finals week (did I mention that I took all my engineering exams in a foreign language, yet?) and the last month of preparation for Imagine Cup. I felt guilty spending extra time writing in English while tuning my French for finals.

The rest of my 2009 will be spent in Paris at an internship with the nuclear power company AREVA. I have a little studio in the 18me with two really cool landlords. The transition is noteworthy: I’ll be going from the smallest town I’ve ever lived in to the biggest. My French has come a long way from my tentative forays in Metz, and I can’t wait to see how it holds up to snobby girls, French coworkers, and day-to-day life in the City of Lights.

I shared some thoughts a little while ago about lectures. I want to play a game now: what if your goal was to drop out of school? What skills would you need to be successful? How much of the stuff in class could you do without? Would you be better off?

Lots of other people have done it

It doesn’t take much effort to find successful people who dropped out of school. The most intriguing aspect of that list is that it’s not just entertainers that can drop out and become famous, so can physics geniuses and programming wizards. Entrepreneurs seem to admire the moxy required to drop out. Dropbox, a fantastically successful internet startup, was founded by two MIT dropouts: Drew Houston and Arash Ferdouwsi. They used to have a pretty funny description about dropping out being “startup cred” on their About page, but they have since removed it.

What does school teach you about relationships?

Real relationships are incredibly educating things. The amount that you learn from lectures and homework assignment doesn’t even compare to the amount that you can learn from a knowledgeable someone who cares about your future. Part of the problem is logistical: how can a professor genuinely connect with 200 people in a lecture course? Part of the problem is the student/professor relationship: why do we spend so much time in contention with the men and women that are supposed to be helping us realize our dreams?

A boss of mine expressed the opinion that hiring from well-regarded universities usually doesn’t work out. He went on to explain those employees from big name schools were less useful in the group because they tended to be close-minded in a room full of men and women from smaller colleges. The difference in educational background vanished when skills needed to be applied in a team setting. Isn’t that funny? You should be developing open-mindedness rather than squeezing in one extra course on fluid mechanics. Where is that on the syllabus?

Detaching from school

I trained for three years to secure a spot on the three-person team that won a trip to the ACM International Collegiate Programming Championship World Finals last year. I also got my first C in a class. I was surprised to find that it didn’t matter to me; I had found something that was worth more than a 4.0. I have gotten more phone calls from companies because of my involvement in that contest than I have for any grades in my classes. The feeling of freedom and competence knowing that there’s more to achievement than GPA is incredibly motivating.

Vigilance is key

Professors have paid their dues; they know what they’re talking about. And working diligently is an incredibly useful skill. However, how many people have you heard of that just decide to continue to grad school because they don’t know what to do next? Georgia Tech recently introduced an option to get a Master’s degree without writing a thesis. You know, so that you don’t have to come up with anything original to get the “Master’s” stamp on your diploma.

There is an obvious conclusion from these thoughts: class work is not transcendent. If you don’t care about it, then it will be pointless to you in the future. Be more critical of what is taught to you in class. Some teachers have noticed this and ask students to call BS on their history textbooks. Obviously, I don’t think that class work is pointless. I just think it’s pointless if you resolve to forget about it when your finals are over.

Implications

I want to close with two extraordinary messages: one scary and one optimistic. In October of last year, Andrew Lahde dropped out of the hedge fund game with a short letter. Here is an excerpt–

I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

There is an optimistic interpretation to the dropping out question that I ran into recently. I started writing this entry about a week ago, and since then Clay Burell posted an article on The Wisdom of Dropping out: Steve Jobs’ Must-See Graduation Speech at change.org. Here is the video, and a list of my favorite quotes.
From Steve Jobs–

• “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and I had no idea how college would help me find out”
• “[Typography was] artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture”
• “If I would have never dropped out then I would have never dropped in”
• “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. “
• “…the confidence to follow your heart.”
• “the heaviness of being successful was replaced with the lightness of being a beginner again—not being sure of everything It was one of the most creative periods of my life.”
• “You’ve got to find what you love”
• “Remembering that you’re going to die is the cure for thinking that you have something to lose. You are already naked; there is no reason not to follow your heart.”
• “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”
• “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

I hope some of you will play the dropping out thought experiment, too. Also, Hearing your results in the comments would make my day.