40 replies to this topic

[The89er]

I love reading the forums. Whenever I miss Tech or High school, I always look at the forums and find it fascinating. I graduated in 1989. But here are my observations and comments:
1: My class talked about identical issues with colleges, internships, etc. We had awesome teachers. Many of them are retiring now or retired recently.
2: Violence and crime were prevalent issues - as Tech and the Fort Greene area was dangerous. We were always worried about a Gang called the Decepticons that originated from Tech and had spread throughout New York City. Its founder was shot in the head in Fort Greene Park in 1989. There were multiple ethnic gangs as well. Theft was huge.
3: There is a debate on the the school newspaper. Alot of the kids that were editors from my year, and years prior are media personalities today. They discovered their interest in journalism at Tech. This includes television personalites, MTV V-Jays, writers for newspapers, radio djs, magazine writers, and local news people.
4: Most of the class of 1989 are good people that have yet to find success, happiness, or even a career. Thats true with any class. Most of these people are still paying off loans from undergrad.
5: Most technites I speak with don't think about or miss Tech (for the first 9 years.) Then comes the 10 year reunion. It creeps up on you fast, and forces you to evaluate life. Then you start thinking about how great Tech was for your development.
6: Is it better to go to an expensive college or a cheap college? A brand name school or a city school? This debate was huge in 1989. Here's the answer - it only matters for your first job out of college. After that, your experience, ambition, drive, education, and whether you can actually do the job matters.
7: Student loans - they can be unavoidable.
8: There is a difference between going to college and getting an education. Make sure you get an education and not just go to school to get a degree. People can tell the difference with a 2 minute conversation.
9: The demographics of Tech have changed. In 1989, 970 students graduated Tech. 30% were black, 40% were East Asian, the balance was pretty evenly mixed between whites and hispanics. And there were a dozen South Asians.
10: Pitfalls - Many of my fellow alums were not prepared for the social aspects of college, and developed depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, etc. Many are still in therapy or can't seem to kick the addiction.
11. So many alums from my year avoid Tech. It represents a time in their life they'd sooner forget. You can't avoid who you were in High School. People will always remember the person you were.
12. The Sats don't really matter after high school.
13. Later in life, whenever you're sad and feel like life is not working out, walk the streets of Fort Greene. It'll put you in a good mood.
14. I was a comp-sci major in high school, an english major in College, a marketing major in Grad School. Its ok to change your mind a few times. Nothing is set in stone.
15. There is something really sacred about graduating Tech. My friends from Tech are living all over the US. Its a very special bond. Its takes a while to realize it.

[TheRainbowFalcon]

What I find most interesting about your post is its timing. Tonight the class of 2007 enjoys their senior prom, and most of them were born in 1989.

Gruesome and horrible as gang violence can be....only Brooklyn Tech can found a gang named after the villians in Transformers. This also leads to the "timing" of the movie coming out in under a month.

Smart-assery aside, I really enjoyed what you had to say. Thank you.

[Izra]

It's very interesting and refreshing to have an alumni opinion from many years ago. I wish we had more users like you. Just one questions: Do you still keep close ties with all of your friends from high school?

[teknite]

I really enjoyed your post. It brings a nice view on things and life, i wish we had more users like you.

[WhiteIce89]

Thank you for sharing, there were things that I expected to be in that list, but there were also quite a couple of surprises. In a couple of weeks I'll be graduating. I am going to miss Tech, it was a pretty big deal in my life for four long years.

[techkid]

The89er, on Jun 6 2007, 04:20 PM, said:

10: Pitfalls - Many of my fellow alums were not prepared for the social aspects of college, and developed depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, etc. Many are still in therapy or can't seem to kick the addiction.

I don't mean to pry, but do you know this from observations of close friends of yours, or did you make this generalization based on what your friends told you about graduates from that year?

[The89er]

To answer the 2 questions asked:
1) For the first 5 years, I kept in touch with the technites that were in my close circle of friends. After that it gets difficult. In 2004 I made it a point to seek and find as many technites as I could. We had a get together of 18 technites in Feb 2005.
But through email, I keep in contact with about 20 or technites.

2) The substance abuse knowledge comes from my own relationships with a few technites and from the recent get togethers. The most shocking thing has been how many technites from 1989 are deceased. There have been a lot of drinking and driving deaths. Conrad McRae died of heart failure while playing summer league for the Orlando Magic. At my 10 year reunion, alot about 150-200 alumni came. I also went to Albany, as did alot of other technites.

I did not know that last night was the prom. Our 1989 prom was held at Windows to the World at the 110th floor of Tower 2 (World Trade Center.) Looking back on it, I'm really glad it was held there. Spike Lee use to live across the street from Tech, where his 4 acres and a Mule studio is (South Elliot.) We use to tease him alot because he was very nerdy. Imagine that, technites finding someone to call Nerdy.

[LEEJONGYOL_1989]

Hi, I am a very close friend of the author of the inital posting on this forum. In fact, I flew back from Hong Kong to be his Best Man at his wedding. To the curious, I would qualify as one of the 89er's depressed friends. And, yes, there are friends between us who have "personally" become addicted to drugs and alcohol, have gone on to become doctors, writers, and some have even gone ahead of us to the world to come. He was not passing on hearsay but those tragedies and successes have touched people whom we know and were friends with while at BTHS.

I realize that something like this has a potential to become long-winded. Afterall, there is almost 20 years of experience to draw on since we left Brooklyn Tech. Since most of the students who have read the89er's comments are either current students or are graduating seniors, I think it is appropriate that I comment a bit about what collge is best for many of you.

To this end, my dear friend comments that it really does not matter what school you graduate from but rather what you learn and do while you are in college, any college, is what really matters once you are five years removed from college graduation. I am not sure if that is a good enough answer. Even though I agree with his general comment, I think there is a need to look a bit deeper at this clearly complex question.

The starting line for this opinion comes from my belief that the American socioeconomic tree is highly structured and divided. If any one of you are rather precocious, you might have read on the New York Times about the increasing disparities in income between the poor and the rich in America. I once read that the top 10% of the general population are worth about what the bottom 60% of the general population is worth, combined. One thing you will realize once you are older is that getting from one socioeconomic class into another is extremely difficult to achieve in America. The Law of Averages is almost insurmountable. So, if you are like how the89er and I was back in the 80s, that is economically disadvantaged and immigrant, then the odds of your success are low.

Intrigued by the same article I mentioned earlier, I looked up a Department of Labor statistic that listed the professions that averaged the highest annual compensation in America. It was not surprising at all for me to find out that lawyers and doctors averaged the highest annual salaries. You see, the overwhelming evidence again suggests that it is specialization in skills in law and medicine that academic excellence awards the most in terms of financial renumeration. I am not suggesting for everyone of you to become lawyers and doctors. What I am suggesting is that life and our role within this life is PREDICTABLE. It is those that disprove such predictable outcome that outperform even the doctors and the lawyers. The89er is one such case.

No matter which college you may go on to, your professors and college presidents will remind you of how "excellent" you are and how you will become the "leaders" of your generation. But, you also must remind yourself that not all can become leaders. The largest portion of this society will have to become the faithful foot soldiers of those who decide to lead.

In my humble opinion, it is best that you be honest with yourself first and foremost. Getting into Harvard or Yale matter little, if you go there only to fail. In my case, I believe that I would have been far happier had I gone to a school like SUNY Binghamton instead of Carleton. Going to a wealthy, predominanlty white, liberal arts school brought me face to face with who I really was -- compared to my fellow students. The realization of my true self, proved to be devastating to my fragile ego.

I think it is far better for many if not all of you to go to a school where you can feel truly comfortable, truly welcome, in order that you may achieve the most, as the 89er would say, learn the most. For some of you that school may be Yale and Harvard but I suspect for far far more of you, it would be a school where you go to classes with roughly the same students that you went to class with at BTHS.

The President of Carleton College when I was a student there in the early 90s once answered a question about what makes a college #1. His answer was that it does not really matter whether Carleton is #1 or not. What really matters is if Carleton is right for you. I now know the meaning of his answer. I hope whoever reads this reply will also spend some long lonley nights asking him or herself, if the school she or he has chosen to go is really "right" for them.

With respect for all who are following our footsteps....

JYL '89.

[techkid]

LEEJONGYOL_1989, on Jun 8 2007, 11:17 PM, said:

The starting line for this opinion comes from my belief that the American socioeconomic tree is highly structured and divided. If any one of you are rather precocious, you might have read on the New York Times about the increasing disparities in income between the poor and the rich in America. I once read that the top 10% of the general population are worth about what the bottom 60% of the general population is worth, combined. One thing you will realize once you are older is that getting from one socioeconomic class into another is extremely difficult to achieve in America. The Law of Averages is almost insurmountable. So, if you are like how the89er and I was back in the 80s, that is economically disadvantaged and immigrant, then the odds of your success are low.

Intrigued by the same article I mentioned earlier, I looked up a Department of Labor statistic that listed the professions that averaged the highest annual compensation in America. It was not surprising at all for me to find out that lawyers and doctors averaged the highest annual salaries. You see, the overwhelming evidence again suggests that it is specialization in skills in law and medicine that academic excellence awards the most in terms of financial renumeration. I am not suggesting for everyone of you to become lawyers and doctors. What I am suggesting is that life and our role within this life is PREDICTABLE. It is those that disprove such predictable outcome that outperform even the doctors and the lawyers. The89er is one such case.

I hope I am speaking for everyone when I say thanks for both of you for sharing your experiences. As I start to look back on my four years at Tech I think what if some things happened and what if other things happened. I have stopped doing this and am content with where I am now and I hope my fellow students are as well.

As I read your comment I found the two paragraphs above interesting. I have seen from my parents struggles that it is indeed hard to move up in the socioeconomic structure in this country, but not as impossible as people say it is. My parents came here with absolutely nothing and had two kids. They saved their money, and worked really hard very hard to make ends meet. A little more than 17 years later my parents made a lot of headway. Statistics tell everyone that becoming a lawyer or doctor is the most likely way of leading to future success, and in the past this might have been the case. You stated that The89er is one case where other professions were able to make more money. I have a feeling that there are more people doing just what the89er did and the future there would be more. It's actually really simple to come to this conclusion if you just theorize a little with the current facts. As more and more people become doctors and lawyers, there is going to be too many of them and unless the demand for these two professions increases at the same rate, the salary of the two would have to go down. I don't want it to seem that I am attacking any of your statements, I just want to let people know this, as I have told my dad this countless times to try and stop him from telling me to become a lawyer. I have never really wanted to become a lawyer, but you sometimes have to use other arguments to make people understand your point of view.

[LEEJONGYOL_1989]

Fellow alum.

I don't mean to fall back on numbers to emphasize my point but that's how I have come to "analyze" things since high school. And, please do not think that I am TELLING you to go to law school. Like you said, there are ways to outperform. If chance allows, you should meet the89er in person and ask him how to busted the law of averages.

As of 2005,

• Avearge household income for the top 10%: $100,000
  
• The same for top 5%: $348,000
  
• The same for top 1%: $1 mil
  
• The same for the 1/10 of 1%: $3.5 mil
  
• The same for 1/100 of 1%: $25 mil

[/list] You seem to be an entrepreneuring type. I think becoming a successful lawyer and a doctor would put you right over the top 10% by the time you are done with your medical or legal education. You can become a lawyer rather early (arounf 25) whereas finishing your medical education would take you longer (you will likely be near our current age.

If your aim is to become a member of the 15 million (that is a very large number of people) who outperform even an average salary of the doctor and lawyers, you should go for it.

I also should have mentioned that a few of the89er's friends who majored in computer science in the late 80s have gone on to achieve phenomenal wealth and accomplishments during the 90s in the IT industry.

I have no idea what you are like and from what kind of perspective you speak. If I had to guess, your perspective out on the world could not be much different from the one that the 89er and myself both shared back in 1989.

If I had one advice for you, please do not think you know as much about what awaits you out in the world and perhaps even in college, as you might. Keep a sense of humility about you and learn more, speak to as many people as possible and develop a mature perspective on how this world operates.

Then, you will be in a better place to pursue your personal goals. May I suggest that you read about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates? On Youtube you will be able to find VOD clips of the commencement speech they delivered; Jobs at Stanford GSB and Gates at Harvard.

Good luck.

[LEEJONGYOL_1989]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2...d+GSB&hl=en

Above is the link to the video of Steve Jobs' commencement speech delivered at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2005. I also watched the video of Bill Gates' commencement speech delivered earlier this week at Harvard. For those of you who do not know, Bill Gates, Sr., is and was one of the wealthiest persons living in the Seattle area. If you ever get a chance to read Howard Schultz's biography, Pour Your Heart Into It, the senior Gates makes a cameo apperance as one of the investors that gave the current CEO of Starbucks his chance at turning a neighborhood cafe into a global chain. One thing that stuck out between the two speeches was the personal, almost a confessional nature of Jobs' speech and more of a pedagogical tone to Gates' speech. Both men arose from vastly different backgrounds to do remarkable things in their lives.

To the precocious gentleman who wishes not to be a lawyer: There is no one right answer to success.

I also would like to put up the text of Steve Jobs' speech here as well.

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

Printable Version
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.
---------------------------------------

I was once a seventeen year old as well and I remember thinking to myself that I was right and that my parents were not. One thing that I would like to remind all of you is that if you are so sure that you are right, then you should also leave open the possibility that you may be wrong. That is the biggest lesson that I received from my four years at Carleton College.

[esong27]

Thanks so much.

It would be amazing to have more alum like you guys.

[LEEJONGYOL_1989]

[jj2]

As I read these posts from the Alumini. I begin to wonder if I will be posting on these forum 20 years from now, sharing my experiences in life.

Joke aside, I really appreciates these posts, it really widens our prospective of TECH, and life after we graduate from high school.

However, to contribute to the thread, from my POV, one's profession or salary is not so important as long as it is enough to feed me and in the future my family. But it's the work I would be doing that would be most important.

[zaccariah2005]

Nice to know that there are alumnis out there visiting the site, especially considering that you guys were in high school during a time before the World Wide Web, let alone this website. Hopefully, one day, I will tell Btech's Class of 2029 my experiences in the same way you guys have told us.

I might be too young or too ignorant to know anything, but, I think most people who attempt entrepeneurship fail. There are so many people in the world and a very small portion of them are lucky enough to become sucessful entrepeneurs.

Throughout the past years, my neighborhood had various types of stores. People thought they would be successful if they are their own boss. Many of these businesses ended up failing, and go out of business within a year after getting into business. Being an innovator, requires you to think in a way different from everybody else. With so many people in the world, that is definately harder than it sounds. you have to look at what everybody else is looking at and think in a way nobody else is thinking. Not a very easy task.

Getting a college education seems like the most safe way to become successful. Becoming an innovator is very risky. Greater risks means greater rewards. It also means greater consequences. The chances of the consequences are higher than the chances of the reward. I think most of us are better playing it safe.

[jj2]

zaccariah2005, on Jun 9 2007, 09:30 PM, said:

Throughout the past years, my neighborhood had various types of stores. People thought they would be successful if they are their own boss. Many of these businesses ended up failing, and go out of business within a year after getting into business. Being an innovator, requires you to think in a way different from everybody else. With so many people in the world, that is definately harder than it sounds. you have to look at what everybody else is looking at and think in a way nobody else is thinking. Not a very easy task.

In the past I believe this is true, because it's very common for families to open up a business together, where they all share the profits. However, our society today is very different from the past, as we become more engage in the global trading network. As we start to import our goods from other countries, which are cheaper, we are causing our own business to suffer at the same time. (factories). As a result, most of the citizens in our society (without a degree) who tries to start their own business ends in failure. Also there is also an increased in our population today then in the past, so we have more competition for the jobs.
This is from personal experiences, because a close kin of mine own his own garment factory. He told me that in the last decade his business experienced a steady decline due the increasing amounts of imports from other countries.

I do agree with your post. I too, witness the start and decline of about a dozen business in the past few years. However there are those which survive despite of competitions, from about a dozen different stores which provides the same services.

[techkid]

zaccariah2005, on Jun 9 2007, 10:30 PM, said:

I might be too young or too ignorant to know anything, but, I think most people who attempt entrepeneurship fail. There are so many people in the world and a very small portion of them are lucky enough to become sucessful entrepeneurs.

Throughout the past years, my neighborhood had various types of stores. People thought they would be successful if they are their own boss. Many of these businesses ended up failing, and go out of business within a year after getting into business. Being an innovator, requires you to think in a way different from everybody else. With so many people in the world, that is definately harder than it sounds. you have to look at what everybody else is looking at and think in a way nobody else is thinking. Not a very easy task.

Getting a college education seems like the most safe way to become successful. Becoming an innovator is very risky. Greater risks means greater rewards. It also means greater consequences. The chances of the consequences are higher than the chances of the reward. I think most of us are better playing it safe.

Of course most people attempt to be entrepeneurs fail, there's a risk involved and not everyone is successful. But that does not mean that someone should not try. Being an innovator might be risky, but that is what being an innovator is. You start to think of something totally new that would change the world, and you might even succeed to a certain point, but then someone else steals your stuff and you fail. It's tricky business and you have to be careful. The rewards don't always have to be money as everyone seems to think. For example, when asked in school what I valued the most, my answer was power and influence, more than money while a lot of other people said money. And not power and influence like politicians, because every move they make is scrutinized.

jj2, on Jun 9 2007, 10:46 PM, said:

In the past I believe this is true, because it's very common for families to open up a business together, where they all share the profits. However, our society today is very different from the past, as we become more engage in the global trading network. As we start to import our goods from other countries, which are cheaper, we are causing our own business to suffer at the same time. (factories). As a result, most of the citizens in our society (without a degree) who tries to start their own business ends in failure. Also there is also an increased in our population today then in the past, so we have more competition for the jobs.
This is from personal experiences, because a close kin of mine own his own garment factory. He told me that in the last decade his business experienced a steady decline due the increasing amounts of imports from other countries.

I do agree with your post. I too, witness the start and decline of about a dozen business in the past few years. However there are those which survive despite of competitions, from about a dozen different stores which provides the same services.

Not all goods that we import are cheaper, goods that people value for quality would be consumed or bought regardless of price. Your family member is one such case and could not be applied to the general public. Also, how does your family member know that his business failed because of other goods? Couldn't it be that his goods fell out of favor, and had nothing to do with other goods from other countries? Mom and pop stores have always failed in the past and are always going to fail, it's a sad fact.

[TheRainbowFalcon]

jj2, on Jun 9 2007, 08:23 PM, said:

As I read these posts from the Alumini. I begin to wonder if I will be posting on these forum 20 years from now, sharing my experiences in life.

Joke aside...

That was a joke?

[techkid]

TheRainbowFalcon, on Jun 10 2007, 12:00 AM, said:

That was a joke?

A joke to one person is a mere assertion to another person.

[azntechguy]

First off, thanks The89er and LeeJongYol for taking the time to tell us your life observations. I know it's hard to come in and talk in a place dominated by people in a different age bracket. I admit, I have that problem. But, I hope you've found a receptive group here at BTHSNews. I wish there are more guys like you.

From what you guys wrote, the adage: "The more things change, the more things stay the same" has yet another reason to live. Sure, things changed here and there, but we're facing more or less similar problems and dilemmas you guys faced at our age.

Now, excuse my threadjacking / ranting. I want to add my own two cents in the same spirit of "Random Thoughts from a [Recent] alumni." Call me weird (and cynical), but I find the concept of college (on how it applies to us, the current students and for our future selves) and the society at large strange. Supposedly, having a college degree is the key to the lock of enhanced income/wealth. Yet, it never ceases to amaze me how people who don't attend college or drop out do remarkably well too, sometimes earning more/having more power than those who did go through years perhaps decades of hard work to get that damned piece of paper. Of course, I also find it equally amazing the flip side of that. How do some people who don't go to college / drop out, who must work equally hard as the others who did drop out manage to not reap the same benefits?

What does it make of those who did go through that effort in academia? How come there is a singular trend (which I find deeply disturbing), when it comes down to profiling the success stories of the dropouts? I'm still not sure of a definitive answer, nor do I think I'll know it in my lifetime. But I know racism (yes RACISM. the tabooed word gasp!) and transfer of socioeconomic status has a role. Human nature dictates that those two will always have a role permanently in America. Gee, whatever happened to meritocracy, down with the inherited wealth/nobility in America and liberty and justice for all?

Unlike what LJY said earlier, I'm probably tainted by having this mindset. So much for humility. But, (in a note of irony), I plan to live with some hope that there is a chance after all, for everyone who looks for it. I'm not perfect, but I will give my best shot at understanding.

I've turned down (what I found out was a coveted spot by many of my friends) a seat in SJU and LIU Pharmacy, with nearly full scholarship for both. I must say that many of my friends in the Bio-Med major saw me as a sucker for doing that and there are two spots in my yearbook for me to remember that in case I forget. No, to the shock of some of my friends at Hunter, I'm not going to Med School, Law School or what have you. You guys have fun there and do what you have to do. And no, I do plan to graduate from college. My ethnicity and my parent's socioeconomic status puts me in a huge disadvantage if I don't.

To me, the greatest happiness and honor is if I can give back what I got (and I don't mean through ridiculously massive donations. Anybody with a lot of disposable income can do that). And for now, by being in the education track, I think I'm on good target for that. I won't change America, the society, its values, its flaws, etc. by teaching. But anything is better than absolute nothingness and I want to be a part of it for myself and for them.

Why the hell did I say all this? In my naivety, I'm hoping that I'll help appeal to that somebody, whoever it may be, you're not alone.

Conclusion? Just like what I interpret of Steve Job's commencement speech and somewhat indirectly, what I think the alumnus are telling us... GO FOR IT!

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As a final note, I have to say that in this thread, it's a story not too far off different, but written in the perspective of more recent alumni. Sigh, my last long reply in a long while. Good Night!