I’m more than twice as old as when I started my blog by Anthony R. '09

In 2004, I applied to MIT.  It was a paper form, the first part, and I filled it out by hand and mailed it with a stamp.

I remember this because I scrutinized my handwriting, ripped it up a few times and started over, trying my best to be legible.  I was 17, and I thought this sort of thing mattered.  It was the first year of the MIT Blogs, after all, and I felt a connection with the team who would review my application.  I wanted them to like me!

In 2014, with my MIT degrees and my own blogging career behind me, I wrote a reflection post after being out in the real world for four whole years.  It’s still on point, and you should go read it.  I was 27 then and the Blogs just turned 10.

Well, now I’m 37, and the Blogs are 20.  I’ll put this into perspective: the Blogs are older than I was when I applied; and, now I’m older than the admissions staff I tried to impress!

Damn.

+++++

In hindsight, I couldn’t have guessed in 2004 that life would be this rich, or this hard.  After MIT, I lucked out with a 15-year run (and counting) in my chosen field, peeking behind the curtain of things I’d long been curious about, and somehow getting paid nicely for it.  I also met my wife thanks to MIT, when we both lived in DC and randomly attended the same alumni event.  We joke that we would not have ended up together as students, even though we overlapped and had friends and classes in common.  Time changes people, and priorities.

Indeed, I’ve found that timing is everything.  Being in the right place, at the right time, when someone specifically needs you.  There is no other magic formula to engineer most of life’s important outcomes.  Sure, you can increase your likelihood of success by being smart, or hard-working, or a good storyteller, or even just being young and not “set in your ways” – but luck plays a huge part.  I think this is true about everything from college admissions, to getting a great job opportunity, to meeting your soulmate.

I learned a few other things:

• As you prepare to leave for college, almost all the days in your life that you’ll spend with your parents will be behind you.  You’ll grow up, and one day before you know it – maybe suddenly in your 20s or 30s, like me – they’ll be gone.  Nobody else will know your history, your successes, nor celebrate you or be as proud of you the same way, ever again.  You won’t know how this feels until it happens to you.  So while you shouldn’t tolerate bad behavior, at least try to be a little patient with them now, and even indulge them.  Take trips with them, build new “adult” memories, maybe have some adult conversations.  One day, you’ll have to decide what to do with all their adult stuff, PLUS the kid stuff you left behind.
• Live below your means.  Spend less than you earn, pay off debt as quickly as possible – and as your income grows, resist the urge to inflate your lifestyle to match it.  It doesn’t matter what your friends or co-workers are buying, so try not to compare.  Start by saving a few months of expenses for emergencies, then open a Roth IRA, pick a boring, low-cost, broad market index fund (not meme stocks) – and just let time do its thing.  Because of compounding, you should start while you’re still a student if you can.  Continue being mindful about spending when you start working full-time, and you’ll have even more to save and invest – hopefully wisely and in a diversified manner.  Financial confidence is wonderful, often far more in your control than you realize, can be achieved even with modest earnings, and puts you in the driver’s seat in many areas of life including the ability to take larger career risks, sabbaticals, prioritize family, or even retire early.
• On a related note, who you partner up with (or especially marry) is one of the most financially important choices you’ll ever make.  Fights about money are a leading cause of breakups/divorces – which cost even more money!  So, find someone who is on the same page as you regarding saving and spending.  Screen for this during your first few dates.
• After college, it becomes a lot harder to make friends.  As you go from job to job, you’ll find that workplace friends are situationally relevant (like complaining about the same boss) but often aren’t durable after you leave that common ground.  If you can keep one or two close to you each time you move on, you’re doing great.
• When you get to the age where friends are having children, and if you decide not to have children, don’t be surprised if your paths will cross less frequently.  I don’t think this is either side’s intention at the outset, but it just happens, especially if you no longer live in the same city.  Social media makes it easy to stay in touch, but there will be less in common about your daily life experiences.
• Celebrate resilience when you see it, but also, have compassion when you don’t.  Everyone has something going on inside of them that you don’t know about.  It could be a current struggle, or an insecurity, or a past event that they haven’t completely worked through yet.  For example, the Covid pandemic majorly impacted a lot of people, and those impacts endure – but for some reason the world wants to move on and forget it happened.
• Finally, at MIT we tend to pride ourselves on the quality of our intellect, knowledge, and work product: it’s a meritocracy.  Surprise, most of the world isn’t.  The old adage that “MIT grads end up working for Harvard grads” has some truth.  Perception is reality, and if you can tuck in your shirt, look polished, and tell people what they want to hear, you’ll often be rewarded (at least in the short term) even if you haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.  So, look out for slick talkers with résumés full of short stints and few substantial contributions.  They might be adding value somehow, but you won’t relate to them.