I got a facebook friend request from someone I didn’t really know. He said that I
“just seem like a really professional kind of student, you know someone who is really going places with his life. Whatever advice you could give me on getting that same mentality that you have, would be pretty sweet…”
Now this guy is basing his impression of me on my facebook profile, but I’ll take his compliment for what it is.
The truth is my parents and other parents have asked how I got to be the way I am. I think they were talking about my good traits and not my ability to lose things on command, break anything I touch and get distracted by anything with words on it. I guess its more that I got into Stanford, I’m a pretty good gymnast, and I seem pretty sociable/compassionate/intelligent. They want to know where it all came from.
The more I read about personality and intelligence, the more I’m convinced it’s mainly due to genetic differences. I hate how in movies, the main protagonist’s character traits can always be attributed to childhood experiences. Not true. Anyways, I’ve already tried multiple times to write this blog post and I’m never happy with the way it has come out. I’m going to give it one more shot. I’m ditching the essay this time and going straight to bullet points.
My Education
- Included reading a lot of books – first fantasy and science fiction, then lots of science non-fiction, now a little bit of that literary stuff too
- consisted of doing a lot of schoolwork that I did not really enjoy (although I did occasionally)
- involved playing the violin for 5 or so years
- involved a lot of gymnastics – 20 hours a week from 11 years old – present Continue reading →
Jason Shen is the co-founder of 