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Footnotes
1.
I have recently invested in a split keyboard to help my wrists 🙃
2.
Two of my high school's mottos were "create lifelong learners" and "always be a healthy skeptic." Former classmates just in my grade include: grandson of Phil Knight, grandson of Donald Rumsfeld, a Youth Jeopardy champion, a chess grandmaster, a nationally ranked speed rock climber, a youth Olympic rower, the list goes on and on
3.
Progress generally following the typical expectations of a high schooler at a west coast preppy high school. However, given the hippie underpinnings of my high school, the ladder laid out in front of most wasn't as generic as I understand it was in other parts of the US. Nonetheless, I felt the pressure to excel in my chosen path, have a stable source of significant income, be athletic, a leader, etc.
4.
In freshman year of high school, I took part in a Portland-wide startup incubator program. My partner later became a Thiel Fellow
5.
Since I started working in Portland's tech scene when I could drive (15), I literally grew up with a PNW + tech view of an accommodating workplace. Not to say lazy - just flexible. My new midtown NYC corporate job had few days off, weak culture, and a hostile feeling office.
6.
In my working experience, I have met many who are okay tempering their anxieties (perhaps their own scarcity mindsets) with dependable career ladders, salaries, occasional job title embellishments, etc. This is not something that fuels me. Not that 'coasting' in this way is bad, but I feel that I similarly have a deep desire to make things and improve things incrementally. I will inevitably start to feel restless if I am not 'with my people.'
7.
Ironically, two coworkers had left in the months leading up to me, and on my last day my group's president also handed in her two weeks.
8.
"If you lack the patience and pluralist public-spiritedness required to figure out and operate by strange new laws, the "world full of idiots" narrative is very attractive. So long as you and your Chosen One can convince yourselves of three things. That all the idiots are on the other side. That Great Regulations or Great Accelerations are the answer. And that turning the answer into reality merely requires eliminating hostile idiots from positions of power. And so we find ourselves hopeless, trapped in a world framed by narratives of stasis (and most visions of "acceleration," rather ironically, tend to fetishize a kind of historicist process stasis) rather than one being powerfully molded and reoriented by actual ongoing changes in the environment." Quote from Strange New Rules
9.
Another non-trivial factor in my decision to return to engineering is how easy it is to tutor yourself with AI today. I took many CS classes in high school and college - basically majoring in CS - and loved learning in smaller classes where the teacher could help me get unstuck. I did not like collegiate seminars at all where there was no Freirean sense of teacher-student collaboration. The bootcamp I have found is based on this dynamic, and I am optimistic I will be able to continue building on this foundation long into the future with AI.