6.5.2024

this is an active draft, it will prob make no sense rn haha but if u want to chat about it as i think through it lmk

disclaimer: none of this is me saying working in big tech is bad, its awesome, kind of, haha ive worked in big tech and will prob work there after i graduate. maybe? idkkk yet. its me looking at the reasoning for why students go to work in big tech, rather than analyzing the simple action of working in big tech if that makes sense

• started to ask, why all the undergrads talk about the same thing and regurgitating the same thing over and over?
• it seems like indoctrination. everyone is in this BOX, but then you have to pose the question of who is putting people in that BOX because in order for us to be in the box, we had to have been put there somehow.
• i often describe the phenomena as: you come into college with BIG DREAMS & VISIONS, and within weeks all that gets shrunk and thrown away and put in a box on a one way path to big tech.
• and in the search for who is putting students in a box, you realize its not just one person or force, its a combination of many systems and subtle things in which the higher ups doing it dont even realize that its putting students in a box, and the students themselves dont perceive or comprehend that they are actually in a box
• and so it takes those few students who can break out of the box and ask a serious question: “wtf is going on?” (such a sophisticated question right lol)
• i started going to more phd / research talks. finding groups who actually cared about what they doing and learning
• it was dangerous to see 95% of the engineering students losing creativity, passion, and all concept of using their knowledge to create impact in their communities and the world. super dangerous path and future we were heading towards.
• and so you watch this culture of cheating, you watch 50 students all get the same hw answers from that 1 student, you watch the same assignment be tweaked and submitted hundreds of times, you watch the lecture halls lose student attendance each day, you hear students saying how useless school is , how useless knowledge is, and how they just need to get through it to get their 100k job at google, microsoft, Amazon, etc.
• ^ im bashing cheating and im also going to admit I have cheated on assignments before. not something im proud of, not something many students will admit to. i also had to take a step back and ask why am i cheating, what has prompted this? here is a screenshot of ane amil i sent to an academic person at my university. LMFAOOOOO looking back, i think im mentally ill why would i snitch on myself like this. but as you can tell, i had basically had enough of myself and everyone else around me normalizing this path

• it is truly terrifying. and so a group of students began looking for a solution. we see a problem, and we cant just sit back and watch the future go to shit.
• entrepreneurial mindsets i believed is the solution that can really change the engineering culture. there needs to be a push to PURPOSEFUL and IMPACTFUL LEARNING. when people hear this and about cseed, they think its juts “oh we want you to go build cool tech companies and be a 21 yr old dropout.” on the contrary, i would argue that entrepreneurial mindset spans much much much further than this, and we in fact, don’t want you to be a 21 year old drop out. so what do we want?
• education system of course HAS A HUGE PART TO PLAY in this. if students no longer see a connection between what we are being taught in the classroom and how that can translate in to us creating meaningful, fun, or impactful things, then that is also a problem. where there is a student who cheats, there is a reason for that cheating, and so although we students should take accountability for cheating, there are other factors rooted far deeper ….
• it is what pushes young people to stand up for what's right, its what pushes you to stand behind something you care about, its what pushes you to live authentically and be yourself, have purpose, and want to create impact in the communties your in. its waht leads to many initiatives being started, from a non profit, to the next unicorn tech company. and so yes cseed (club created on campus) was dedicated to tech entreprenuship as our target focus was cs and eng students, but still heavily wanting to promote an entreprenruial mindset.