What I've been up to, May 2011

I've been getting two questions from friends and family in the wake of graduating from CMC last Saturday. First, Did you have fun at CMC? Of course I did, but like any good economics major, I want to be wary of mistaking a positive statement ("I had fun") for a normative one ("Was it worth it?"). The second question, Was it worth it? is tougher to answer.

If I hadn't been in school for the past five years, how different would I be today? I can't go back and relive those years, so it's hard to say. My best guess is that CMC helped, and I definitely had an opportunity to meet a ton of great people and take classes in areas I wouldn't have learned on my own. The other big decision I made - dropping out of Penn to transfer to CMC - was definitely a smart move.

Other highlights from this past semester: listening to Gary Vaynerchuk and Dan Ariely speak on campus, writing a compiler for a subset of C#, hitting the road for job interviews, attending the Coachella Music Festival, and staying up till 5 every day for two weeks, first to get finals done and then to enjoy my last week with the other seniors at CMC.

Next year I will be working at Google on the team responsible for stopping people from abusing products (by clicking on their own ads, linking to fraudulent sites, etc). I'm excited to be working with a team of incredibly bright people, and I will definitely keep working on cool side projects while I'm there. This summer I'll be traveling around the USA and trying to learn some cool new skills before I start at the end of July.

I'd love to hear from you; if you could send me a quick update on what you've been up to since we last spoke. If you are in the Bay this summer, I'd love to have you over for dinner or meet up for coffee. I'm looking forward to a great summer, hope to hear from you soon.

Best,
Kevin