A conversation I had.
Did we talk about this or not yet?
I I don’t think we did. Um
no, we haven’t talked about it, but I
saw your video right before going to the
arizona college admission advice fair and you were talking about
include your passion in your arizona college admission advice
essay.
Mhm. So this is
yeah this is a little bit different than
that but I want to talk about how to
develop a passion. So um because you’re
interested in engineering and
architecture let’s see if we can build
on that. And I’ve had students ask me
this question. Uh I’m passionate about
so many things I don’t know what to do
or I’m not I don’t I don’t know how to
build uh to be passionate about
anything. Uh, I’m passionate about
nothing. What What do I do? And the
answer is the same. It’s learn more
about it. Whatever it is, as you learn
more about it, um, you’ll learn more
about it. And as you learn more about
it, you’ll appreciate it more. And as
you appreciate it more,
uh, your passion for that thing will
grow. So, the the story that I tell is
um when I was in my 20s, I’m I had a
co-orker who invited me. He says, “Hey,
JD, you want to come over to my house
and hang out?” And I’m like, “Yeah,
sure.” So, we go over to his house and
we’re sitting on the couch talking,
drinking a soda. And he says, “Jie, do
you want to see my crystal collection?”
Well, my first thought was, “That’s kind
of weird.” Uh but I’m like, “Yeah,
okay.” So, he walks me over and he’s got
a cabinet and in the cabinet are
different uh crystal glasses and vases
and stuff like that. He says, “There it
- See?” And my response is, “Wow,
cool. Neat.”
And and he says, “You don’t see it, do
you?” Like, “No, I I don’t see it.” Um,
so he pulls two he pulls two glasses out
and he holds one up the light. So, see
how this one is cut this way? I’m like,
“Yeah, yeah. See how this one is cut a
different way? I’m like, “Yeah, I see
that.” And you see how this one has like
a little bit of a blue tint to it and
this one has a little bit of a yellow
tint to it. I’m like, “Yeah.” The more
he talked about it, the more I could
appreciate it. Um, so if I wanted to, I
could learn more about collecting
crystal.
I would love to go back now, you know,
20 years later to see what his crystal
collection looks like. I’m sure it’s
amazing. So, learn more about it. So,
what are you interested in? Are you
interested in movies, books, sports,
animals, cars, mountain biking,
architecture, whatever? Learn more about
- Pick up a magazine on the topic.
Browse the internet on that topic. Find
other people are interested in similar
things. Uh join a club or start a club.
All all those things are good. National
Honor Society is is okay.
It’s not great
because there’s a million and a half
students that are involved in National
Honor Society. If you want to do it and
you’ve got the time to do it, then
awesome. Go do that. But let’s think
about something that is different and
unique. I call it a unique teen
activity. That’s something that the
average teen doesn’t do. And here’s a
couple ideas to think about. I’m not
telling you to do any of these things.
I’m just making some suggestions. you
might want to think about this or you
might want to think about that or maybe
one of these things might uh produce a
different idea.
So you could do some virtual
volunteering. That might be something to
look at. You could create a green
program in your school or your
neighborhood. Um start a business. This
was Luke. When Luke came into the
office,
it was right after his birthday and he
received a iPad for his birthday and he
was all excited about it. He was telling
me how he learned how to jailbreak his
iPad. Um, do you know what jailbreak
means? It So, with any Apple product,
iPad, iPhone, whatever, the only way
that you can download software onto that
device is to go to the iTunes store.
When you jailbreak it, you actually go
in and you change the code on it. and
that allows you to go anywhere you want
on the internet to download almost
anything onto that device. And he was
telling me about that. And the next day
he went to school and he was telling his
friends, “I learned how to jailbreak my
iPad.” And his friends are like, “That’s
cool. Could you do that to mine?” And he
said, “Yes, for $20.”
And he was telling me this. I’m like,
“That’s great. Take that idea and push
it even further. So, what else could we
do? And I made the suggestion, why don’t
you create a Craigslist ad where you can
um post on your ad, I can jailbreak your
iPhone, iPad for 20 or 25 bucks. And he
was a and he was able to develop some
business doing that. And then he was
able to write about that in his essay
and in his resume. And I’ll kind of
paraphrase his essay. It was um
I’m interested in software and I learned
I helped my school edit their uh
website. I learned HTML. I learned how
to jailbreak iPads and iPhones and other
Apple products. Started a small little
business doing that. And your arizona college admission advice
has a software major program. I want to
study that. So we tied that all into a
nice neat little bow.