What a long, strange trip it has been.
In past years I have analyzed predictions from previous years and made new ones for the year to come. I am going to stop doing that. The prediction game seems like just a bit too much of a shot in the dark and 12 months is often simply too short of a time frame for even the trends I am most confident in to come to fruition.
Instead, I just want to do a bit of a recap and a review of what happened in my life after the past year.
Big life events in somewhat chronological order.
Applying to Grad School
I don't know if this is how other grad school programs work but applying to your MBA feels like stumbling into a shockingly deep rabbit hole. As you start getting into it you find a massive world of insanely well-paid consultants and seemingly impossible best practices. Thousands of forums and blog posts on the topic. Profiles of applicants who had perfect grades and found cures to diseases and still didn’t get in. There is even a live ticker that shows the stats of people who do or don't get into various schools when it comes to decision time. It is all a bit intimidating. I'll probably write a separate post on this process one day but for now, suffice to say that it is a PROCESS. In October of 2019, I decided I was going to accelerate my plans and apply for schools' second-round deadlines in January. I ended up applying to 6 schools in what ended up being a tight, but not uncomfortable timeline. I had the great advice to take my GMAT the summer after I graduated so I had that score in my back pocket and it was one less thing I needed to deal with. I ended up getting interviews at 4 of the 6, I got waitlisted by two schools and accepted into two schools including Wharton. The onset of COVID immediately after my interviews makes the events loom especially large in my mind. Prior to visiting family for the holidays just a couple of weeks ago, our last getaway was when we took advantage of being in Boston for interviews and made it into a weekend visit. Similarly, my last time on an airplane was flying back to Columbus from Philadelphia after my Wharton interviews. My Wharton interviews, in particular, were an excellent experience. There ended up being a group of interviewees with late flights who all got drinks and burgers together after interviews had finished and funnily enough everyone in this group ended up getting into the school and have become good friends.
COVID
It's impossible to write about 2020 without writing about COVID. It caused a monumental shift in just about everyone’s life. For us personally, it had some upsides like serving as an impetus to get a dog, increased working flexibility which allowed us to spend more time with family this year than ever before, increased time with my wife, and the breathing room to focus on improving my physical health. The biggest silver lining was probably the fact that my wife was able to keep a job that she loves when we moved. It also presented some personal challenges. We weren't able to spend nearly as much time with our Columbus friends as we would've liked prior to moving. Travel plans were curtailed and we had to make a major life transition at just about the least opportune time ever (and ended up contracting COVID in early August as a result). Overall, we have been extremely fortunate to be in the privileged and blessed position that we have been where our life has been able to continue in an impacted, but not diminished way. We try hard to maintain the perspective that this pandemic is a lot harder for a lot of people.
Getting a Puppy
The biggest surprise of this year was our adoption of a puppy, Bulleit. Caitlyn and I had gone back and forth on getting a dog for years, never quite landing on the same space in the gameboard. Finally earlier this year, with grad school looming, we synchronized on a final decision. We would not be getting a dog.
In early March, when the world stopped spinning and everything was on fire we were kinda bummed out and decided it would be a good idea for our mental health to spend an afternoon playing with a puppy that one of my coworkers was fostering. It was going to be a fun afternoon with absolutely no long term commitment. As I am sure is of little surprise to anyone who has ever owned a dog we immediately fell in love and haven't looked back since (shoutout to Shannon for bringing this guy into our lives!). At the time, we thought that covid would be a great opportunity to get a new puppy since we would be home for a couple of weeks and could train him (hah).
I can say with absolute confidence and zero bias that Bulleit is the greatest dog to have ever lived. He is much better behaved than he has any right to be and is a constant joy to us and everyone who meets him.
Getting in Shape
I have written a bit about my focus on improving my physical health. I had a bit of a health wake-up call towards the end of 2019 and was really focused on improving my health in 2020. Overall this was a big success. I lost about 35 lbs before gaining about 10 lbs back over the holidays for an overall net loss of about 25 lbs. More important than the outcome was the journey it took me to get there. Eating healthier and being more active has led to me feeling better and being happier. Trying to be healthy has turned from something I do to part of who I am. I still have plenty of room for improvement but I am seeing physical, mental, and emotional progress and think 2021 is going to be an even more positive year than 2020 was.
Moving
Moving sucked. I hate moving so much. Next topic.
Getting COVID
Part of moving sucking was having our movers give us the gift that just kept on giving in the form of COVID. Part of the reason I want to talk about COVID and be open about it is that it is hilariously stupid that there is any sort of stigma attached to a highly infectious global pandemic. Maybe I would feel more self-conscious if we had been exposed due to wanton negligence but it's unfortunately hard to get around being in close contact with people packing and then unpacking all of your earthly possessions. COVID was not fun but also not terrible. 10/10 still would not recommend. It manifested as a bad cold for me. For Caitlyn, it was a bit more severe with flu like symptoms. The hardest part of COVID for me was the existential dread that I would never make any friends at grad school since I was isolating during the first couple of weeks of school. Luckily those fears proved to be overblown. Without making light of it, part of me is glad we got it. It doesn't feel like quite so much of an amorphous boogeyman as it did before. Having antibodies has increased our risk tolerance and allowed us to feel a bit more comfortable participating in social situations.
Philly
Philly has turned out to be a wonderfully pleasant surprise. We have really enjoyed our time in the city. There are a ton of shops, restaurants, and parks in the area we live in. All Wharton students live within a relatively small area so we have lots of friends around and it isn't rare to serendipitously run into people you know. The highlight for Bulleit (and maybe Caitlyn too) is definitely the off-leash dog park just a couple of blocks away from our apartment. For all the rumors of the demise of big cities over the past year, moving from an idealized mid-sized city to a coastal metropolis has done nothing but give me confidence that those rumors are overblown. On paper, it may be easy to focus on the downsides of big cities like the cost of living. But there is an energy and life in big cities that just doesn't seem to exist in other places. Maybe it is all in my head or caused by the grad school bubble I find myself in, but I believe that large cities will continue to be where the brightest and most ambitious people choose to live their lives. There just isn't a good substitute for the powerful network effects that cities create even in an increasingly virtual world.
Colossus
A pleasant irony of this year was that I pursued my MBA in the name of a belief in the power of serendipity and yet the most serendipitous thing to happen to me has had very little to do with school itself. Since the beginning of the school year, I have been working part time at Colossus. For those that don't know, Colossus is a startup media company that includes the popular business and investing podcasts Invest Like the Best and Founder’s Field Guide of which I have been a huge fan for years. A big reason why I wanted to get my MBA was in a hope of getting operational experience. Getting to be part of the Colossus team from early on has given me that in spades. It is a good reminder that there is no better way to learn than to do and it has been immensely rewarding being a part of building something. I've been happy with how my role has grown and I am excited for the trajectory the company is on. It's a unique position for a company that is in many ways very much a startup but has the benefit of having hundreds of thousands of highly engaged fans that tune into the shows weekly. Special shoutout to Damian for already teaching me a TON about hiring, firing, selling, building, and being more direct. Working at Colossus has also been an amazing example of the power of networking, social media, and being politely persistent (Don't ask, don't get!). It has been the perfect real-world supplement to my education in the classroom (and the fact that it is helped line the coffers of the "oh my god I am in college and drinking beer regularly again" fund doesn’t hurt either!
Wharton
Overall, school has been awesome. We have made some amazing friendships forged in the fires of shared experience. I have loved being back in the academic environment. In undergrad, I definitely did not appreciate being in the classroom for the incredibly privileged opportunity it was until I had graduated and missed it dearly. I am trying not to make the same mistakes again and really appreciate ever minute that I have to learn and engage with brilliant professors and fellow students. I don't always succeed. It's easy to get caught up with everything else going on personally and professionally, but I am really trying to be intentional about being grateful for my additional time in academia. Once again, school is an area where COVID's shadow looms large. All of my classes were virtual in my first semester (luckily all my classes should at least have some in-class components this semester). There are still friends and classmates I have only met over zoom. I believe the school administration’s lack of nuance and inability to creatively problem solve has had a deleterious impact on my feelings of belonging to the school community. Never the less, my time in grad school has gotten off to a successful start. The primary reason why I pursued getting an MBA was that I wanted to build relationships with super-smart, driven people and I couldn't be happier with how that has gone so far. I still have room to improve in "finding my tribe" of other students who want to pursue entrepreneurship, but I think the steps that I am taking on that front will help massively.
One of the things I undervalued in my estimation of the value of getting my MBA was the benefit of simply having some mental breathing space to take a step back, think, and ask myself some of the big questions in life. What do I want to do long term? Where do I want to live? What is my calling? What are my strengths? I am in the minority of my peers in that I don't have a clearly defined next stepping stone in my career that I am pursuing. This has led to the occasional existential crisis as they are going through recruiting and I am sitting over here twiddling my thumbs and trusting in the power of serendipity. It hasn't always been a pleasant experience grappling with the questions of life, but I DO think it has been massively valuable. When you are working full time, it is hard to just keep your head above water. In some ways, I am still struggling with figuring out what I want to do this summer, post-graduation, and with the rest of my life. I am sure you can expect a blog post on the subject soon. But what I have come to appreciate is that where you are going is much less important than the person that you become along the way. And I am trying to lean into that revelation as I get tactical about my summer plans.
As I look back on a year where so much has changed, I find myself most grateful for what hasn’t. Caitlyn and my relationship is stronger than ever. Our friends and family are healthy. We continue to look towards the past with gratitude and the future with hope. We continue to believe that tomorrow will be better than yesterday.
Thanks to everyone that has been part of our journey and here’s to 2021 being the best year yet!
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