Hiding Behind Reality
Apr 8, 2024There was something unreal about Stanford. Something that made it feel not part of this world....
Corporate-Educational Complex
Apr 22, 2024If the universities are the temples, the corporations are its priests....
jarins
do we play the game, or does it play us?
McKinsey Comes to Town
Apr 15, 2024Senior year, McKinsey and Goldman Sachs came calling. They didn't come through the usual channels that companies approached Stanford. They didn't show up at the c...
Diverse Conformity
Apr 11, 2024Stanford trumpets its diversity. But it's really the conformity that matters....
Trials of Admission
Apr 1, 2024All tribes have trials. We just call ours college admissions....
A Religion By Any Other Name
Mar 25, 2024All we've done done is swap out our old religion for a new one....
The Art of Bullshit
Mar 21, 2024What we learned at Stanford – what we really learned – was how to bullshit. This is so much more than simply making things up. It’s an elevated form of psychological man...
Groupthink & Elite Culture
Mar 18, 2024My whole life, I’ve been something of an outsider. Growing up, I never had more than a handful of friends. I wasn’t an outcast. People didn’t make an effort to exclude me...
What Colleges Really Teach
Mar 14, 2024I returned to Stanford, intent on understanding this world that I had been so wrong about. While at Chicago, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I’d run away from s...
Truth of Academia
Mar 11, 2024Faith in something doesn’t collapse all at once. It erodes in bits and chunks, like icebergs breaking off the coast of Antarctica. At Stanford, my faith in the way of th...
Leaving Stanford
Mar 7, 2024None of this was what I expected. Looking back, it seems naive to say it, but the truth is that I believed truly that I would find a group of peers at Stanford, who cared...
The Ducks of Stanford University
Mar 4, 2024Why did the kids I met at Stanford pretend to be perfect?...
Orientation Week
Mar 1, 2024When I arrived at Stanford, I thought I’d meet the best and the brightest. That was not what I found....
Initiation Night
Feb 27, 2024The chanting began a little before midnight....
The Kid Who Was Good at Math
Sep 26, 2023There once was a kid who was good at math. In reality, there wasn't anything special about this. He just liked numbers, the way other kids like balls or dirt. One a...
Princeton, the Temple
May 3, 2023Stepping inside the temple gates of Princeton University, I felt an ancient feeling, as the world melted away....
The Very Human Need for Religion
Apr 28, 2023Deep in the Australian Outback, Emile Durkheim figured out why humans need religion....
Halo of Prestige
Apr 27, 2023Like many kids, I chased prestige my whole life. But what exactly is it?...
Match This Pattern
Apr 24, 2023In third grade I took an IQ test that changed my life....
Truth in the Bathtub
Apr 19, 2023From childhood to adulthood to old age to death. This was the moment I realized that everyone dies....