Marvellous May at Minerva University (2024)
Marvellous May at Minerva University (2024)
A week in NYC, a practical tip for college living, four cornerstone courses, and two hundred lifelong friends
PS. I would love for you all to check out the most recent episode I hosted on ‘Humans of Minerva’ with my beautiful classmate, Megan Edwards. Hear about why Megan transferred from Cornell University to Minerva, her experience on Mount Denali (North America’s tallest peak), her internship in South Africa, cycling across Europe, her family’s restaurant business, and her future plans!
Link:
Megan, it was such a beautiful and engaging conversation! Hoping to host many more such episodes on ‘Humans of Minerva’ with all my wonderful classmates and professors in the months and years to come.
Back to the newsletter….
A week in ‘The Big Apple’
I took a relaxing and visually pleasing Amtrak train ride from DC to THE city that gets 13 million visitors per year. For all the die-hard Hamilton fans out there: ‘In New York, you can be a new man’.
It was a chaotic blur of a week, trying to tick as many items off the bucket list as I possibly could, with total neglect for a good night’s sleep beyond three to four hours. I spent my early mornings on fascinating walking tours, my warm afternoons in intriguing museums, my late evenings watching stunning Broadway shows and my late nights on the iconic Times Square in the city that never sleeps. I know that Manhattan is any tourist’s must-visit spot in the city with its towering skyline, but I made the effort to explore the other four burrows of the city as well – Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island. These are neighbourhoods with rich history, spectacular architecture, and jaw-biting tales of the local celebrities, equaling the gripping Broadway musicals on Times Square.
Summit One Vanderbilt
This is one of the newest observatories of the city, offering a breathtaking view of New York from the 93rd floor. What’s even more special is that before you reach the observation deck, you visit six different experiential, immersive rooms that are completely designed to enthrall your senses. My words will do no justice to the serenity and vividness of the experience but to briefly describe, I visited:
· A room filled with mirrors and colourful lights, from floor to ceiling, and across all four walls
· A room filled with colourful balloons of all shapes, sizes and colours, gleefully bouncing around
· A room filled with screens from top to bottom with fluid, moving colours and shapes with no form or limitation
I hope you get the idea. It was other-worldly.
And yet, when you think about it, the entire experience was just a mix of sensory inputs for our eyes and ears.
Creating any sort of memorable experience, be it a delicious meal, gripping film, interactive museum, world-class home, or a deep work of art, relies completely on the creator being able to impress, engage and surprise our five senses. It is through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and fingers that we experience every niche of reality. And when I pondered deeply after taking the elevator back down 93 floors from the observation deck, the reason I felt so immersed and captivated by ‘Summit One Vanderbilt’ was that the experience immersed multiple senses: it surprised my eyes and ears, and it was so vivid, colourful and fast-paced that it didn’t let my senses rest for even a moment. It was just a combination of the colours, shapes and objects that we take for granted every day – mirrors, balloons, screens, four walls. But, the powerful mix of them all truly created the ‘unreal’ feeling of the experience.
We all create experiences for others, right from a birthday surprise for a friend to a presentation we give at work to a vacation we plan for our family. Maybe designing great experiences begins by using this framework of immersing, engaging and surprising the five senses through which we see, hear, smell, touch and taste the world. Let’s design experiences that make these five senses come to life in such a way that the special moments of life are captured, cherished, and never forgotten!
A practical tip for college living
This is the latest section I’ve been yearning to add to this newsletter. For all high schoolers and college students out there, I know that this journey is one hell of a rollercoaster ride. I’m going through the ups and downs, same as each of you. Hence, every month I desire to share with you one insight, lesson, or piece of advice which has been serving me well along the way.
Create a beautiful friend’s group that transcends national borders
It is so easy to connect with people from your country and culture or even neighbouring ones – after all, you share a common language, cuisine, insider jokes, traditions, religion, and to some extent, a common belief system and worldview. There is no doubting that all the Indian students at Minerva will always remain very close to my heart.
But, every day I remind myself that if I wanted to surround myself with kurtas and lehengas, I would have gone to a domestic university, and saved myself the pain of leaving family behind, halfway across the world. I chose the US because I truly wanted to interact and learn from students who come from countries I have never even heard of: Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova. I want to converse with students from countries like Pakistan, China and Russia, cultures about which my perception is too clouded by stereotypes, biases, and misplaced negative emotions. After graduation, I want to have a home to stay in and a wedding to be invited to, from literally every corner of the globe.
Put in the effort to connect with people whose country and culture you’re interested to learn more about. Somebody so different from you that you might barely have any common ground or overlapping heritage. These conversations will teach you more than any other.
At Minerva, I’ve made an effort to integrate students from Japan, China, Ukraine, Belgium, and Kazakhstan into my core circle of friends. And it’s no hyperbole when I say that I learn some interesting fact about their country/culture every other day. I feel proud to form my perception about a particular people not just from external sources or my domestic media, but also after interacting with the people who have actually lived through the events I can only see on TV or Instagram.
Step out of your comfort zone. University is the right time to goof up. The cost of a mistake or failure is almost negligible, and the payoff of success is unbounded.
Academics at Minerva – Cornerstone Courses
HC highlights
1) Complex systems – #complex causality
In our messy world, it’s very rare to find an effect that can be attributed to a single cause. Whenever we attempt to change/remove/introduce a new outcome, it’s important to investigate and be aware of a wide range of potential causes, because we must always address an issue at the level at which it arises rather than superficially managing the symptoms. Lastly, multiple causes lead to multiple effects – turning a blind eye to the secondary and tertiary effects of a chain reaction might be a problematic choice.
Real-world examples:
· Feedback loops. Positive feedback loops are powerful, self-sustaining snowball effects that only increase exponentially as time progresses. It’s vital to ensure that these snowballing effects in our lives are concentrated on positive/desirable behaviours and completely avoided for negative/undesirable behaviours like addiction, crumbling relationships or declining self-esteem. Starting and being consistent with any new habit requires forming this feedback loop. Intense exercise often forces healthy eating which supports intense exercise. Consistent meditation leads to improved mindfulness, which helps keep one motivated and self-aware enough to remember to meditate each night. Investing in a relationship pushes the other party to invest as well, leading to an upward spiral of growing mutual trust and connection. These feedback loops mustn’t be interfered with – their power comes when they sustainably grow over time. While on an intense exercise regime, know that that one donut is much more harmful than you think – it won’t just harm your diet, but also reduce your will and energy to exercise and just like that, a powerful feedback loop is broken.
· Standing and triggering causes. When firing a gun, the bullet is the standing cause and the choice to pull the trigger is, you guessed it, the triggering cause. Both the bullet and the pull of the trigger are necessary for the gun to fire – neither can be neglected. Triggering causes might sometimes be outside our locus of control – you may be unable to influence whether you get promoted at work, whether your role model replies to your sincere email for a coffee chat, or whether your friend decides to forgive you after a mistake. But, the standing cause is most often well within your control. You can strive to be the most punctual, passionate, innovative employee in the room. You can draft the most brief, powerful, action-oriented email to your role model. You may have previously invested time, effort and vulnerability in your relationship with your friend, in preparation for a tough time like this. When you ensure the standing cause is already a part of the equation, the triggering cause will eventually show up to give you a helping hand. Ensure the six bullets are always loaded in the gun, and eventually somebody will come to press the trigger. Boom!
· Science and technology. Interfering too much with nature’s wisdom without understanding all the causes of a particular outcome could be a risky game plan for science and technology. In the case of gene editing, altering the genetic make-up of a newborn child to make him taller, stronger, smarter or have blue eyes must be a well-cautioned decision because we still don’t know enough about the multiple genetic factors influencing intelligence or strength or even something as simple as blue eyes. And we are even more clueless about the multiple possible effects of even the slightest alteration of a newborn’s DNA. When trying to replace human decision-making with algorithms, this may improve accuracy but often leads to complicated model biases. It’s very difficult to map out or predict human decisions because of these multiple interacting causes and effects. And let’s not forget that science is only beginning to understand intuition or ‘gut feeling’ which may not be as random or illogical as we once assumed.
2) Empirical Analyses – #analogies
‘Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth within the least space’.
Real-world examples:
· ‘If you can’t explain it to an eight-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself’. We pride ourselves on being such experts and thought leaders in our field, that when we talk technicalities and jargon, almost nobody else in the room can comprehend what we say. I think that’s a frightening problem, more than an achievement to be proud of. If we want to democratize knowledge and help even the common man understand a complex technology like AI, blockchain or gene editing which may someday impact his life personally, its crucial to be able to explain things simply. We must consistently be testing ourselves to see if we can explain the work or research we do to a curious eight-year-old child. Good metaphors hold the key to this. It is not about finding the perfect metaphor because idiosyncrasies always require jargon and technical details – something that’s good enough to ‘get the job done’ should suffice.
· Analogies for problem-solving. Sometimes, two distinct industries or fields may not be as far apart as they seem. Creative solutions for problems in one domain may come from the principles or borrowed learnings from a solution which solves a problem in a totally different domain. I love the invention of Velcro as a timeless example. Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral had been struggling for many days to find a reliable, easy to use fastening mechanism for clothing, shoes and other accessories that could replace buttons, zippers and hooks. One fine day, as he was casually strolling in the woods, he was fascinated by how the burdock (a plant) burs were sticking to his clothes and his dog’s fur. Curious about the mechanism, he examined the burrs under a microscope and saw that they were covered in tiny hooks, which easily attached to the loops in fabric and fur. Thus, the Velcro was born. The entire field of biomimicry uses analogies from nature to transfer these key principles to human engineering. The 21st century is a time for generalists over specialists who can innovate and create novel solutions because of their ‘inch-deep, mile-wide’ knowledge in multiple subject areas.
· Analogies for living a better life. At the heart of analogies, is extracting the core essence or key principle of something and being able to transfer it to your subject of interest. Well, aren’t we all interested in living a better life – a life of greater joy, fulfillment, peace, gratitude, excitement? Being able to look at the outside world and draw wisdom from lived experience is a skill worth nurturing. Being able to learn from the trees that survive the storm, the eagles that soar effortlessly with the wind, the new grass which rises from the ashes of fire is a gift. Nature has many of the answers we seek if only we can look carefully enough and then effectively apply something we observe ‘out there’ to our own human lives. How can you survive the storms of your life? How can you soar effortlessly with the wind? How can you be the new grass that rises from the ashes of all the destructive ‘fires’? It all starts with an analogy. A powerful metaphor, which once understood, changes everything.
Student spotlights
Kacper Malinowski (Poland)
What has been your personal relationship and journey with music over the years?
My mother, ‘Aldona Malinowski’ was a musician (Oboist) turned music teacher. Hence, music was always present in my life, right from a young age. I picked up the harp in music school almost by accident. I wanted to play the saxophone, my mother wanted me to play the piano, and my dad wanted me to play the violin. During my initial interaction with the school principal, he asked me to play the harp in front of him. I obliged and have not looked back since. I went to a middle and high school that combined music with general education, hence I was always doing classes like music theory, history of music, ethnomusicology, etc. aside from my English, math, science, etc.
Music changes everything for me. Try listening to a film without sound and it will absolutely ruin your experience and emotional reaction. Music is so powerful for the human mind, heart and soul!
My teacher and lifelong mentor at the music school, ‘Dorota Janiak’ was also playing at a local theatre in my city and invited me to perform. I am fortunate to have had the honour of being the youngest player in the orchestra of the ‘Lodz Grand Theatre and Opera’. I have been a harpist for over a decade now and have been privileged enough to perform at various events, operas and theatre halls across my beautiful city of Lodz.
Eventually, during high school, I made the difficult decision not to turn this passion into a career. I began to see the power of social activism and international diplomacy especially for Poland and its people, hence I shifted from musical education to pursue a more traditional university degree.
Your social activism has shined brightly in Poland recently, where you were a Sustainable Development Ambassador for the United Nations Association in Poland. Beyond the prestigious title, what were the day-to-day responsibilities of this post and what level of impact were you able to create?
I was one of sixteen youth ambassadors in Poland, representing my region on behalf of the United Nations Association in Poland. I signed up because of my deep passion for preserving the environment and being aware that many young Polish boys and girls around me were completely unexposed to even the basic UN SDGs. I went to different schools all over my region, to speak to them and spread awareness about the SDGs, their sub-components, and how students and schools could take concrete action in a positive direction for the environment. It was so heartwarming to see many of the students I inspired who began to engage with an SDG in their in-school or after-school activities and volunteering, and some who went even further and took it on as their mission to make progress on one specific SDG over the course of many years. Social activism may sound daunting to the youth when you speak to them about big problems like world hunger, poverty, or global warming. But, you inspire them when you break down a big problem into smaller, tractable components (#breakitdown) which even a single individual can make progress towards like switching from plastic to steel straws, etc.
Throughout the entire journey, I had the pleasure of interacting and working with multiple Polish embassies, parliament members, professionals in city councils, and UN employees, who were all inspirational figures for my young, high school self.
You’ve been able to inspire positive social change both in Poland but also in the United States. Say more about your experience during the FLEX program, where you spent a year as an exchange student in an American high school.
Absolutely! FLEX is a highly competitive, merit-based scholarship program funded by the US department of state, where students from various countries are awarded a full scholarship to live with an American host family and attend an American high school for an entire year. I spent my year in Des Moines, Iowa, with my lovely host dad, ‘Greg Fuhrmann’. It was an extraordinary experience which truly opened my eyes to a new culture and way of life, far away from home.
During the FLEX program, I was selected to participate in a conference in DC with hundreds of other FLEX students from across the nation. The conference was titled ‘Young leaders in teaching English’ and it equipped us with the tools, techniques and resources to go back to our home countries and more effectively help our peers learn the language. Fast forward to today, and I’m in the process of setting up my own English teaching school in Lodz!
I attended another excellent leadership conference hosted by ‘World Link Inc.’ which focused on social engagement and community service within our respective local communities, both in the US and back home. I participated in the academic decathlon in my school, which is the American equivalent of ‘Olympiad’. As part of the debate team, I travelled to many parts of the country to debate.
Overall, it was a wonderful opportunity for me to practice sharing my culture and country with Americans, also leading to the realization that there are so many under-appreciated or unheard aspects of Polish culture and values which ought to be spread more effectively.
Finally, I came back to Poland and became a city ambassador for FLEX, which means I organized FLEX events and conferences at different high schools, where we spoke about American and Polish culture as well as the benefits of spending that one year as an exchange student. Another interesting, fun fact is that I actually helped with some organization and setting up for the Joe Biden speech in Warsaw on the 21st of February, 2022.
When the Russia-Ukraine war started, you were still in the US for FLEX. Of course, sitting in the US with your host family and American high school, there’s not much you could have done to help the poor Ukrainian refugees, right?
Wrong! From hundreds of miles away, I still managed to play my part.
On the night that Russian soldiers attacked Ukraine, there was fear and uncertainty in Poland because historically, our country has been seized by the USSR completely by surprise. All Polish citizens felt a need to react and assist our brothers and sisters, the Ukrainian refugees – we almost took it as an attack upon ourselves. Today, over two million Ukrainian refugees have crossed the border and are being sheltered in Poland. Immediately, I knew that it didn’t matter if I was in Poland, the United States or on the moon – I needed to do something to help. The charity idea came quickly.
I reached out to the United Nations Association in Poland – they were organizing crucial actions on the border like giving the refugees food, clothing, blankets, medical supplies, etc. I wanted to contribute to this effort.
Hence, I began the process of organizing and leading a charity event in my school titled ‘From Hoover students, for the Ukrainians in Poland’. The school community reacted more encouragingly and passionately than I could have ever imagined.
We organized a basketball tournament to collect funds – even the local media and news channel came over to document the event! The school orchestra organized a charity concert, where of course, I played the harp. We had a poetry night, pottery sale, food stalls, you name it – and it was just a great reminder to me of this idea of ‘the one race called the human race’ because here were students helping refugees on the other side of the world who could very well have been ‘nobody’s’ to them.
With all the funds we collected, I sat with my host dad on his computer, and we ordered and shipped supplies to a non-profit organization in Warsaw, who then sent these supplies to the Ukrainian refugees on the border.
Lotte Carolina Damm (Germany)
Let’s begin with the civic project you worked on over the entire first year at Minerva, with a local organization in San Francisco. How did your team tackle the challenge question, ‘How might we promote and incentivize green energy usage in the bay area?’, with a concrete prototype and deliverable?
We spent the first couple of months in very different directions, trying to tackle all aspects of our challenge question with a concrete project – it was not easy, and we had little success. Finally, a teammate proposed that we focus on children because they are the future of the world, and they will be both the decision makers and the bearers of the consequences of climate change over the course of their entire lifetime. We all agreed with the proposal and began ideating how we could teach children about this dark, serious issue in a more gamified, engaging fashion.
We developed a playful, gamified application which is science-based where children can be informed about green energy – how it works, why it’s better than fossil fuels, and the tangible impact of different energy choices they make on a regular basis. We made the children build a home and make various energy choices in the process of constructing and powering each room + allowed them to witness the immediate consequences of their decisions. In the process, children were learning key ideas and principles which they could implement in their own homes, to increase sustainability. We found the entire project a novel take on the climate crisis, because instead of portraying it as the grim, dark, serious issue it is and nobody enjoys talking about, we approached it with bright colours, gamification, fun and joy, while still conveying the same message to children that their choices have a substantial impact on the world they will inherit.
We included a dialogue function so children could continually converse with a robotic assistant who would keep teaching them about energy production and consumption. We also included a quiz element to ensure we could test and measure the children’s’ level of understanding of various concepts.
A shoutout to – Mania, Haya, Yerkezhan and Meri, all my teammates turned best friends. It was such a pleasure to present the project with you in front of all our classmates and all civic partners during the Civic project symposium!
A big shoutout to you in fact, for being an exemplary class representative for the Class of 2027! Can you share more about what it means to be a class representative and what this position has taught you over the past few months?
As a student council member at Minerva, I aim to bridge the perspectives, visions and desires of students with the faculty, staff, and higher management of the university. We frequently meet with the president, Mr. Mike Magee, the Dean of Academics, the Provost, and other management members to discuss how Minerva is addressing various issues ranging from the Israel-Palestine conflict to sustainability awareness to changes in the global rotation model.
The core issue I’ve been working to address is ensuring that with so many staff members with different roles and responsibilities, students know exactly who to contact for their specific query or concern. This is especially challenging with a travelling university, with students from different classes and staff members literally based in every corner of the globe, almost never interacting face-to-face.
I’m still working with Minerva’s management to better justify to students the decision to remove London from the global rotation and more recently, add in Tokyo.
Sustainability has always been close to my heart and I’m also working hard to ensure that Minerva consistently role models and communicates this as one of our core values. Because of our global rotation model, things like flight emissions, or throwing away many objects which we purchase in a rotation city are key concerns and students should be aware of these issues + be educated on how to make wiser choices for the environment.
Minerva holds such a sweet spot in your heart. This is a university which many years ago, you only dreamed of attending, and you’re now living the dream. But you’ve definitely put in the work for that. Inspire us all with your personal experience of fundraising your entire Minerva education.
After being accepted into Minerva, I was on cloud nine. But, in the back of my mind, I was fearful and frustrated because I knew I didn’t have the funds to attend, despite being on significant financial aid from the university. For the next three months, every day, I would sit on my computer and apply for American scholarships, German scholarships, write articles to local newspapers, non-profits, educational foundations, requesting everyone for sponsorship. I had to make the best possible pitch of myself hence I designed a compelling personal website, beautified my LinkedIn, and wrote many blog posts on my dream of studying in the US. I applied to over three hundred foundations in Germany for scholarships, and fifty scholarships in the US. Only two German foundations agreed to support me. I invested all my parent’s savings, and my life’s savings and then with plenty of smaller donations like a thousand dollars from a cousin and another five hundred from a friend, I was able to proudly pay my first-year tuition.
So many people asked me why I chose to take such a difficult path, whereas university in Germany would have been free for me – I reply that this experience is what I need to grow and escape my comfort zone. I value active learning, a liberal arts approach to education, and the inspiring international community of students I am surrounded by – it has been worth all the struggle!
You’re such a huge advocate of stepping outside your comfort zone and throwing yourself headfirst into novel, challenging experiences. I’m fascinated by your year-long volunteering experience in Tanzania and I am sure readers will be too!
I was one of thousands of German students who was sponsored by the German government (Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development) to spend a year of volunteering in rural Tanzania.
I spent the first four months on the pristine Zanzibar islands, where I worked in the cultural arts centre of a local non-profit based in the UNESCO World Heritage city of ‘Stone town’. I learnt Swahili, tried to navigate the local culture, wore a ‘hijab’ for the first time, and forged a lifelong connection with my host family.
I then moved to another NGO on the mainland, called ‘Kinara for youth evolution’, based in Morogoro. We were a small team of women with the mission of empowering youth and young women through education to help them become socially autonomous and financially independent. I taught English, math and science to school children and took sessions on sexual reproductive health and rights, for young women. There are many cultural differences you experience firsthand, on-the-ground, and I definitely felt an ocean of difference between me, the white girl who came from the country which colonized Tanzania, speaking about highly stigmatized and ‘taboo’ topics to young, African women.
I eventually realized my major value-add would be to stay in the office and help with paperwork. Over the next few months, I wrote many reports on the NGO’s programs and effectiveness, I improved the English of their existing reports, and came up with new project ideas which I thoroughly described and documented.
A funny culture shock to me was that in Germany, 6 pm means 5:58, and people will be extremely annoyed and feel disrespected if you are even five minutes late. In Tanzania, you could be waiting for the bus or meeting somebody at a restaurant at 6 pm, and they may casually show up two hours later, and apologize for being ‘slightly delayed’.
Book of the month
Movie of the month
Poem of the month
The Un-noticed
The quiet kid
At the back of the class
Who never raises his hand
Never speaks
Doesn’t laugh
And has no friends
The office worker
Who works in silence
Gets up quietly and leaves the room
So nobody notices
And is never present
At an office party
The shy family member
Who keeps to himself
During social gatherings
Avoids your gaze
And giggles nervously
If you try to make conversation with him
These people
Shy, quiet, reserved,
Almost invisible
Are The Un-noticed
Nobody knows anything about them
And nobody expects anything from them
We may mistake them to be
Stupid, arrogant, incompetent,
Weird, silly, confusing
Yet don’t be surprised
If one fine day…
That quiet kid tops the class
That reserved office worker becomes your new boss
That inconspicuous family member
Summits Mount Everest
And returns home without a word
Until you see his name all over the papers
These people are The Un-noticed
They’re busy working, building, preparing
Heads down,
Eyes focused
If you ignore them,
You might just be in
For the shock of your life
Take care not to write them off in your book
Because they just might be
The heroic protagonist
Wow! That was long. Thank you for being patient with me and reading (or skimming) to the end.
Please subscribe to my monthly newsletter if you would like to stay updated with my monthly adventures as I travel to six global cities (San Francisco, Taipei, Seoul, Buenos Aires, Hyderabad and Berlin) over the next four years with Minerva University. Until then, Au revoir!