Nurturing November at Minerva University (2023)
Los Angeles, Muir woods, four cornerstone courses and 200 lifelong friends
A week in LA
Warner Bros studio tour
An enchanting peek behind the scenes at one of the most iconic studios in the world. We went to the famous streets, alleys and buildings which were all used as sets in world–famous movies and shows right from Friends to the Big Bang theory to La La Land and Inception. It was incredible to see how the same building or street was repurposed so craftily for different settings, moods, times and places. We got a peek at sound stages where talk shows and dialogue are re-recorded for the final edits of a film or show. We took a journey back to our childhood adventures when we saw original props, like the real Sorting hat from Harry Potter, the original Wonder women costume and the original Batmobile used in the Dark Knight trilogy. What makes an ordinary hat, sword or car so iconic and mesmerizing that people will wait in line for hours just to get a peek and a photo?
What I realized that day was that all the ingredients in a movie aren’t inherently magical or other-worldly: men and women as characters, everyday props, everyday sounds, ordinary buildings, simple cars and bikes. What makes a movie magical is the powerful combination of all these components – acting, dialogue, sound, animation, costume design, sets, and editing, which together creates a surreal effect. There is something about the underdog story of a normal man, woman or child who goes on to become a legend and a hero, that strikes a chord in each of our hearts, as we deal with life’s everyday challenges and aspire to serve a higher purpose. There is something beautiful about how a single film can encompass the range of human emotions and experiences of a lifetime into 120 minutes. We all eventually come to realize that the emotional heart is a far more powerful source of inspiration, strength, and courage than the rational, calculating mind.
Griffith Observatory
A beautiful scientific observatory on top of a hill, with a clear view of both the iconic Hollywood sign and the vast city of downtown Los Angeles. A beautiful planetarium dome with three unbelievable documentaries about outer space, the planets and life beyond Earth. A wide range of exhibits to explain the general public the fascinating equipment research astrophysicists use to conduct research on outer space, and the surprising discoveries their research is yielding every day. I saw the insides of a telescope, measured my weight on the different planets in our solar system, witnessed Nikola Tesla’s electric coil at work, and marveled at rocks from outer space.
Our innate curiosity and thirst for exploration will always be more powerful and advanced than our technology. We will never be satisfied as long as there is more to explore in the vast unknown – yet what keeps us progressive and innovative, also keeps us unsatisfied and greedy – a true double-edged sword.
Muir woods
Once back from LA, I took a rejuvenating hike in Muir Woods, a national park on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Miles and miles of gorgeous woodland, filled with Coastal redwoods which have been growing for hundreds of years, and tower up to a staggering 250 meters tall. The lumber from this forest can never be sold commercially, ensuring its beauty and serenity are present for future generations to cherish. Sometimes I wonder, why do we require the strict enforcement of laws and rules to force us to do what we know is right?
My 90-minute walk through the forest was a refresher for my mind and allowed me to forget the heavy burden of academics and assignments because there was something more important to enjoy. I’m sure even if I stacked all my worries, fears and pain, on top of each other, they would be nowhere near as tall as these gigantic trees. The sheer immensity of nature’s glory is enough to remind us that our individual lives are not the most important thing in this world, and that we should take ourselves less seriously sometimes.
On the drive back, we stopped at a cute town called Sausalito, by the waterfront. A city populated by the millionaires who wanted a quieter, slower and calmer life than the bustling city of San Francisco could give them. It never fails to amuse me how centuries ago our ancestors all thrived while living in the wild and today there is a significant cost to living close to nature – a luxury which many among us cannot even afford.
Academics – Cornerstone courses
HC highlights
1) Empirical Analyses – #datavisualisation
The visual presentation of data in graphs and trends allow our visual sense to quickly pick up on patterns and trends which are unobvious when looking at a spreadsheet filled with numbers. Data visualization is an art. Intentional choice must be made about the appropriate choice of graph, data processing, and the trends we choose to highlight. Sometimes, ‘data conceals as much as it reveals’ and can be manipulated to highlight certain trends and hide other ones. Thus, we must be critical observers of any data visualization we come across.
Real-world examples:
· Media and news – We come across charts and figures every day in the news, but many of us take a quick glance and blindly accept the stated findings listed below. It’s important to note key details like the time period of the data, what the trendline signifies, and most importantly, how the data itself was collected by researchers; ie. how unbiased and random was the data collection process?
· Public speaking and presentation – As creators of data visualization, the intention is always to simplify and clarify data for viewers so they can understand the key insights from the data within less than 5 seconds of viewing a chart. Unambiguous and over-complicated charts can weaken and even contradict your intended message as a presenter.
· Art – Lately, I’ve been thinking about whether art can also be a data visualization, in a more abstract form. Data from the creator’s life experiences, worldviews, inner thoughts and emotions, which are selectively chosen and displayed to viewers with the hope of communicating a desired message or emotion.
2) Complex systems – #systemmapping
According to Plato, ‘there is no obvious way to carve nature at its joints’. Sometimes, complex systems are too difficult to analyze unless we make intentional choices about how to break down/decompose a system, allowing us to study each part individually. Each decomposition of a system will both reveal and hide insights, and it requires us to decide which system mapping would be most relevant for our research question.
Real-world examples
· Business – Segmentation of customers. No organization can cater to everybody’s needs hence they must specify their target audiences. Based on their product, a business can choose to classify its potential customers based on age, gender, ethnicity, height, personal interest, etc. and then market different products using different mediums to each sub-group of customers. This is not a straightforward process – should a bank break its customers down based on their income, profession, or age?
· Hardware and appliances – Even a non–engineer can learn to solve basic hardware and appliance issues using system mapping. A basic understanding of the different components of a device and their functions can help identify hardware issues and fix them without requiring a professional every time your AC, refrigerator or TV breaks down.
· Networking and relationships – Think about your personal and professional network as a complex system. You have some friends for specific hobbies, some colleagues strictly for business interaction, some obligatory relationships for cousins and nephews, some individuals who mentor you and other individuals who you mentor. Mapping your network out in multiple ways will allow you to understand the purpose and motivation behind each connection you have, and which area in your life requires stronger connections that you must build up.
Student Spotlights
Arsenii Iatskar (Russia)
Let’s start with the Start-up you have been building over the last few months at Minerva. What inspired you to start it and what stage of building are you currently on?
I have always been obsessed with huge ideas, ideas that can transform the world and impact the lives of millions. However, such an idea should be economically viable with a clear revenue model to ensure financial stability for the entire team, while also genuinely making a positive impact on the world. My Start-up involves building a stock market for investments in people. There is a famous saying that ‘Investors invest in teams, not ideas’. The idea and business model of any Start-up will pivot multiple times during its early stages, however a motivated, passionate, and ambitious team is the glue which keeps the idea and its execution together. Today, investors still invest in ideas and projects, whereas what they really want to invest in, are people. My team is building a software for investment not in individual projects, but in an entire individual or an entire team over a fixed time period. Under US law, an individual is allowed to share a certain % of their income for a fixed number of years in exchange for a certain amount of money right now – this literally allows an investor to invest directly in people, not just an idea.
Projects and ideas can fail, but driven and passionate individuals will eventually succeed and thus, by investing in a person you invest in much more than a single business idea, rather you invest directly into their entire future earning potential. We are currently building the platform for our company, and aiming to secure funding to expand our idea.
How have you been utilizing the city to expand your professional network, while also finding potential investors for your Start-up?
There are many layers to networking events and tech conferences, here in San Francisco. The easiest but most superficial layer includes general networking events posted on platforms like Eventbrite, open to the common public. I wanted to go deeper. Hence, I started by attending such general networking events but used my connections there to enter into more niche, smaller circles of people interested in more specific industries like blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFT’s, etc. I have been trying to penetrate into more exclusive groups of founders, innovators and CEOs who can mentor me and provide better direction for my Start-up. Multiple days a week, I attend events and conferences at UC Berkley, Stanford, House of Web 3, Silk Road Innovation Hub, and more. I have met brilliant, like-minded individuals who have inspired me to work both harder and smarter.
You frequently have coffee chats with ‘Atlas fellows’ in the Bay area. Tell us more about the Atlas fellowship and what you gained out of this program.
The Atlas fellowship is a 12-day physical program conducted in Berkley, for selected high school students who pass a rigorous application process. The program is dedicated to 4 major topics:
· AI alignment: The ethics and philosophical debates which circle the AI and ML revolution; discussing how to use AI for the good of humanity
· Effective altruism: Smart charity. Donating funds to an organization and a project with the highest return on investment, measured by the number of lives saved / benefitted, per x amount of dollars invested.
· Rationality: Theories of emotion, cognition, System 1 and System 2, Behavioural economics, and more
· Forecasting: Tools, techniques and concepts related to predicting transformative global events in the short and long-term future.
Mentors at the Atlas fellowship are all industry professionals in fields like financial consulting, AI research, software development, economics and more and they interacted with me like I was a rational, responsible, intelligent adult who could make my own wise choices which was extremely powerful and empowering for my teenage self. We worked on multiple ‘sprint projects’ throughout this fellowship, like fleshing out an entire Start-up idea in 2 hours or building a website from scratch in half a day. It pushed my boundaries and taught me that when I set up the right constraints for myself in terms of resources, time and funding, it would push me to work smarter, not harder, and still produce a high-quality output. I now have a large network of Atlas fellows in the Bay area which I occasionally bump into and invite for a coffee chat, because despite being in different environments and stages of life, we are all intellectually curious and lifelong learners which is the glue of our community.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years from now?
My favourite book is ‘The black swan’ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He talks about crucial, world – changing events with very low probabilities of occurring, which are very difficult to predict, like 9/11, the rise of the internet and personal computer, or the outbreak of Covid 19. The world looks very different today because of these black swan events throughout history, which nobody could predict because today’s prediction systems all value high-probability events, discounting the potential transformative impact of huge events with very low probabilities of occurring.
To answer your question, I have no idea where I will be in 10 years from now because I believe that one or multiple black swan events will completely alter the trajectory of my life. Instead of predicting my future, I am working on myself today, by maximizing my chances of being in the right place, at the right time, for the right opportunity headed my way.
Bo Shih Huang (Taiwan)
So, what was so special about this school you went to back in Taiwan?
Trick question. I’ve been homeschooling since second grade, by personal choice. I made an intentional choice to be home-schooled because the Taiwanese education system was not well aligned with my interests and skills, for example, my early passion for filmmaking, 3d printing, volunteering and programming. I found a homeschooling program in Taiwan and dove right into it. Homeschooling is definitely not for everyone, but I was self-motivated and intellectually curious hence it worked well for me and gave me the flexibility and time to pursue my other extracurriculars. For my entire high school, I designed my own homeschooling curriculum, to focus more on Project-based learning and professional skills geared for the workplace of the 21st century like content creation, public speaking, creative thinking for innovation, etc.
What was your biggest extracurricular activity during your schooling years?
Volunteering. From an early age, I involved myself in beach clean-ups, organizing summer camps for children, and helping with the logistics of workshops and discussion forums in my city on topics of social change and social justice. I was both a volunteer and participant in multiple conferences, events and panel discussions in the Philippines, Singapore, Japan and even at Stanford for a technology summer camp along the lines of a ‘youth shark tank’. Volunteering felt fulfilling and relaxing to me; I genuinely enjoyed helping people around me, especially in situations where my English proficiency could be helpful to fellow citizens who struggled with the language.
Your English proficiency certainly led you to some interesting experiences and associations. Tell us more about working as an interpreter with the Ministry of labour in Taiwan.
We have many ‘makerspaces’ in Taiwan and I loved volunteering there. I helped translate class materials and lecture content for Taiwanese university students in some maker spaces, in an unofficial capacity. After slowly building a rapport with them, connection after connection led me to work in an official capacity with the Ministry of labour in Taiwan. I would be the translator when foreign dignitaries arrived in Taiwan like representatives from the EU, and even the president of Saint Kitts and Nevis! In 2017, I again worked as a language interpreter at the ‘World Congress on Information Technology’ hosted by the Ministry of economics in Taiwan, and even at the ‘International Exposition on Asia-Pacific issues’. It has always amazed me how such a simple skill opened up a world of opportunities for me in Taiwan, simply because it was so highly demanded and desired back home.
And more recently, you hosted a TEDx event in Taiwan. How was that experience?
For a long time, I had been eager to organize a TEDx event in Taiwan. People think that just because an event has the brand of ‘TEDx’ on it, it immediately motivates the public to attend. Not entirely true. With so many TEDx events happening all the time, it’s crucial to pitch the theme, purpose and intention of your event as effectively as possible, and only then will people find it worthwhile to attend.
Setting up this event involved many activities from securing funding of USD 10,000 for the event to hosting monthly public events leading up to the conference to make the public both aware and enthusiastic about the event’s theme and speaker profiles. We spent most of our time brainstorming the purpose and intention of our conference and how best to market it to invite more people to attend. Another major challenge was reaching out to potential speakers who can range from your back-door neighbour to the top CEOs and public speakers in the country– we had to work with each speaker individually to determine the content and duration of their speech and ensure a strong link back to the major theme of the conference, to give all the talks a common thread. TEDx speakers receive no financial compensation for giving their talk, hence we persuaded individuals to come from different parts of the country to speak at our event just out of their charity, generosity and willingness to share powerful ideas with the public. I was personally responsible for ensuring a mixture of Chinese and English speakers to ensure a bilingual conference which catered to both the foreign and local audiences.
Book of the month
Movie recommendations
Top watches for the month:
· Source code (2011) – Duncan Jones
· The Post (2017) – Steven Spielberg
· Bridge of spies (2015) – Steven Spielberg
· Her (2013) – Spike Jonze
· CODA (2021) – Sian Heder
· Contagion (2011) – Steven Soderbergh
· Sound of metal (2019) – Darius Marder
· King Richard (2021) – Reinaldo Marcus Green
· Minari (2020) – Lee Isaac Chung
· Life is beautiful (1997) – Roberto Benigni
Poem of the month
My best friend
My best friend
Why does he avoid my pleading gaze?
Sit at another table during lunch?
I’m willing to let go of the past
To forgive and forget
And begin the relationship afresh
But not he
He holds onto his hateful grudge
And the pain deep inside his heart
He goes ahead
And makes a new best friend
Leaving me truly alone
PS.
My younger brother, Ayan Dharod, has spent many months working on an exciting project. It is the 2024 calendar, titled ‘52 weeks of Human wonders’. It comprises 52 hand-drawn, pen and ink visualisations of iconic monuments and buildings around the world, including the Notre dame cathedral, London Eye, Taj Mahal, Colosseum, Arc de triomphe, and many more! Stunning detail combined with the simplicity of black and white sketches to truly highlight the architectural feats of the world. The calendar will be released for purchase very soon but until then you can view the preview here: https://serenestrokes.com/calendar/. Wishing you all a wonderful new year ahead!
That was long. Thank you for being patient with me and reading (or skimming) till the end.
Please subscribe to this monthly newsletter if you would like to stay updated with my progress and activities each month. Until then, Au revoir!