Flash back to 9th grade history class. The teacher passed out an assignment, some sort of research and essay stuff. But there was a catch – students in the class had a choice to do a second assignment instead. The second one involved completing a longer reading, and writing a lengthier, more complex essay. This alternate assignment was mandatory for any student who wanted to apply for AP World History the following year.
So 14 year old me looked at the teacher and said (in my head of course), “so let me get this straight. You’re giving me homework, and then you’re saying I have the opportunity to volunteer to do even more homework. Are you freakin’ crazy?”
I didn’t like homework very much, so I opted for the first assignment and never looked back. I certainly worked in high school, but I wasn’t up until 2am every night writing papers nor was I struggling through advanced calculus. I took the normal classes (plus 2 AP’s and college level Spanish) and excelled.
Everything in high school and beyond is about trade-offs and opportunity costs. I chose to not pursue an excessively rigorous courseload in part so I could have more free time outside of school. And when I was 14, I used that free time to start my first business, Armonk Computer Solutions.
Over the next 4 years, while many of my peers were sweating through AP Euro, I was learning the fundamentals of customer service, marketing, accounting and technology. I learned how to talk to people and how to sell. This wasn’t coming from a book – it was real world, first hand experience.
The bottom line here is about passions. I wasn’t passionate about any of the subjects offered in AP. To this day, I still believe that I got more value out of starting a company than I would have gotten spending my afternoons outlining an AP biology textbook.