Ismail told me I should write a year-in-review post, so here I am!
2022 was my best year yet. I learned and did so many things, so I will attempt to go over them here:
School
The biggest thing on my mind at the start of 2022 was school and college admissions. It is remarkable how ubiquitous the college admissions process is for smart high schoolers. I applied to a number of schools I would really like to go to and a few backups, and then proceeded to only get into my backup and its backup. Yeah, it wasn’t great, especially as all of my friends were opening their acceptance letters from their dream colleges. Going into the process, I knew mentally that college admissions were a horrible process that cared too much about arbitrary and useless metrics, but in the process of putting myself through it, I lost sight of that knowledge, especially since nobody else seemed to realize it.
That was the hardest thing for me to deal with for the first 6 months or so: that I had failed college admissions (at least by my standards). I had known that it was a big game, yet I hadn’t played it to the best of my abilities, and so I didn’t win. My friends who did play the game succeeded tremendously, and while I was happy for them, it still hurt.
If you’re in the college admissions process or about to start it, lol sucks to suck just remember that it’s a big stupid game, and if you don’t ruthlessly waste your time to win, you won’t, and that’s okay.
In contrast to my admissions failures, I was showered with successes back home in high school. I got a fancy award from the superintendent, during senior awards night, I dominated, I got to speak at graduation, and I received the Student of the Year award. It was a funny place to be in, where my administration loved me for whatever reason, yet I couldn’t convince a bunch of old farts in Massachusetts that I was worth their time.
I wasn’t only focused on admissions, though, I did have something of a life. I was on a DI (Destination Imagination) team with 4 other powerhouse students in my grade, and we had a competition in February. They had done their part in making costumes, a set, and writing a script, and my job was to build a rolling structure that could hold as much weight as possible. I waited until a bit too late to work on it, and while I built something that matched up to what I envisioned, it was not structurally sound, failing on the second weight test.
As a result of my failure, we got last place (still top 3 !) in our division. Even with this, we were invited to compete at the next level up, state, where I could build my structure correctly this time. My teammates unanimously (except for me) decided that they weren’t interested, and my structure remains unbuilt. It was a shame, but I learned a lot about working in a team like that, and I don’t plan to ever replicate my failure.
All of this is to say that it was a funny time, and it was both disheartening and uplifting in a strange way.
As I graduated, all of the reputation and credit that I had built up over the past 4 years at my high school vanished (although my legacy still lives on at that school for the time being), and I knew that unless I wanted to peak in high school, I had to dominate in college.
Let’s talk about the octopus in the room
I did do one more thing in high school before I left. Namely, I 3d printed over 5,000 little plastic octopus figures and hid them around the school. It was a monumental project, and one of the most fun things I’ve ever done. After it was all said and done, I made a video with my friend Will, inserted below for your viewing pleasure:
Why did I do this? It’s simple: my school’s spirit was awful. I knew that nobody else was gonna do anything special, so it was up to me to do something, anything. I was able to pull off the greatest senior prank in my school’s history (I can confidently say this because my class was only the second-ever graduating class from my high school and there was no senior prank the prior year). Even though the first-order effects were already well worth it, and it was a ton of fun to pull off, the trickle-down effects could be even stronger, as now the underclassmen have an example of what was done at their school, and a target for what they have to beat to become the best. I hope that the next generation of students can do even bigger, more creative pranks.
A quick aside on why I think this a good thing
The defining feature of humanity, as I see it, is the habit of taking what is given to them and making the best of it. To use a classic example, when the British put a ridiculous tax on tea in 1773, the American colonists didn’t just accept it, they dressed up in costumes and dumped that shit into the harbor. Humanity shines when it is allowed to be free and do great things. Society as of late has seemed to crush all of that, and the pandemic made it much worse.
People that dance around the rules as kids turn into innovators and makers. When their creative drive can run free, only then can they change the world (or whatever inspirational-sounding words you want to use). My school had very little of this. The administration worked around the clock, it seemed, to crush our spirits. For every idea I got them to allow to improve the student life and spirit at school, they rejected 5 more.
If these kids can go out and make a big, legendary prank, then that is the first step in reclaiming their humanity from the powers that be.
Quick aside over, back to the octopi
I’m going to be honest, it wasn’t just about wanting to help my school, it was also fun as hell. I had no rules beyond what I set for myself, and at any step of the process I could shoot myself in the floor and nothing would’ve ever happened. I messed up a few times, almost costing the project its life, and I learned a lot about adapting to changing circumstances as things didn’t go exactly as I planned.
Work
At the start of the year, I was finishing off my two-year stint at Chick-Fil-A, and it was fascinating to see how such a successful organization evolved and changed over my time there.
Wherein Michael complains about changes in his old job
It was very interesting to see the culture and expectations shift as my Chick-Fil-A grew and expanded. If you were to jump from the time about a year before I was hired to the present day, you might not recognize the place. I’m not sure if this example is generalizable, but I expect that it is. Here’s what happened:
When the store first opened up, the team was small and demand was high. The small team was very close-knit, and everyone was very good at their jobs. Team members (employees) would often double- or triple-task to keep the orders flowing. Only the best of the best team members were promoted to trainer, or if they were truly incredible, team leader. As time went on, more and more people were hired, multitasking was not always required, and so the new people lost the ability to do so. When the pandemic hit, resources were diverted away from the dining room into the drive-through, and more and more people were staffed to keep up with demand. With the increase in number, however, the productivity per team member dropped, as there was much less ownership of the work. With such a large team of people that all wanted to be promoted, the number of trainers and Team Leads spiked, with the truly powerful managers retreating up the promotion train to the Director titles. There were more team leaders when I was promoted to one than there were trainers when I was first hired, and the quality of each of them was noticeably less. When I was promoted, the trainers were practically a penny a pound, and being a trainer didn’t carry the same reverence or weight that it had previously.
When I go back to visit now, I see too many people on the clock, not doing their job and a much weaker culture. Let me be clear, though, this Chick-Fil-A is still well managed, it has just lost the closeness and charm that it once had.
Why does this matter? Well, as you will read later, I am starting my own organization, and if I don’t want it to collapse into this sort of thing, I need to actively fight it, which I definitely will.
End of Chick-Fil-A rant
During the whole end of senior year, I really wanted to make something with my skills that I could sell and make money off of. After a few misses, I eventually designed this James Webb Space Telescope-Inspired wall decoration, and they started selling like hotcakes. For a few weeks in January and February, I was making money hand over fist doing this, until the orders eventually slowed down. This somewhat impressed in me the realization that if I just keep trying stuff, eventually something has to stick and work, and I plan to keep doing this in the future.
After quitting Chick-Fil-A when I graduated, I found (read: nepotized) a job at a local machine shop. Nothing makes me want to get an education more than having to sit at a machine and press a few buttons every 15 minutes for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. While the work was soul-crushing, I was able to save up a bunch of money, and I had lots of time to listen to podcasts and audiobooks (and an audio-based defensive driving course).
I learned so much about machining from that job, that I am definitely glad that I have done it in the past, and it’s already come in handy quite a bit. At the end of the summer, I put in my two weeks and finished my job there.
A note about work ethic
Hired along with me for my summer job were two other guys, the cousin of one of my shop managers and his friend. They were awful workers. They would regularly screw around and watch basketball for hours at a time, or just wander around the warehouse aimlessly. Even when they had a clear job to do, they sucked at it. They just didn’t care. Now, I don’t claim to be some sort of wonder child when it comes to working, but anyone would look like Elon Musk when compared to these two guys. As the end of the summer neared, they were let go early, and not welcomed back. When I left, I was offered a job again if I every needed, and they asked if I could stay even longer.
All of this is not to say I’m amazing, it’s just to say that when you work hard and care about your work, people can tell, and you get a whole lot further than if you just laze about and try to go home.
Adventures
Right after I graduated and before I started my job at the machine shop, my parents took me on a great trip to Florida, primarily to see a Falon 9 launch (I like rockets). While we were in town, we also went ahead and stopped by this little park called Universal Studios, it was great. If you like rockets and have never had the pleasure of watching a live launch, I highly recommend it.
Around the same time, some friends and I went on a trip to Galveston, and it was a ton of fun. It was a nice little taste of adulthood, just being able to plan such a substantial trip and do it.
After I left my machine shop job, I went on a little trip, traveling up to and back from Grand Junction, Colorado for around $300. I took a bus, 3 planes, a train, and an Uber, and it was a ton of fun, especially as I got to catch up with some old friends. It’s surprising how cheaply you can travel if you are willing to spend a lot of time in layovers or on trains/buses. It’s also amazing how horrible it can be if you are having severe stomach pain throughout the entire travel process :D
Texas A&M
Here’s the juicy section. I didn’t mention it earlier, but I ended up going to Texas A&M University. Nothing says individuality like being one of 70,000 students. Despite my dislike for the school I was committed to, I was stuck there and I had plans. At this point, I really wanted to succeed. In my mind, there were two ways to do this:
The traditional success, the success that almost everyone is going for. I would work hard, get a good GPA, pad out my resume with extracurriculars, make connections, work hard, and, by the time I graduated in 4 years, I would have an easy ticket to any master’s program I wanted (as long as I didn’t screw up the application process again), where I would repeat the process and eventually get a great job at a fancy rocket company.
Disregard school beyond just keeping my GPA up to keep my scholarships, find an amazing idea and some like-minded people, and start a company. Drop out (if my mom reads this, this part is a joke) once I become a millionaire and keep building cool things.
Now, I’ve always had a preference for doing things in the lane of #2, but that didn’t help me get into college, and I couldn’t see anyone around me that seemed to be on the same page as me, so all I had left was #1. The shame and humiliation from the whole college admissions hijinks propelled me, and I was determined to become the golden child of the program by the time I graduated. As the weeks turned into months, I settled into a rhythm, making friends and thinking about what minor I wanted to get to pad out my resume even more. I joined a service organization, a rocket team, and a caving club, and I felt like the rest of the year was gonna be pretty predictable.
The rest of the year was not predictable
And then this random guy walked into my room in the middle of the night and told me about how he was building a rocket engine, and how he wanted to build a makerspace.
Once I got past my skepticism, Ismail showed me (and my friend Matthew) his rocket and invited us to join his loose club of, as he called it, “interesting people.” From there, everything went insane. I started pulling late nights working on the rocket engine, and we were lined up to do a test fire by the end of the year, but that wasn’t what was in store for us, evidently.
To make a long story short, Ismail managed to raise a hefty chunk of change in donations, more than enough to get his (and quickly also my) makerspace dream off the ground. Like rapid fire, we started looking for a place to start the makerspace, we came up with a name, and we started to build this idea out. On December 7, 2022, Starforge Foundry was born. As the board of directors, we had me, Ismail, and Matthew. The rest of the semester was a flurry of building out a 20x20 storage container into the world’s first (as far as we know) storage unit makerspace, at least while we looked for a bigger place to expand into. We called this very first area spaceZero, and it was (and still is) beautiful.
As finals week rolled in and out, we all headed back to our respective homes, far away from our beloved spaceZero and the future prospect of spaceOne, and we had time to think, reflect, and get even more excited about the future.
So what did I learn this year?
The biggest thing I learned this year was that there’s nobody stopping me from doing what I want to do (except the government, sometimes), and there’s nobody stopping anyone else from doing what they want, either. When I decided that I wanted to hide 5,000 octopi around the school, I did it. When I wanted to fly to Colorado, I did it. When we wanted to open a makerspace, we just did it. I found some amazing people and an extraordinary community that keeps me excited for the future.
I also learned that college admissions are horrible and bad, and they aren’t a good measure of what they’re supposed to be measuring.
What’s next?
2023 is the year of the maker and the builder. We have enough funds to run the makerspace comfortably for a good portion of the coming year, and everything after that is a mystery. I will not let this project die. If you want to keep up with the progress of our makerspace, I’ve been uploading impromptu vlogs to our YouTube Channel.
Specific goals:
By July, I want Starforge Foundry to be cashflow positive, even if only barely so.
By the end of the year, I want to expand Starforge Foundry to at least 5,000 square feet.
If SFF fails and dies, I want to have a different large project that I’m working on by the end of the year.
I want to spend my summer doing something worthwhile
By the end of the year, I want to have a money-making venture that is making me at least {redacted} dollars per month.
Maintain my 4.0 GPA (don’t wanna lose my scholarships)
2022 has been the best year of my life, and I believe that 2023 can be even better.
I had the same experience with college admissions! I personally think you're in a much more unique place than MIT :)