“Dirt is good for the gut,” my dad announces at dinner, munching on a suspiciously crunchy leaf of garden-grown lettuce. He credits his physical constitution to the large amounts of soil he ate as a toddler; he grew up predominantly in my grandmother’s garden. 

“My playpen was made out of barbed wire,” he sometimes jokes.

My father is a child of the endless cornfields of northern Illinois. As an adult he relocated to Madison, Wisconsin to work with computers. Now he has retired to a hobby farm about 30 minutes outside of the city. He’s become good friends with his next-door neighbor, Gene.

After supper, the three of us meet at the barbed wire fence where Gene’s herd crosses over to graze in my dad’s pasture. My family gets 250 pounds of beef per year in exchange, it’s a good deal. 

Gene, too, is a child of the rolling cornfields. He’s about as strapping as a 79-year-old can possibly be, and he’s been on farms all of his life. He’s tumbled around this Oak savanna since he was shorter than the raspberry bushes he loves to grow. The energetic smallholder continues to pay homage to Wisconsin’s bounty with his 17 acres of corn and 14 beef cows.

They grumble about the rain (too much or too little), talk about the merits of pasture-raised cattle, complain about how their tomatoes were bitten by this year’s late May frost.

As retirees, though, their work is not toil; all exertion is completely voluntary. With more time than ever they both enjoy simply sitting on their land. My dad sometimes lies on the grass next to the chicken coop as the hens curiously wander over. 

Our young and our old seem to have a peculiar affinity for the earth, and interfacing with the dirt becomes more interesting to us at both ends of life. In Wisconsin, the soil, the neighbors, and the hens make for good company. 

When I graduate college in a little over two weeks, it will be without much nostalgia and with a great sigh of relief. The cost of attending an institution of such stature as the University of Minnesota is not just approx. $12,000 per year, but it also includes the punitive damage of ~18 months of Seasonal Affective Disorder, ~128 hours of angsty phone calls to my parents, and an unquantifiable amount of existential angst-although the existential angst might have happened with or without the degree.

First, I’d like to address the soapbox I’m standing on. To quote my incredible and ineffable dad, “I hope my blathering doesn’t just become something to smile and nod to.” I absolutely recognize that I’m 21 years old and this makes me uniquely qualified to be horrible at giving life advice. In fact, I think that one of the only distinctions between me and my freshman self is that I know I don’t know anything.

That being said, I definitely learned something in college, but I have to be honest in saying that, academically, I learned much less than I anticipated. I thought I would come out of four years with a fundamental understanding of business, which as a whole is a much larger subject than I once thought. I think if I would have focused on my studies more, I would have acquired more tangible knowledge, but I also believe that I learned a much broader skillset because I didn’t focus on class above everything else. My job waiting tables, my study abroad experience in Spain, and my passion and leadership on the cycling team are all examples for this. Cycling taught me how to be tough, Spain taught me to take risks, waiting tables taught me how to be social, confident, and how to read people.

To Business School Students: the value of a business education is not primarily in the classes, but in the peripheral, opt in programs. If I had to live my life over again, I would have participated in more experiential learning like the Carlson Enterprises (Consulting, Branding, Ventures, and Funds), which allow you to apply and learn in a much more autonomous and practical setting. Autonom ou can only learn so much with an authority figure and a notebook, whiteboard, or excel file. Take advantage, in the same way that you should go to class to maximize your dollars per hour, apply and take part in these programs.

As far as philosophical advice, I have a few ideas that I’m still developing within myself and are for me as much as for anyone younger than me who’s reading this-but at the minimum, I wish someone would have told me this (and made sure I understood it) when I was 18, or 19, or 20, or even last summer.

1. On Quitting

Don’t weigh quitting against staying, weigh staying against alternative opportunities. Weighing alternatives denies the opportunity to be brazenly optimistic and allows you to be entirely realistic. For instance, last summer I stayed at a job that I hated for about 3 months longer than you should have-to what ends? Quit decisively when a better opportunity presents itself. Quit strategically when there is a better opportunity. Quit unsentimentally so as to move forward with your life. Risk must be met with reward. Don’t do stupid things for the thrill. Do stupid things because often, there’s much to be gained from doing stupid things.

2. On Experimentation

“Risk is the tariff payed to leave the shores of predictable misery.” – John Folse

Experimentation is key to living a good life. Doing the same thing over and over causes stagnation. It’s unproductive. Weigh the worst outcome against the best one. If the worst case scenario is realized, usually you can go back to wherever you were in the first place. Don’t be afraid to take a risk. Play around with systems, work, organizations, and relationships. You’ll be better off for it.

3. On Trying

Try hard. Commit to things. Don’t complain too much. You contain a great amount of power, remember to use it. You control your life. Try to accept most of the blame and most of the responsibility.

4. On happiness

I think living in Spain was one of the happiest times of my life-for me, the question now is, what can I do to replicate that, wherever I am and whatever I do? I think the takeaway from my trip is that we must separate the wheat from the chaff: I watched Netflix in Spain, a lot, but I don’t think that made me happy. There’s still a lesson in that: relaxation is important!

Other aspects of Spain that probably made me happy: frequently talking to my family, interacting with strangers, making friends with new people, drinking cerveza on beautiful terraces. Weekday socialization, living with a family, routine, structure, weekly travel. Escaping my comfort zone. Making sure to not take things for granted. Understanding impermanence. Quiet reflection. Learning a new language.

So maybe the ultimate takeaway is that you control your own happiness, in multiple senses. First, you control your happiness in what you do. We, on a day to day basis, can fundamentally control what we want to do with our lives. We choose our path, we choose who we want to share our happiness with. We can choose to take the path of goodness in our life. We can choose the balance that we want.

Simultaneously we control our happiness on a more cerebral level, a mindfulness to how we react to our emotions. I’ve begun to learn, finally (after being told this time and time again by my mother) that I can control how I feel-it’s been enlightening. I CAN CONTROL HOW I FEEL! This is something that you must learn, discover, decide for yourself, but it’s vitally important. Whatever your situation, you can stabilize your emotions. I believe that psychonormative and neurodiverse people both can use this to their benefit: how you frame things matters. Things matter.

In a third sense, you cannot depend on others or the guidance of others for your happiness. You will not be happy or successful following the path that others lay down for you, you must find it for yourself. This includes your parents, your peers, your significant other. You are you, you are inherently unique and special, and you have value. This value gives you ability to choose your own direction. Recognize this in yourself. Keep hope, continue to spread the light. There are people that depend on you. Humanity depends on you.

As for me, I deeply hope I can hold these lessons true, continue to live by them, continue to build on them. I also know that I’m human, I’m fallible, and that tough times lie ahead. But I am me, I am unique, I am special, and I control my fate.

As for the future, I plan on waiting tables for the next couple of months to stockpile some money before I travel the American south with my dad to find the perfect peach. Afterwards I’ll travel to Costa Rica with my incredible girlfriend, Liza. From there I’ll fly to Puerto Rico to spend more time in the sun (important!), create a new life, work in the thriving entrepreneurial community there, and hopefully start my own business. Liza will be spending Spring 2020 in Puerto Rico studying at a University there.

I am, among all people, most richly blessed.