I sent rejection letters to potential teachers/mentors. And why you should too.

What did the Wall Street anthropologist, the professor who taught executive business classes to Fortune 500 companies, and the director of a research center have in common? I did not want either one of them to teach me anything.

Don’t get me wrong these were HUGELY accomplished people who had so much talent to their name. But after the first meeting with each of them, I knew that we weren’t a good fit for each other. One was someone who played things too safe; loved rules and timelines and told me I should attend 10 years of school before I even THINK of starting a company/going out in the real world. Another told me I should not pursue entrepreneurship because it’s too risky to do that in college, and another was a little too egoistic for my taste. Last thing I wanted was to have any of these traits in my personality, so I made mental rejection letters and sent it to them. (Actually I just thanked them for their time and said thank you but no thank you).

Teachers are probably the most important people in your personal and professional development after your parents. And while we cannot choose who our parents are, we can, to an extent choose who our teachers are. So when we have a choice to be taught by whomever we want, I think it’ll be nice to choose wisely.

Okay enough cynicism.

One of the best ways my extrovert nature has served me is when I invited myself to lunch with a man in his 50s and 2 other students. Kind but mischievous eyes, sandy blonde hair that blended into grey tied in a ponytail, French beard, and a very charismatic chill personality. I just remember asking him “Where is the crazy China where all the innovation is happening?” but I don’t really remember what he said after that. It’s hard to remember it all because we talked for about 3 hours, and I was not taking notes.

This wasn’t a one-of-a-kind conversation. This person, despite not being a professor, became one of the most important teachers I had at DKU. The image on the right is a lesson he drilled in my brain.

We would talk for 3 to 4 hours - on average. Conversations would go from business, ethics, culture, venn diagrams, computational design, knowledge networking, mapping civilizations, understanding human behavior, understanding our own emotions, morality, innovation, great people, great ideas, stupid ideas, dumb ideas, physics, gaming (this one flew over my head lol), music, minimalism - everything. If I learnt nothing at DKU, and failed all my classes and never graduated, but had more learnings with this person and the others I will write about, I’d still have won at life.

Not all of my teachers were adults; some were my age. A very dear friend from Zimbabwe taught me about life and its hard hard realities. Money, time, prioritizing, and having terribly uncomfortable conversations with myself on why I am interested in doing what I think I’m interested in. (Do you guys know how hard it is to realize you don’t really want something rather you’re just jealous of your peers so you think you should be pursuing it? Ugh that was a tough one.) Another one made me unlearn everything I knew about intelligence and made me reevaluate how I looked at people. He taught me that life is a journey, that most intelligences can be learnt, and the importance of having genuine people around me. Most importantly though, he taught me the most about myself and what I want in life. This all takes me to how I really am just a culmination of the people I have met overtime: the kindness and empathy in me is learnt from my best friend in Pakistan. Another one from Belgium made me feel like it’s okay and even awesome to be unapologetically ambitious as long as I’m humble too. (I CAN be a businesswoman and a kind hearted humble non problematic person. Comment yes to affirm)

Enough about friends now. They really deserve a separate blog <3

Back to adult teachers. Not all of the teachers I cherish were those who uplifted me and made me confident in my abilities. One actually had me in perpetual crisis. He was so brutally honest about how much my idea sucked. And hearing that hurt. So much. I cried in front of my mom and my brother about it. Ranted to my friends about it, but I couldn’t get his logic out of my head. This 65 year old man who was accomplished in the field I was jumping into really really made me think about the value of a good idea. Thanks to him, I stepped out of a “meh” industry to a “wow that’s really sexy” industry (fintech). It was growing pains but the growth was good.

This little story time serves a purpose. Please don’t take “choosing your teachers” as surrounding yourself with people who make you feel good about yourself. Support is important, but flattery is a poison. You might as well hug a king cobra at this point.
But if you know your potential, or if you have a drive to go above and beyond, then please be very intentional with people you choose. Especially people who have an ability to influence you. They should be better than you, ideally more accomplished than you, and should mildly terrify you with how honest they are.

You’re a canvas but there are many artists that will paint you. Sure some of it you will paint yourself, but a lot of it will be others around you. What kind of a painting would you wanna be?

Most of my learnings were at restaurants. Here’s somewhere I’d really wanna go sometime. What a vibe.