Who are you? Who am I? | Week 8

February | Early Years | Week 8 | 2/26/2023

Talk about your high school years 

In retirement investing philosophy, the most propagated formula is the one with the lowest P Value for future success. Sure there are get-rich-quick schemes, inheritance maneuvers, entrepreneurial delusions of grandeur, and a dozen ways to serendipitously wind up at the end with a pile of cash. However, for the laymen, the guy who gets a job, has a family, and wants to retire at 65, there's a strategy which works. In this philosophy there's commonly three stages identified throughout a lifetime, the Accumulation stage, the Preparation stage, and the Retirement stage. The accumulation stage is important due to the time value of money. The preparation stage is important due to the exponential growth in deposit size. And the retirement stage is important due to the withdrawal timetable. For those individuals who wanted to succeed along the normative trajectory, high school was an analogous microcosm for this investment philosophy - whereby the "end" is college.

In Freshman and Sophomore year, you have a disproportionately long accumulation stage, where your main objective is to just not mess up - don't get failing grades, take a solid schedule of classes, join a few clubs and sports teams. Junior year is the preparation stage, typically the longest stage of the investment lifecycle, packed into a singular year. This is the year where the top performers are separated from the rest. How many AP, IB, AICE tests can you take? How many clubs can you become an Exec in, how many sports team can you become the MVP or captain? How many colleges can you apply to, get letters of recommendation for, and be competitively considered? The deposits here are huge, but the timetable is short. Finally, there's Senior year, the retirement stage, where you start to cash in on the discipline and consistency that you spent the first 3 years focused on. This is the year of house parties, attending sporting events, taking the gas pedal off school and spending more time with friends. Not everyone follows this trajectory, in fact, there's massive deviation, and this makes High School interesting. Let me identify a few deviating archetypes. 

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[1] Bullish on Fun | The bullish on fun archetype is your social butterfly. These are people who over index on fun throughout the duration of high school. This is the guy or girl who is at all the parties, who hangs out in the courtyard the longest, who is last to bed, last to class, first to date and first to tailgate. They'll reference High School as the Golden Years. 

[2] Bearish on Fun | The bearish on fun archetype is your introvert, someone who over indexes on 1-2 friends. These folks typically read or go on their phone in the courtyard. They're not using time outside of school very efficiently, playing sports or studying hard, they probably play video games and have a job outside school in a pizza parlor. They "can't wait to leave", but don't do much to advance their cause. 

[3] Bullish on Sports | The bullish on sports crowd are your aspiring college athletes. They commit to a single sport, spend the majority of their time in school thinking about said sport, as well as the majority of time outside of school playing said sport. Their friend group is their teammates. Weekends are spent in the gym or on the field. This group has their head on the next phase in life - God forbid it doesn't work out.

[4] Bullish on Academics | The bullish on academics group are a hodgepodge of aspiring doctors and scientists, snobby nerds who don't interact well with society, and anal-retentive, half-committed athletes with helicopter parents. These individuals had 4.95 GPAs and competed for the top 5 spots in class ranking. They had visions of ivy league acceptances and satisfying the chip on their shoulder by becoming part of a hypothetical in-group, which beats out the in-group that they never were accepted into growing up.

[5] Bearish on Normal | The bearish on normal folks are the people that you end up seeing 10 years later on TV, where you say to your friend, "oh shit I remember him!" These are the kids you had in your class, that were maybe slightly odd but interesting nonetheless. You felt that they slid under the radar, but that they were good at something unknown to you. These are the musicians who wind up in a touring band, the comedians who wind up in LA, the pianists, the dancers, the performers. These are the ones that you reference at the office when you're trying to flex, "I grew up with her..." These folks didn't know they'd be great at something one day, but they over-indexed on a thing, in case they got their lucky break. So High School was just another string of years practicing until they mastered their craft. 

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Looking back to see where I fit in, I mostly followed the normative path, but had elements of the above 5 archetypes. My experience was dynamic and it's hard to define. Here are some examples of why.

 

A. I was in an advanced program, AICE, where I took the hardest classes available to me, because I was competitive. I started high school as a snobby nerd who was judgmental and wanted to be an economist or politician. I finished high school extraordinarily open minded, wanting to be a physician. My GPA was 4.75 and I was 7th in my class. 

B. Despite the academic rigor aforementioned, I didn't quite fit into archetype 4, because I was the youngest male swimmer at States as a freshman. I was captain Junior and Senior year. And I remained skilled enough at soccer to play with the guys on the team in the summers. I debated a swimming scholarship but my health got in the way. But I was good enough to go, and therefore dipped into archetype 3. 

C. In high school, I had a girlfriend at 16, and another at 18. I had a job 3/4 years, I played some video games, and attended one too many house parties. At certain points, one could classify me as archetypes 1 or 2. The first two years, I spent the majority of time with the same 2 guys, writing case briefs for a club we formed. The second two years, I spent my time with the cool kids, in houses and parking lots, up to no good. 

D. And as if all that wasn't confusing enough, I was the guy who binged Anime behind closed doors, played guitar until my fingers calloused over, and fixed up '98 Hondas in garages with my friends. I was solving Rubix cube's for time and watching sci-fi shows. There was a strong case to be made that I was bearish on normal. 

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My brother Connor and I always say, if life was a Nintendo game, we'd aim to be Mario. Let me explain. If you looked at the skill distribution of the main characters, Bowser had maxed-out strength, but his speed and agility were low. Toad had no strength but high speed and agility. Wario had some strength and speed but no agility. And so on and so forth. 
Mario had equal stats. He was the most well-rounded and therefore it was up to the player's skillset to win with him. You had a fighting chance if you had strategy, intuition, and adaptability. We like those odds. We want to be Mario - academic and athletic enough to compete with the best of them, concentrated on hobbies with enough rigor to be considered somewhat of a master or subject matter expert, social but not to a fault, and able to exist in many worlds simultaneously. This optimizes the potential for an interesting life and allows for a fighting chance in many arenas: a player's game, and one that we can play until we're old. My high school years were the years I discovered this, but couldn't yet articulate it. I'm grateful I did.