Carrying a Chip

These last few weeks I've been extremely frustrated with the state of the world. It feels like every day there is something new & I just haven't been able to figure out the right way to explain how I'm feeling… which has thus made it worse. Today, it came to me while I was on a walk. I passed the pier where all of the Alcatraz tour boats depart out of & saw a picture of Al Capone.

Now, to make my point & tell this story, it's going to be a journey that you have to go on with me. You'll get to see a bit of the way my mind works & threads things together along the way.

So I thought of Al Capone. When I was younger, I had to read the book Al Capone Does My Shirts for school, probably in elementary school. I was so fascinated with Alcatraz after that. My dad also had this same fascination so we'd watch movies & shows on it. I even did a fifth grade project & presented to the class on Alcatraz.

Somehow the topic got brought up with my nana, on my mom's side, & she told me that my great grandpa used to cut Al Capone's hair. Back then, my great grandpa owned a barbershop in Madison, WI, right off of State St., near where the Plaza Tavern is. Al Capone & his friends would vacation in Wisconsin & my great grandpa would get blindfolded & taken to cut their hair.

It's funny because now I get to look out & see Alcatraz every day from the top of my street.

My entire mom's side of the family grew up in Madison, WI & a good chunk of the family went to UW Madison. As a kid, my nana still lived in the house that my mom grew up in so we would visit a lot. It felt like Madison was my second hometown since we would spend so many weekends up there. My nana had season tickets to the Badgers football games so I'd go see a game at Camp Randall every year. I had loads of Badger gear.

So fast forward to my senior year of high school when I am applying for colleges… I obviously had been set on going to UW for as long as I can remember. I knew I wanted to go into the engineering program. I decided I needed a back up school & my family friend had just gone off to the University of Iowa. Kayla & I went to go visit one weekend & we had a blast. You can imagine… two college seniors going to visit a Big Ten school… we certainly left feeling like we'd just seen a whole new world. I decided that would be my backup school.

I applied to Wisconsin's computer engineering program & I wrote a college essay, that in hindsight was so me to write. In it I had written about the day I knew I wanted to go to the University of Wisconsin. My great uncle Glenn had gone to UW & majored in chemical engineering. He is like another grandparent to me. He has loved the burger at the Plaza Tavern, the Plazaburger. The Plaza Tavern, I referenced before, because it was near the barber shop my great grandpa had owned. It opened in 1930, while the Prohibition was still in effect. So this day, Glenn had taken me on his tour of UW. I had to have been anywhere from 7 to 10 years old at the time. The Plaza Tavern was obviously included on this stop. In the Plaza, there was this old phone booth that still worked. I had decided in that moment that I wanted to go there. Let's be real, I was being primed for this my whole life so it definitely wasn't just that moment, but it's the moment I went into the phone booth, with the quarters Glenn gave me & I had called my parents to declare I wanted to go there.

Now, when I applied to UW, I thought I had it in the bag. I had gotten good grades my whole life, did every single math & physics AP class you could think of. I was in extracurriculars. I got a good ACT score. BUT I got the email that I got waitlisted. I knew it was not a high likelihood to get off the waitlist… so you can imagine that 17 year old me was a bit heartbroken. My ego had really taken a blow on this one too. I had been telling people since I was a kid that I wanted to go there… so what now?

So now, my plan was to go to the University of Iowa. I didn't really have an interest in looking at any other schools.

But the thing is, 17 year old me actually felt more on the college campus tour of Iowa than I did at Wisconsin. I had spent so much time in Madison over the years, I had heard the stories of all the people before me at that school. It felt like, there wasn't space for me to make my own new memories there because everyone in my life showed me the best possible version of what it was. I got to go to Camp Randall for years & sit right next to the student section. I got to spend time at the Union on summer evenings. I got to eat Babcock Ice Cream growing up. I got to go to the Farmer's Market near the Capitol. I got to experience it. Had I gone there, it would've been in the shadow of my family & it would have been a much tougher route. I would've been in more student loan debt leaving college. Their engineering program is cut throat, whereas Iowa was not that way. It was actually a very inviting engineering program.

So I went to Iowa. I was at a wedding for my friend Kevin this past October in Tiburon. He is the only friend I knew from Iowa that also moved out to the Bay after graduation. I was there, surrounded by friends from college, & I thought… could you imagine if I didn't go to Iowa? I met so many great people, that I'm still friends with today, & I had such a fun experience. I was able to make my own new memories. My family got to come visit & they saw new experiences & a new college campus. Plus every year, it made for a great tradition of the Iowa vs Wisconsin football game.

But needless to say, this all did bruise my ego. I still felt rejected & not good enough. I'll never know why I didn't get into Wisconsin & there are so many factors outside of me that are in play for those decisions. I do know that it feels right that that happened. & it gave me a fucking chip on my shoulder for the next 4 years. Every time I thought of it, I was a little pissed off & it felt like I had something to prove (maybe to myself). That chip came into play as I was interning. It came into play with applying for jobs. I knew that I wanted to end up in San Francisco after college & I was going to make that happen, despite not going to Wisconsin.

This is when I learned, that I do my best work when I have a slight chip on my shoulder. It allows me to take something that triggered me & do something with it instead of sulk about it. It allows me to be productive with the shitty things in life so I don't get stuck in it.

That's how I feel about the current state of the world. When I check Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn & I see all of the shit that is going on… it hits that trigger point for me. It makes me frustrated & angry. I am baffled at what is happening with ICE & our current administration. I am baffled at how the tech industry has disregarded the human experience & has been so reckless with AI. What has this all given me? A fucking chip on my shoulder. The most productive thing for me to do is to take that energy & let it fuel me. I let it drive me to use my unique set of skills & use them the best way I fucking can to build something that I think would make our current reality a better place.

I can't control what's happening in Washington. I can't control ICE raids or tech companies building AI without regard for the human experience. But I can control what I do with this chip on my shoulder.