USAP Forum 2012: "Entering the realm of innovation"
By Nancy Kasvosve, University of Chicago '11
The real world is overrated!
This is my first thought everyday when my alarm goes off in the morning. They never tell you this at graduation. They give you your degree and you walk down that stage all beaming about how the nightmare is over. I mean coming from a school like UChicago, just breathing in itself was torturous at times. A few months down the line, it all gets "real". The waking up at 5 o'clock everyday, the 14 hour days, deadlines, bosses, business casual (yes dressing up everyday becomes unfun after a few months) and all that exhaustion of finally being in the "real" world. My alarm goes off again and I go through one last bit of my morning ritual.
I close my eyes real tight and try to think of a brilliant idea. One that will not require me to get out of bed. One that will make me millions instantly. My alarm goes off again and this time I do not hit the snooze button. Corporate America is calling. I drag my idealess self out of bed and go to my bathroom and start brushing my teeth.
How the hell did Mark Zuckerberg do it?
I am sure I am not the one to whom this question occurs every other day. This year the USAP Forum to be hosted at the University of Chicago endeavors to explore this question in depth. The question of how ideas are birthed (in your bed if I could ever come up with one in mine), as you brush your teeth in front of your mirror, sitting in that boring lecture or on the subway. But how do they escape the confines of your head and start crawling, eventually walk and mature into a force of change?
For a group of talented and dynamic individuals, entrepreneurship is an untapped potential career pathway at the very heart of the USAP community. This year the USAP Forum will highlight our success stories in various unique undertakings in this realm and inspire the creation and sharing of new ones. We want to especially address today's endless opportunities for new exciting ventures and possibilities for positive change through non conventional lines of work, such as business, non-profit and technological start-ups. This year's forum is keeping with our tradition of looking into the future and finding new creative ways in which the USAP community can positively impact it by transforming knowledge into practice.
What more rightful and inspiring stage to explore this question than the University of Chicago. Founded in 1892 by John D. Rockefeller, the University of Chicago's contribution to the growth of various disciplines in the 20th century onwards is unparalleled. The university was once home to 87 brilliant minds, at different point of their career, including the 44th president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, that the Nobel Committee honored for changing the world in one way or the other in economics, law biological sciences, physical sciences and other disciplines. Prestigious organizations such as the Pulitzer Prize, National Medal of Science, the Grammys and MacArthur "genius" Foundation have also honored University of Chicago faculty in the past few years.
The first self sustaining nuclear reaction on American soil is credited to a University of Chicago researcher and 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics recipient Enrico Fermi. It was at the University of Chicago that the charge carried by an electron was determined using the elegant "falling drop method" by 1923 Nobel Prize in Physics recipient Robert Millikan. James Watson once walked the University of Chicago quads as a student in zoology before winning the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for deciphering the structure of DNA with Francis Crick. Instead of just asking how did Gary Becker do it, University of Chicago students have the privilege of going and knocking on the door of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient and asking him in person the intricacies of his his theory on human capital and the utility maximizing tendency of individuals.
The University of Chicago is an institution that is grounded in the tradition of asking tough questions of the world around us and pursuing knowledge with rigor because of a belief in the transformative power of ideas. We are pleased to share our space with a group of talented individuals as represented by the United States Student Achievers Program and hope that you will be "Aspire to be Inspired," to achieve your full potential and scale the heights of innovation into the future.
Every USAPer is not only a cut above the rest, but a cut among the best!