Initiate 48 Reflections: Rodger Liang
Initiate 48 Reflections is a series written by our Alumni — we follow them as they reflect on their experience & takeaways from attending our weekend program.
I’ll admit, I’m a horrible student.
About a year ago, I was happy, but I wasn’t satisfied with my life. It was difficult to explain why.
Despite attending an academically selective high school, I’d often daydream in class — more than once I would be reading about the world on my computer, filtering through pieces of information on the state of the politics, or the nature of economy — pieces like the financial recessions and booms would always pull at my imagination. These small acts of imagination fuelled my passion for experiencing the “real” world so many of my teachers told me I would one day enter. I will be the first to admit that school wasn’t the best place for me. School was either too easy or too hard — learning in the classroom was effectively reduced to teachers telling us to do the work — practice makes perfect, after all.
To be honest, I didn’t understand why at the time. I just didn’t know what I was doing.
I just did what others expected me to do. I went to school, worked hard, and slept. Going on autopilot, working through worksheets, creating more PowerPoints than I expected (and wanted to) and of course refilling the printer every time it ran out of ink.
Despite being a horrible student, I’m not a horrible learner.
There’s an odd sort of fascination with the idea of educating yourself. A lot of people yearn to learn — and there is an incredible drive to learn something unique, and something new. School is a difficult place to explore your passions, because the school system is still static — made for people heading out to the workforce, made for people to excel at the repetitive, the hard work that needs to get done.
Maybe it would be for the best, if the world wasn’t changing so drastically. Everyday hearing constantly about the miraculous advances in technology, how the world I knew would become increasingly connected, and how 75% of the jobs in the future won’t even exist today and the “gig” economy where a “9 to 5” job my parents had would disappear.
The students of our high schools today would need to change with the times, and only then will we be able to face the future head on. We need to develop skills to adapt to this ever-approaching future, and we need them fast.
At Initiate 48, you’re not simply building solutions, you become an agent of change. You go back to your classroom, your school, your life, and you think and act differently. Initiate 48 creates a community of people who have mindsets driven by innovation and growth. People learn to keep learning and to embrace change. In a time where technology and planning for the future is rough, we need more than ever, the urge to get up and do something different from everyone else.
The most important aspect I will take away from Initiate 48 is that numbers and exam scores don’t matter or define who I am as a person — our passions and our determination to do good in this world do.
-Rodger, 16
