What Should I Do With Mine?

Editor’s Note: This is a series of letters between Claire Diaz-Ortiz and her foster son Samuel Gachagua about mentorship, the value of college and how to make big life decisions.

Hey Samuel,

What should you do with your life?

Can we start with an easier question?

When you graduated from high school, you and I were both on the same page that spending a year volunteering in South America would be a great way to expand your worldview. Given your childhood, and the ways that you had been helped by development and aid, the chance for you to volunteer in an underprivileged community was bound to be a powerful experience.

It would also better prepare you for university, we thought. And so, when it came time to pack up your bags and leave Ecuador, I envisioned a small dorm room with an annoying roommate, professors who cared, and midnight discussions about life. I envisioned pizza boxes in the cramped dorm hallways. I wanted you to do the work of school to help prepare you to carry out the work of your heart.

I told you then, and I’ll tell you now: A college degree isn’t for everyone. That said, I do believe that a university degree can be one of the best choices out there for kids who haven’t been born with many privileges. And you haven’t, Sammy, you haven’t.

People say it’s just a piece of paper. And it is, in part. But it’s an important piece of paper. It’s also a wealth of knowledge. It’s a contact list. And a place filled with mentors to help you figure out who you want to be.

But you wanted to go back home to Kenya, and you wanted to volunteer again, this time working on the ground with a small nonprofit. And so you did.

You had a big role, and big responsibilities, and you worked harder than you ever had before. I marveled at it all. My freshman year at Stanford, sunbathing under palm trees as I pretended to do my homework didn’t really hold a candle to your international jaunts to development conferences in London.

But I was still scared. I told you I thought that in order for you to make the impact you really dreamed of making, you would benefit from a university education.

When you decided a year later that it was time for university, I breathed a parental sigh of relief.

That’s when I realized something important: I had been wrong.

You were right, Sammy. You needed that extra year. That year of digging deep into the thick of things, learning about the highs and lows of nonprofit work, and what it means to care deeply about a cause and the people who are affected by it.

I marveled at you, and at your ability to know your heart.

It’s a big thing to know your heart in this world, and since I left Twitter, I’ve been working hard to figure out mine. I know I want to continue to help startups, and to continue to have a foot in the social impact space, and to write books, and yet I’m not quite sure how to best combine those three things into something that works for me and the life I want.

So, all this to say, I believe that you know better than anyone else in this world what you should do with your life.

Claire

P.S. What should I do with mine?

The Life Well Lived section is sponsored by The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America.