paris mitton

Dealing with Failure After a College Admissions Disaster

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 12:31:19 +0000

Hey, my name is Paris Mitton. I’m 19 years old and a software engineer. Just a few months ago, I was very certain I would not be a software engineer within the decade – I was my school’s valedictorian, had perfect grades, and applications out to the most prestigious universities in America. What happened next was a complete disaster. I had to struggle to figure out, with weeks until graduation, how to go from almost 0 job experience to a software engineer. I suggest you read the story of what happened and how I got here before you read the rest of this post.

Dealing with failure is hard. Really hard. If we always learned from our mistakes, we’d have life figured out by retirement age, and very few of us will ever have life figured out, period. We’ve built all these little lessons and sayings in our culture about failure and how to handle it, but we do a really bad job applying any of it. Many of us ignore it when we encounter it, and we do nothing to actually expose our kids to what failure is in the real world. I found that out the hard way.

When I finally landed at FullContact, there was definitely a sigh of relief. I was exactly where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do. But in exchange, the stress in the months between my graduation and my employment has doubtlessly shortened my lifespan. What happened was clearly a failure on a lot of levels – one that ended up being positive, but never the less, a gigantic mess and learning experience. I want to share some of what I learned in a way that I hope is fairly universal (although the rant for soon-to-be college students is coming, have no doubt).

Never play the victim.

This isn’t new information. Nobody suggests that you should play the victim. But neither do we spend enough time talking about how victimizing yourself isn’t just obnoxious, it will poison your life. It is too easy to be a victim, and too easy to stay a victim.

I don’t blame people for wanting to offload blame. Coming out of high school as valedictorian but no college prospects, it’s very easy to find somebody else at fault. It was my parents for leaving me uninformed. It was my counselor for letting me go without a safety school. It was the colleges for ignoring my talent and feeding lies about their acceptance criteria and costs to kids. No, it was society for believing so blindly in a broken system! I went along like this, going from fault to fault, for quite a while because it’s a pretty comfy place to be. You get to keep all of your self-worth even if the world thinks otherwise.

My peers did this too. The rest of my graduating class had similar luck getting into prestigious colleges, and many had the same complaint: “Well, I was white and middle class. Of course I couldn’t get in. Of course I couldn’t get any scholarships. It’s affirmative action at it again.” I was in an advanced program where everyone had immense social pressure to excel academically, so there’s a huge incentive to save face with a statement like this. Now, you can blame your failure on outside circumstances. It wasn’t me. It’s not my fault.

If you’re busy being the victim, you can’t learn from the experience. When you shift the blame of a situation onto somebody else, it’s usually a way to avoid introspection. Since you obviously weren’t the source of the problem, you don’t have to change. So you don’t, and the problem gets ignored, and nothing really gets done. Maybe the Stanford admissions did make a mistake. Maybe it was just bad luck that you didn’t get in. The reality is, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. In most cases, there is something you can do better in a bad situation. And if there isn’t, then stop getting caught up trying finding a scapegoat. Every bad situation is an opportunity for self improvement, and if you’re the victim, you’re ignoring that opportunity. Placing blame is embracing your weaknesses and giving control of your life away. It affirms, “Circumstances outside of my control have put in this situation because I’m too weak. My force of will is not enough to change my life.” Well, blame it on the web, but the spider’s your problem now. If I could go back, I would tell my classmates, you are where you are. It doesn’t matter why. What are you going to do now?

But the most dangerous part of this way of thinking is how quickly it becomes a habit. Playing the victim can become a very addictive role. The human brain has a multitude of filters and tricks to keep itself from feeling vulnerable, and the majority of them are subconscious. Your mind feels safer knowing that it doesn’t have to change than it does realizing that you could have done better. Working against this takes directed and clear effort, and without it, the downward spiral is all too clear.

First, you say that the university didn’t accept you because you’re white. You didn’t get in, nothing you can do now, right? So you get mad, don’t get excited about education, get cynical about the whole process, and have generally a bad time. Your brain has no problem twisting the situation until it fits the narrative that you started – that this situation is not your fault. And now you wonder who else is screwing you, the banks, the corporations, the democrats, the republicans. It’s not just the boogeyman, it’s all the little things too. Didn’t get the girl? Well, she was blind to your charms. Came in late to work? It’s that idiot bus driver. You ignore all the places you can do better and all the ways you can control your life in favor of feeling mentally comfortable. Or worse yet, maybe you give up in a self-righteous rage. People like this aren’t pleasant to be around, and don’t end up being very happy.

Perhaps it was this realization, or maybe just the frantic pressure to do something with my life now that college was off the table, that allowed me to get past who was screwing me this time and focus on what I could do now. Learning from this failure enabled me to develop a plan, move forward, and figure out a new way to get to where I wanted.

Failure is good — and nobody knows it.

Failure as a positive thing is popular entrepreneurship canon — fail fast, fail often, learn, and repeat. But in the wider spectrum of the world, “failure” is treated exclusively as a negative word. In high school, “failing” is the worst thing a kid can do. In fact, the whole concept of failure is tremendously alien to students.

We have this strange “everyone gets a blue ribbon” mentality in our elementary, middle, and even high schools. Like I mentioned earlier, we go out of our way to protect our egos. We know how bad it feels to realize you aren’t good enough, so we give all our kids the blue ribbon, tell them that they’re special, and praise everything they do. We think we’re protecting them from pain when really we are guaranteeing it later on. Of course we have a tendency to blame people when we actually start failing — everyone in our little kid life up until now has told us it’s never our fault! We have a direct hand in building these fragile, probably misguided egos in our children when really they should get shoved around a lot. An immune system that endures attacks from all sides is ultimately a healthier one, and our ego is a mental immune system. (Ironic that parents hate it when their kids get dirty or sick, for the exact same reason — they think they’re protecting them from illness when really they’re guaranteeing no immunity later on.) We’re so scared to tell kids “you’ve screwed up” that when it happens they don’t know how to react.

Then, when kids make the transition to high school, they go from one warped vision of the failure to another. Failure in the microcosmic academic life is nothing like failure in the real world. In school, the whole world is pass/fail. All you get is one shot on the test, or the class. Either you make it or you don’t, and it’s hard to identify what helped get you there. In the real world, failure is not so binary. It is usually a sliding value, ranging from “mostly success” to “pretty much failed”. There’s salvageable bits and pieces.

Additionally, academic consequences aren’t material. What’s does an F in the class mean in the long run? Anything at all? You can bet a startup CEO is trying to learn all he can from his experience because his livelihood is at stake. For kids who aren’t engaged, what’s the problem with a few bad grades?

Then, college admissions is the biggest mess of them all. Most college-minded kids spend their entire 4 years in high school fretting about the results of a single application. The process doesn’t feel like a series of incremental steps contributing to the overall success of the application. There are two results, yes and no, and a good degree of randomness about which will actually happen. For many kids this will be the one big “try” they will make in their school life, and it doesn’t teach them enough. Trying your hardest, and being told “no” by a college for no clear reason doesn’t do much to help you handle high-pressure, long-term investments like the college admissions process. When the vast majority of kids this year are told “no,” what are they supposed to think? Was it the essays? The grades? What could I do better? You’ll have to figure that out yourself, because the rejection letter sure isn’t telling you.

So we as a society never really expose students to the complex failure-ish of the real world. Students should spend their teenage years learning from their mistakes, and we’ve equipped them very poorly to do that. I certainly wasn’t confident. I remember thinking early in my Junior year that “if I don’t get into these colleges, this is going to be the first time I’ll have ever failed. Like, really failed.”

I don’t want to brag. I recognize there are a lot of kids who struggle seriously through their high school years and do fail, often. But among a class of kids who take their academics far too seriously, I think I’m not alone in having never truly been defeated. In my myopic world view, there was nothing I thought I couldn’t do. I had aced all my academics. Every hobby I’ve had I’ve gotten good at. I Impressed every teacher and every friend. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes — but I’d never had to admit defeat. Putting your all into applying for college, and not getting accepted: that’s defeat. People say “learn from your mistakes” but when I’m sitting with nothing after high school, it’s hard to put that in perspective. You’ve failed, Paris. You screwed up. That’s a weird feeling. I got stopped right at the gate, when I was just trying to start my life.

In fact, it’s much better to fail early than later. Let’s say I didn’t fail and got into college. When I did finally hit my first big failure – and there’s no doubt I would have – it may have been at 25, with college debt and a narrow set of marketable skills. Or 30, when my life is entangled with relationships and bills. Or 35, when I have to take care of a family. No, the absolute best time to fail is as early as possible, and 19 seems like a pretty good age for that. I’ve still got a lot of options on my plate and I’m not constrained by anything but me.

As I know now, that failure ended up being the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ve realized that it’s good to get used to failure because if you’re ever going to do something of importance, you’re going to fail several times before that. Relish it. Squeeze every lesson you can from it. I’m nothing but thankful for failure because without it, I would not have learned any of this. I would not be sitting here writing this blog post and enjoying life.

I could have done without the days of crying, though.

I’ll be posting more about my life, computers, and living in the 21st century. You can chat with me on twitter, @parismitton.

How a High School Valedictorian Chose Against College

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 12:31:19 +0000

Hey. I’m Paris Mitton. I’m a 19-year-old software engineer in Denver, Colorado. When people meet me nowadays, the first remark is always about my age. I’m probably the youngest person they’ve met in the professional field, and it’s a little strange. It’s made even stranger by the fact that just a few months ago, I was a senior in high school, straight A student, top of my class, and had applications out to the most well-known universities in the nation. How did I get here? If I could tell the senior-year Paris this story, I’m sure he would not have believed me.

This is the story of how everything that could go wrong, did go wrong — and how that ended up being the best thing that could have happened.

Like the majority of kids today, heading to a university had been on my life roadmap since I was very young. I knew for a fact that I was going to college. I can recall clearly the conversation I had with my mother one day in first grade. School had been boring me; the teacher was spending time on things I already knew and not enough on things I wanted to know. My mother consoled me by telling me that things would be better when (not if) I went to “college” and could study whatever I wanted. College, I asked her; what’s that?

“College is where people go to get smart and be successful,” she replied.

I don’t think my mother’s statement is out of line with the rest of society’s view; College enrollment is at an all time high, as is the cost, which would imply that we as a culture find a lot of value in higher education. The theory goes that the earnings you make over a lifetime outweigh the loans, and the connections you make with people can be for life. Being an industrious little 1st grader, I wanted to be 1. smart and 2. successful. So the choice was a no-brainer.

Here’s the ingenious plan 1st-grade Paris came up with:

Get great grades in middle school to impress high school honors programs.
Get great grades in high school to impress colleges.
Go to a great college.
Get a great degree.
Get an internship at a great company.
Get a job at a great company.
Great.

As you can see it’s not really thought out. Frankly, very little of the college process is thought out — it’s just “what you do” as a middle class high school graduate. Even as I grew up, the simplicity of this plan never seemed to change. The last 10 years of my life have been pretty much a to-the-letter perfect execution of this plan. I was the traditional upscale college candidate — variety of extracurriculars, president of 2 clubs, straight As in every class, valedictorian, IB scholar, and with a passion for learning and my personal forté, computing. I wrote the essays, impressed the right people and aced standardized tests. In short, my life was the on-the-rails indicator of success. I was surrounded by people — teachers, advisors, parents, friends — who saw these metrics and reassured me that I was destined to do well. How could I not succeed?

Step 3, here I come!

I applied to CalTech, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. All out of state, mostly private, and highly competitive. Anyone who went to college in the last few years will notice that I did not apply to a safety school. Why not? My own mismanaged sense of pride, primarily. I am quick to note that literally every source I had was telling me the same thing: I’m going to get in. The admissions page sounds like all it takes is being the top of the class. My teachers and parents, impressed with my grades, said I was a shoo-in. Everyone, myself included, had a completely wrong idea of what college admissions really are (A lottery — more on that for another post).

So the results rolled in. I was rejected from Stanford and Caltech right off the bat. This was a surprise to me. Of course there is an element of chance in admissions — but I thought I was a lottery-winning sort of kid. Even if I didn’t get into one of those, I thought the chances were good I would get into the other. But two strikes out? Ouch. That’s ok, I told myself, Berkeley has a lower standard, since it’s a state school. I’ll get in there.

Can you guess what Berkeley said?

The night I was rejected to Berkeley was a very somber night. It was the first time I cried in several years. At the time, I felt betrayed by my teachers, my counselors, and my parents. I had been promised that if I wanted to be the best and proved I was willing to try, I would be accepted to the college of my choice. It was the educational equivalent of the American Dream, and it just failed me. So how did it come to this? This was all I could think: How did I try this hard for all my life, and yet, at the last moment, come up with nothing?

Despite all these questions swirling in my head, the real world doesn’t grind to a halt just because your personal one does. The most pressing question, of course, was “what happens now?” Admissions were closed. I was graduating in a few weeks. I’m not the kind of guy to sit around my parent’s basement. What did I have left? Only then was I was reminded of an experience I had a year prior that might offer a way out.

In the summer of my Junior year, I took an internship at a software development firm. The work was mostly trivial, but I did get to play around with the code and work with some real developers. I saw what they did on a day-to-day basis and realized that a lot of it was within reach of my own self-taught skills. I really wasn’t that far off in my capabilities from an actual working developer.

I was stalled at step 3 — but could I somehow leap over the missing steps and go straight to Step 6? Could I be an actual, working developer?

I thought about how my resume would look compared to any other entry-level candidate, straight out of college.

19: those few years between 19 and, say, 23 mean a lot in the tech world. It could easily mean “less mature and responsible” to an interviewer.
No fantastic scholarships to speak of, and no recommendations from colleagues/professors: a bit of a wild card.
I had some experience, possibly more than most college candidates: that was an asset or at least an even playing field.
No college diploma: isn’t that a straight out disadvantage? So much so that many companies would not even allow me to apply to a job without that piece of paper. The job postings are discouraging. Required: 4-year-degree in computer science. Well, that wasn’t me. How do I play those weaknesses as strengths instead?
19, and yet had enough knowledge to be an engineer. That says a willingness to learn.
Young and passionate, which means I work hard and contribute to the company environment.
I had minimal experience where new grads sometimes have none. I am familiar with the engineering workflow and standards like Scrum, Git, and continuous integration — practical, not theoretical, knowledge.
No diploma proves that I can teach myself and learn on the job. It can be a position of strength — leave the “safe” college approach and strike out on your own. I realized that my greatest asset was my youth, my enthusiasm, and my personality — and resumes do a very poor job of advertising any of these.

So, online job applications were out of the question. Instead, I started going to meetups. I found a few interesting ones in areas that seemed interesting. I met face to face with professionals (potentially colleagues) and exposed myself to cutting-edge ideas. Most importantly, potential employers saw me and not my resume. Much to my surprise and benefit, I found that the way I thought about myself is the same way that much of the tech world has taken to thinking as well. Many startups recognize the power of a unique company culture, and that great skills can come from everywhere. When I set out on my job search, I expected to, just maybe, find a team that was open-minded enough to appreciate my unique profile.

To my delight, I received interest from almost everyone I talked to. I didn’t just find AN opportunity — I found many. This was extremely validating for me. My computer skills hadn’t been rewarded (or even acknowledged) at school, and by my senior year, I began to question just how much a 5th year of english or a year of rehashed programming basics at college were going to help me. At the very least, the debt would be a serious financial setback. I felt like I had a valuable skill, and it would take me 4 years, several thousand dollars, and even more time spent in a traditional, static educational setting to prove it. So to hear that there were companies out there who recognized that, even degreeless, I was worthy of their time — that was magical. Maybe, there is a place out there for me.

The interview process was daunting at first. I have heard a lot of horror stories about cranky interviewers and oblique questions. I was definitely nervous, but I never felt unfairly treated or out of my element. The interviews I had mostly consisted of a rigorous technical overview, time chatting with employees, and then some sort of project. The projects usually involved implementing some aspect of the developer’s day to day work.

For each project, I tried to come up with something that was interested in but also displayed a variety of technical skills. My favorite was a project where I had 2 days to build a lightweight web service that aggregated data from different sources. When I was assigned this, I had just finished a long winded argument with a friend who suggested that the recent live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was actually good. Despite my most fervent arguments, he would not see reason — so I made “Taste Tester,” a “how good is your taste” web service. You give it a set of music, movies, and video games that you enjoyed and your ratings of each. Then, it would look up what the critics rated it and would snidely inform you how good your taste in media was. That way, whenever my friends said something stupid like “Avatar was a cinematic masterpiece,” I could give them scientific evidence that they had no idea what they were talking about. Projects like this made the interview process more interesting and were also fun to build.

When the dust settled, I was beyond flattered to be able to choose between two great job offers. This was a dream come true. Where universities had ignored my hard work and passion, the tech world seemed not just tolerant but welcoming. It’s been a sign of good things to come. Today, I work for FullContact, which unifies, cleans up, and saves customer’s address book information in the cloud. I work on tools for developers, and the technology that adds publicly-available information to people’s limited information on contacts. I’m learning a ton, collaborating with a great team, and feel invested in the work. This is the first time in my life I can wake up in the morning and think to myself, “Is today monday? Game on.”

March through October 2014 was one the scariest and most stressful times of my life. Looking back on it, I am nothing but glad that it’s happened. I love where I am and I wouldn’t have wanted to get here any other way.

What now?

I made it to Step 7 in 1st-grade-Paris’s plan, several years early. For now, I’m enjoying the ride and learning all I can. I’ve got a few business ideas cooking. Who knows? After planning my life for 15 years, I’m ready to go with the flow for a little while.

I’m going to be posting more about my experience — what I learned, and how I feel about university in America (guess what: negative!) here on my blog. You can chat with me on Twitter — @parismitton.